Pastor Jay //

I am finishing my third day of this first session of seminars at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. The dream that was placed in my heart about 8 years ago to return to school and complete ministry studies is now becoming possible. Seven years ago, I was in preparation to begin doctoral work in Fort Worth while I was a pastoring in Texas. Unfortunately, the church did not think that their pastor should have a doctorate. It was not long after that I was called to Missouri to First Baptist Cameron. Now, with the church’s blessing, I have an opportunity to start work again. For the longest time, I had planned on doing Ph.D. work which would have probably not been as practical as the studies that I am doing right now. The work that I am doing now, by nature, has to be work that relates to my ministry. I will be developing a project that will, hopefully, be a benefit to our church.

It is wonderful to be in a room of just 10 other students that have already proven themselves in school at the masters level and in their ministry and now are returning to do research. Each seminar is only a week long, but there are weeks of work before and after the class. Before this class we had 6 books to read (about 1500 pages) and written work for each book. Then after the class we have 30 days to write an exit paper (15-20 pages) and other assignments. I will do this 6 times in 2-3 years and then take about a year to do the project and write up the research.

This week has been an exhausting but inspiring week.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 26th, 2006 at 9:34 am and is filed under coffee talk. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.