A new term is upon and and this time I'll be doing things a little differently!
I have officially lengthened my studies from the three year track to a four year track. Instead of fifteen credits last semester I'll only be taking ten. That was a decision due to an essentially unanimous gathering of wisdom from those I asked and from knowing that my pace I was at was not sustainable for me. Intellectually, I had made that decision a long time ago, but there was a hesitancy to make it offical in me that until recently I couldn't name. Committing to a whole extra year and taking on extra debt just kind of feels like shackles restricting my freedom. Even, if I look at it objectively I know that it is not a huge deal and that I'm really losing very few freedoms. However, it is not necessarily the very facts of this particular decision that make me afraid, it's just the concept of what this decision kind of represents. The very idea of not being free to up and go and do whatever is a scary one to me. For someone who just likes to go with the flow I realized that i'm uncomfortable not being able to be free to try new things or do whatever. If a trip to South Africa pops up I just want to be able to say "yes" without having to worry about it. Before the Lord, I don't really know how to deal with that fear of relinquishing some freedoms, but I know that I can give it over to Him and trust Him to walk me through it. I guess that's what relationships mean: surrendering some freedoms with the assurance that it is worth it.
I am eager to begin these new classes - each of them advance in a curriculum:
Thanks for indulging my winter break absence from this blog - I hope not too many of my readers have given up on me! Hang in with me for an awesome 2010!
I have officially lengthened my studies from the three year track to a four year track. Instead of fifteen credits last semester I'll only be taking ten. That was a decision due to an essentially unanimous gathering of wisdom from those I asked and from knowing that my pace I was at was not sustainable for me. Intellectually, I had made that decision a long time ago, but there was a hesitancy to make it offical in me that until recently I couldn't name. Committing to a whole extra year and taking on extra debt just kind of feels like shackles restricting my freedom. Even, if I look at it objectively I know that it is not a huge deal and that I'm really losing very few freedoms. However, it is not necessarily the very facts of this particular decision that make me afraid, it's just the concept of what this decision kind of represents. The very idea of not being free to up and go and do whatever is a scary one to me. For someone who just likes to go with the flow I realized that i'm uncomfortable not being able to be free to try new things or do whatever. If a trip to South Africa pops up I just want to be able to say "yes" without having to worry about it. Before the Lord, I don't really know how to deal with that fear of relinquishing some freedoms, but I know that I can give it over to Him and trust Him to walk me through it. I guess that's what relationships mean: surrendering some freedoms with the assurance that it is worth it.
I am eager to begin these new classes - each of them advance in a curriculum:
- Covenant Theology II is my next Biblical Theology course. The Bible is not a theology textbook that presents encyclopedic explanations for all of our questions. So, this class seeks to better understand the grand narrative of God's story of interacting with his creation.
- Elementary Homelitics is the second step in our homiletics (the art and science of preaching). The first class sought to give us the basic and formal tools and the theological understandings of the responsibility of proclaiming God's word to his people. Now we are putting it into practice by breaking into small groups led by pastors so that we all get to preach twice so that we can be honing our craft more and helping each other learn.
- God and Humanity is a systematic theology class. In it we want to develop a comprehensive understanding of everything we can know about the nature of God, the nature of man, and the affects of sin and redemption on both.
- Gospels is continuing in my New Testament curriculum (fourth after three classes of Greek). Now, being able to use Greek, we'll begin to work our way through the New Testament trying to learn all we can about the four Gospel accounts, learning about the culture it arose from, learning about how it was written, their structure, their content, and their role in redemptive history!
Thanks for indulging my winter break absence from this blog - I hope not too many of my readers have given up on me! Hang in with me for an awesome 2010!