Spiritual Life and Evangelism

A Tale of Two Classes

I'm a little over a week into the Spring semester and I thought I'd post a little update on what I'm up to.  This semester I'm taking PM101OL Spiritual Life and PM102OL Evangelism.  What is surprising to me right out of the gate is how differently these courses are structured and it is obvious to me that this semester will very much be a tale of two classes.

PM102OL Evangelism

You ever just start something and immediately know you're going to like it?  Yeah, that's pretty much the vibe I'm already getting from this course.  This course is going to require no small amount of work but it looks to be well organized and scheduled accordingly to allow me to work through things at a comfortable pace.

I'm already into Module 3 in this course which believe it or not means I'm pretty much on track.  The course is moving a really good clip but it's chunked up in such a way that the modules are pretty short.  I can already see though that there are going to be some major assignments at the end of the semester which are going to end up accounting for most of my grade.  Very similar to ST101OL in that regard, but as long as I keep my head in the game, this shouldn't be a problem.

The other thing that I'm really looking forward to is the fact that this is more than just a theoretical class in evangelism.  We're gonna have to get out and meet and talk with folks in an evangelistic setting.  From what I can see so far, this is really focused on building conversations and I'm excited to get started which I'll be beginning to do this week.  Stay tuned!

PM101OL Spiritual Life

Hey Dave, you listed the classes backward.  I suppose that I did but it's difficult for me to say much about this class at the moment as it is completely different from PM102OL.  The challenge for me is that I only have visibility to the next 7 to 10 days of work in the course.

The professor has structured this course in such a way to model the experience of a classroom setting.  While this may sound like a good thing, for someone like me, it actually defeats the purpose of choosing to study online.  If it was possible for me to attend class on campus, I would have done so.  So the downer to this is that I have zero ability to plan my approach to taking this class and with my schedule, this could end up being a disaster.  Case in point, for my assignment next Monday, I'll actually be stepping out of client meetings in order to attend a mandatory WebEx with my class section.  Hardly ideal.

That said, my GTA is sympathetic to my case and has graciously offered to work with me in advance if any of the due dates in the future become difficult for me.  I sincerely hope I don't need to take him up on that, but I do very much appreciate his consideration to be flexible.  The ironic thing about this to me at this point seems to be that the most stressful course I've taken thus far at the seminary, is a course on spiritual life. 

Of course, I'm not going to pass judgment this early in the semester, just letting you know that this course is very much a journey into the unknown.  While I'm certainly having doubts about having signed up for this class, the subject matter looks outstanding, to be honest, and I really hope that isn't ruined by the online class structure.  Also stay tuned.

Overall Impression

So we're off in Spring 2018.  It sure seems to figure to be an interesting semester at any rate.  My expectation is that I'll be investing a lot of time in both these courses and likely more than the 2 credit hours perhaps should.  I do know that this course combination is going to be replaced in the future with one class covering both items.  I'll look to provide a little more detail on that in the future once I get a better sense of classes.  But we're off and I'm looking forward to really getting into the thick of the material.