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!

Then, I had a strange desire to watch  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.

How many of us can relate to this? How many of us who can’t relate have a desire for this type of relationship? Whenever we talk about community and the church, Acts 2:42-47 has to come up. It talks about the early church and how they joined together and ate together daily. Is that possible in today’s disconnected society? Should this still be a goal for the church in the year 2009 and beyond? If so, is it achievable?

After going through the week, I have realized that I really do need to make more of an effort to get some mentors in my life. That’s right – mentors as in plural. Why more than one? Well, we all tend to specialize in certain things, don’t we? So when we identify areas in our lives that need improvement, we are probably going to need to find somebody who specializes, or who has a vast amount of experience, in each of those areas.

So why do I need mentoring? There really are a lot of reasons for this – motivation, encouragement, connections, accountability, etc. The list could go on and on, really. But if I were to try to go the journey alone, without any guidance, I would probably run into a lot more brick walls than I need to. I would also have to learn more things the hard way as opposed to drawing on the experience a mentor has to offer. Please pray that God will help me in identifying the people around me that will help me focus in on God’s calling and also that strong relationships will be formed through it.

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.

My discouragement had me questioning whether or not I should stay in seminary or not. Fortunately, I have a wonderful wife and some good friends that reminded me that God’s call wasn’t going to change just because I was frustrated in my current circumstances. While my wife would be supportive of my whichever decision I made, she prompted me to pray and think about it more before I made any decisions. Our wives can be such a blessing, can’t they?

Because I knew that I still needed a deeper knowledge to pull from, I began looking for other seminary options out there. That is when I found Rockbridge Seminary. Wow, what an answered prayer that was. It was just a tiny little link in the ads section of a Google results page that I happened to notice. Generally, I ignore those completely, so it was a fluke that I found it at all. After checking out their site and reading about it from all over the web, I felt this was the right place for me.

Rockbridge Seminary is geared specifically towards the online community and allows you to learn while you continue to serve right where you are. They have also taken a completely different approach to the seminary course structure and have based their program on local church ministry rather than the traditional model of categories of knowledge. This is a unique approach and one that really meets my idea of what I should be learning to be prepared for whatever God is calling me to.

Financially, the school looked great as well. The cost of tuition is less than half of what I was paying previously, which gave me much more peace in how I was spending God’s money. And for an even greater surprise, the school offered the first class free for all students registering for their September session! Pretty good deal – try the first class completely free!

Through their program, you can only take 1 class at a time and each class is only 8 weeks long. That, my friends, is another answered prayer for me. So, I have re-started my seminary journey as of September 1st with my first class there, entitled “Developing the Focused Life”.  Did they know I was coming or what? Really it deals a lot with identifying your calling, which is something I could definitely use.

I am about a week into the class so far and am truly psyched! The interaction and openness between the students as well as the professor is phenomenal and leaves me excited for what the next 3 years will bring. Only time will tell, but so far so good. Keep the prayers coming!

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.

Granted, sometimes working and learning in these types of environments can be challenging. So far at Denver Seminary, all I have seen is people working and interacting with one another in grace. I pray that it remains that way, though I also see how you could get into some heated debates in a physical classroom setting. Is that a bad thing? It really all depends on how situations are handled. There is nothing wrong with getting into a heated debate as long as people can remember that it isn’t personal (or shouldn’t be!). I look forward to more discussions in our online forums, but am still VERY much looking forward to getting to Denver and participating in the live classroom discussions.

In the meantime, I pray that God continues to teach me and that I continue to seek His true meaning.

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.

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.”

So where do we go from here then? A great question and one that I will obviously be delving into more as this class goes on and well into the future. The one question that I have is why don’t we normally hear this in church on Sunday mornings? Not that we are all called to be biblical scholars, but so many times we are just taught to read what is there and apply it to our lives without any consideration for the context.

Do I believe that God can speak to us individually through the scriptures? Of course I do! Do I think that when 2 people read it they will get 2 opposing, but true meanings? Absolutely not. One issue with this for me is the fact that we as Christians tend to use the scriptures to validate an already held belief or to justify our behavior. While that may not be our intent (though if we are completely honest, often it is), I think that happens more than we realize.

It is now that I am finally beginning to understand why so much material has been written about this single book, our “love letter from God”, if you will.