End of the Road ... For Now

Tough Decisions

Well, if you've been reading you know it's been a struggle for me on many fronts the past few years in pursuit of an MBTS degree.  Despite having a great Spring semester, the financial means to continue in the program remain just beyond my reach.  Tough decisions needed to be made and I simply could not sacrifice my family's needs at the expense of my education.  So it is with a bit of sadness that I share that at this moment, I've reached the end of the road ... for now.

I'll have more to say soon as I reflect on my studies and share more about what I've learned as a result.

Getting My Greek On

Auditing Greek

Alright, we're a couple of weeks into this Fall semester where I'm auditing first-semester Greek.  Things are going fine so far but I've already experienced the normal ups and downs of studying a language.  After crushing my first quiz, I got a bit overconfident and was brutally humbled on my second quiz.  But a big exam later this week should really give me a sense of if I'm on the right track or not.

Needless to say, any language course requires a tremendous amount of time and discipline to stay on top of the learning.  So it's been a solid hour or two most days (especially after the second quiz).  Anyway, I'm starting to get a handle on things and I find Koine Greek to be very technical which is just AOK with me.  So I'm sure I'll have more to write next week but now it's time to get back to studying noun and adjective forms! 

Hanging in There

Decision Update

Just a quick update today.  I've completed all my semester work for ST104OL Soteriology and I'm getting ready to head home for the first time in years to take a little time off.  Before heading out though, I thought I'd share that I've made a decision with the assistance of the kind staff at DTS.  Rather than withdrawing at this time, I'm going to audit a course this Fall to buy myself some time to see if I can make things work moving forward.  Still not sure what's on the horizon, but at least there's still hope.

What will I be auditing?  Well, I can't audit any course that I might end up taking as part of my degree.  So I've decided to go ahead and audit NT101OL New Testament Greek.  Basically, I'm terrible with languages, so I figure this will give me an opportunity to gain some skills I wish I had, without having to stress out over being - right, terrible with languages.  And in case you think I'm being overly hard on myself; I've been living in Poland for ten years now and I still hardly speak a lick of Polish...

Stay tuned, I'll be posting my ST104OL recap shortly after the final grades are posted.  Really couldn't say how I did in the course as much of the final grade rests on the last two assignments I submitted.  I did OK on the final exam with an 88 after answering 3 questions wrong.  I had a facepalm moment as one of the answers I got wrong was from a passage I actually taught on a few weeks back.  I think I mentioned how much I hate taking tests - yeah, it's the little details that getcha.  So look for that debrief in a week or so.

At A Crossroads

The Tough Decisions

As I approach the end of my summer semester in ST104 Soteriology I find myself at a crossroads and faced with a very difficult decision.  If you've followed at all the story of my seminary education at DTS, splotchy as my updates have been, you know that I've endured a lot over the past couple of years.  Life changes, health changes, work changes, and everything in between have made my pursuit of a seminary education challenging to say the least. And now it's time for me to make some difficult decisions.

While my spirit is willing to continue to make the necessary sacrifices to see my studies through, my pockets are empty.  I've just run out of the green needed to pay the bills.  I'm having some conversations to consider my options and I've not given up hope yet, but the truth is, it doesn't look good.  That said, whether I find the means to pay for school and continue or not, I know this effort will not have been in vain.

What I've learned in the short time I've been at DTS has already had a profound impact on my life.  I know this is by God's design and according to His will.  And what I've learned I've also shared, and will continue to do so with those around me; in my church, in my community, and at my work.  While the journey may look different for me soon, it will by no means be over.  I'm sure I'll have more to write on this soon as the picture becomes more clear.

But for now I'll continue to grind through the final weeks of my current course.  You know I was really looking forward to taking this class, and I can tell you that I have not been disappointed.  In the shorter summer schedule it's been a little more challenging, but it's been great and I look forward to sharing a lot more about what I've learned very soon.

All Over but the Cryin'

Another Semester in the Books

Well, it was a hard sprint to the end of the semester and plenty of Coke Zero was consumed over a number of sleepless nights.  But all projects and papers have been turned in and it's all over by the cryin'.  Right now I'm just waiting on my final grades and then I'll post my course reviews.  This was a tough semester, but I'm generally pleased how everything went.  Stay tuned as I'll be posting more in the coming days.  Now I'm gonna get back to bed...

The Best Intentions ...

Blog Update Fail

Yep, as you can see, I've been doing a bang up job keeping you updated on my journey this semester at DTS.  I'm feeling great and I'm headlong into my courses, there just never seem to be enough hours in the day to do everything I want or need to do.  So I apologize for the blog update fail thus far.

So I finally feel guilty enough to post something this evening.  Well that and I've hit a little writer's block on one of my assignments, so this will be a short but needed distraction for a few minutes.  I'd love to tell you that I'll get back in my posting groove soon, but sometimes the best intentions...

In general, though, I really like my classes thus far this semester.  Both are exercising new thought processes and changing the way I look at and see things.  While I haven't been posting, I'm keeping good records and hopefully, I'll soon have some time to catch up with more specific details.

New learning, new books, new tools.  Just one tired student at the moment :).

The Search for a Seminary

Planning My Search for Seminaries. 

With all the possibilities, how should I go about researching and finding a good seminary?  I know that once I find a school, I can use the framework I developed to make an informed decision.  But how to go about actually get started in research was an interesting challenge.

Since I really didn't have a particular school in mind when I decided to go to seminary, I needed to come up with a plan to begin searching for schools that might meet my requirements.  After giving it some thought, I came up with a few ideas to at least get me started.  Within a few short days, I had all the information I needed to begin evaluating a good list of seminaries.  Here's how I decided to do it...