New Year, New Class

Well, 2010 is here and along with it I am just starting my 3rd class at Rockbridge Seminary. So far, I am really impressed with the classes and the level of interaction between the students. I have taken online courses through a few other colleges and for those most part have been disappointed at each one because of the poor interaction between students/students and students/professor. Rockbridge has been a breath of fresh air in this area – I have learned just as much,  if not more, from the interactions as from the actual reading and assignments. One of the reasons for this, I believe, is that all of the students have to be involved in ministry already. Because of this, we are all able to pull from each other’s experiences and learn from them.

The class I am taking now is call “The Theology & Practice of Ministry.”  The course competency is listed as:

Provides spiritual guidance in helping others analyze how God has shaped them for ministry through spiritual gifts, heart for ministry, abilities, personality, and experiences.

Now, if that’s not something to be excited about learning, I don’t know what is. Here’s to another great start of what looks to be a wonderful class!

Community

I am now in my second class at Rockbridge Seminary and am loving the experience. The class I am taking now is called The Theology and Practice of Fellowship. Its focus is on the reason for and the how-to of biblical community. In reading a book, called The Connecting Church: Beyond Small Groups to Authentic Community, I found a story that sounds so truly American that it hurts. It talks about a family that desires true relationship so bad, yet for all that they are involved with are unable to find it.

Then, I had a strange desire to watch Rent the other night with Ginger. While I have seen the Off-Broadway show and seen the movie already, something really struck me watching it this last time, curled up on the couch. What I was seeing in the lives of these friends was real community. One shared money they had.  Another shared what food (okay, and drink) they had. Sounding familiar yet? Not only did they share what they had, but they were there for each other in the good and the bad. In other words, it wasn’t a relationship of convenience.
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Mentors

This week in my Developing the Focused Life class at Rockbridge Seminary, I really had to do a lot of introspection. The week’s instruction dealt a lot with the need for mentors in our journey. To be quite honest, this is an area that I have been lacking. I have never actively sought out a mentor, or at least someone that I specifically keyed in on specifically for a mentor role. Yet the bible gives tons of examples of the mentor/mentoree relationship when God is calling someone to something.

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Newer Beginnings

Wow, has it really been that long since I have posted? So many things have happened since then, so let me bring everybody up to speed!

While taking my online courses through Denver Seminary, I became discouraged with how things were going. The classes were fine and the material was fantastic, but the interaction between the professor and the students and even the students/students just wasn’t really there. I got the idea that they were trying to take a physical classroom approach and force that into an online environment, which really doesn’t work well at all. It seemed kind of like trying to put a square peg into a round hole – doesn’t really work all that well, right? On top of that, realizing that the entire program was going to cost well over $45,000, I just felt convicted that I could be doing something much more substantial with the money that God was entrusting me with; especially given the fact that there are so many people in my area that need basics like food and clothes.

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Amazon Bookstore

All right, so this is a shameless plug, but hey – I’ve got to pay for school somehow, right? On the top menu bar, you will see a link entitled “Bookstore”. From there, you can purchase books that I have read and recommend; the plus side is that you are really purchasing from Amazon, but I would earn anwhere between 4% to 10% of the purchase cost. In addition to the store, you will find a couple of widgets in the sidebar that list various books on Amazon that you might be interested in.

Why do all of this? Well, I do have to pay for my seminary education somehow, which is going to cost quite a bit. I would really love to be able to do that without incurring any additional debt, so I’m look for ways to make some additional money to put towards tuition and books. So, while this may be a shameless plug, I hope that anyone out there looking to buy anything from Amazon would help me out in this effort and buy it through me. After all, it won’t cost you a thing!

* Not looking for a book? Use the search box in the sidebar to find anything else you might be looking for.

2nd Week Down

Well, I have finished my second week of classes and things are moving along. This past week was a lot more engaging than the first week. The odd thing about it is that while there was a lot more reading and work to do this week, I enjoyed it a whole lot more than the first week. Why? Because this was the first week that we really started to interact with each other online. One thing that I love about working with others is learning from a different perspective. Each person brings their own background, culture and personality to the table and you get to see things through their eyes. I long for that type of interaction. At the church in Germany where I was an associate pastor (Victory International), I loved hearing from Germans, Polish, Africans, etc. on all of their experiences and how they were led to Christ.

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Surviving Seminary

I took a “seminary survivability” quiz online today and through its magic, it determined that I have an 85% chance of surviving seminary. Well, those are good odds, right? RIGHT?!? After the amount of reading I’ve had to do in just this second week, those odds aren’t looking too bad right now.

First Bite Complete

Question: How do you eat an elephant?
Answer: One bite at a time.

I’ve always loved that quote, though I’m not really sure where it comes from. What it means for me today is that I have completed my very first seminary assignment. That’s one down with about a million more to go. Okay, so I might be exaggerating a little bit on that one, but who knows. Either way, I’ve just finished my first bite. Now it’s on to the next bite.

Herme – What?

Hermeneutics. That’s the new word in my life. While I have heard this word before and thought I understood it’s meaning, the very first reading in my BI 501 course really blew me away. Why should it, though – it’s just a word, right? Not if you really think about it. You see, so many times we read the bible and take what is there at face value without any consideration of the time in which it was written, to whom it was written, by whom it was written, under what circumstances, etc. etc.

Is that the proper way to read the bible? I read a great article on this just yesterday on the Parchment and Pen blog (I am an avid reader of this blog). This article along with what I read for class yesterday has really challenged me. One of the quotes in the class I heard yesterday really puts this into perspective:

“Wonderful things in the Scripture I see. Most of them put there by you and by me.”

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Too Excited?

So here I am waiting for classes to start already. I have already posted my introduction (all classes are the same in that regard, right?) and keep checking back to see if anybody else is around. I know class doesn’t officially start until tomorrow, but come on! I am too excited to wait. Now I just wonder if that excitement will still be there as I roll my sleeves up and get into the actual assignments. Time will tell. ‘Til then, I’ll just keep looking for more introductions.