Avoiding Evil

Sem•i•nar•y A school, especially a theological school for the training of ministers. A school of higher education. A place or environment in which something is developed or nurtured.

Seminary is very unique. It is a place to nurture and train individuals for ministry in a way that is unlike any other experience. Whereas College was very broad in its teaching, Seminary is very specific. They take the variety of subjects taught in undergraduate school and condense it down to specifics within certain theological areas to a degree that we are fine tuning our minds, our knowledge, and our lives. When I was working on my undergraduate degree we were taught how to gather information. We wrote papers with the intent of understanding what the author wrote and describing his particular purpose for writing. Very broad and very basic thought process, because all you had to do was read the books and write down what they were about. However, in Seminary we are taught how to not only gather information but assimilate and process that information in such away that we can re-work the topic or idea in our own words and expand upon it with great detail in our own understanding, opinions, and research. The professors do not want to know what the author said specifically; they want to know what you say, how you have understood the information and they want to see that you have critically thought through the issues and have come to a viable conclusion. It isn’t uncommon to produce 30 to 50 page papers, Turabian style, in seminary. It is harder than I thought it would be, but the reward is far greater than the hard work it takes to receive it.

The full time load in seminary is 9 hours and I have been taking at least 11 or 12 per semester plus 2 to 3 hours in between semesters for a total of about 25 hours a year. In three weeks I will have completed a total of 50 hours of my seminary education. For a M-Div I need 89 hours which means I am over half way there! I looked at the schedule for this next semester and if I get to take the classes that I need for this year, one year from now I will be only about 10 to 12 hours short of getting my degree. This essentially means that I will have completed my M-Div in 3 and a half years, which is awesome because I thought it would take every bit of 4 years to finish. Another thing that has happened, that I didn’t quite expect, was Missouri Baptist University has officially been accredited for Masters work. I can take classes at MoBap and transfer them to Midwestern in order to finish my “on-campus” hours instead of having to drive to Kansas City. That gives me a greater opportunity to finish my degree that much faster.

The only problem is sometimes I try to do too much and get bogged down. This semester I didn’t have to take a teaching class, but I did it anyway just to get some more hours in. As it turns out I really have no business taking that class, I hate the class, I am completely behind on all the work for it, and I am going to end up getting the lowest grade that I have ever received in seminary and in my undergraduate work because I took a class that I really shouldn’t have. This will make my grade point average drop, and unfortunately if it falls below a 3.33 then I will not be able to apply for the P.H.D. program at Southern, which was my next step. I am overly nervous at this point because I have only three weeks left of school and so many papers due that I can’t see straight. Right now I am drowning, and it seems like I will never get caught up enough to get a breath of air… All of this is increasingly more difficult with a full time job. My church is very lenient and supportive when it comes to giving me time to get my school work finished, which is something I need right now. If only I can survive the next three weeks, I think I will be ok.

Pressed