Wednesday Morning

Well folks, yesterday was my first full day of classes. Monday was an all-day orientation and, while interesting and dare I say fun, Tuesday was where the rubber hit the road.

So here is my schedule: I have Pastoral Theology: Of the People, By the People, and For the People, taught by Dr. Elkins. The class will meet for the two weeks from 9:00 AM - 12:30 PM. It is a class to help me understand culture theology by using Lincoln's Gettysburg address as a way to meat out and interpret cultural theology. The purpose of this class is to help me when I construct my DMin project and write it up in my dissertation.

My afternoon class is Theological Methods and Practice, taught by Dr. Menking. This class meeting from 1:30 PM - 5:00 PM for two weeks. This class will help me do the background work to prepare for the writing of my Topic and Prospectus for my project.

I will have a third class beginning next week, with a paper due this coming Friday (I will start writing it tonight). This class is called Thriving in the Digital Age through Collaborative Leadership, taught by Dr. Hammond and Dr. Hollon. This class is meant to address multiple world views, perspectives on what it means to belong and participate, and the multi-layered expectations that affect congregational leadership. I am not exactly certain how this directly relates to my DMin project but I haven't had this class yet. When I find out its correlation, I'll let you know.

So that's really it for school. The idea for each class is the workload is equal to that of a full year of classes crammed into a week. We have tons of reading (that I've almost finished prior to coming to class), many papers to write, and lots of thinking. All the classes are meant to help us as we begin planning our project. We are also to hit the library as we see what projects other DMin candidates have completed and use their projects when they relate to our own.

For myself, I have narrowed down my ideas for a project to center around doing Christian Education a little different for a small congregation. My project may be to create a multi-generational Sunday school program within Christian Education. At least, this is something our congregation is already considering--and it makes sense to make such a consideration a part of my project. Nothing is set in stone yet, though. These three weeks of class is meant to help me discern my project, I have until September to finalize it.

Okay, so I need to do some homework before my classes today so I am going to stop writing now. See you soon (on here).