I just came across some excellent videos (see below) illustrating the thoughts on theological education and seminary that I’ve been wrestling with for the past couple of years. You can read about my thoughts here.
You can also read a great article by Leonard Sweet about how seminaries have to reinvent themselves here.
I am encouraged to not only see 3DM working through this concept, but also Fuller Seminary.
Here are pertinent sites discussing the matter:
How do you organize your thoughts when you are writing a proposal? Or a paper? Or a research project?
I used to gather all my information in a normal word document, or a note in Evernote and have everything in a linear fashion using 1. a) b) c) , etc, but when it came time to write, I found it was too difficult to organize everything and write efficiently.
I’ve been experimenting with mind maps for a while now, and when writing a paper for one of my classes, I decided to use it to organize my thoughts.
Here is an image of the mind map I used to gather research and organize my thoughts when I wrote my paper entitled, “Planting Multiplying Spirit-Empowered Churches.”
What do you use to organize your thoughts and present them?
P.S. In case you’re wondering, the best program that I’ve discovered for mac is “Mind Node.” I have the free version on my mac, and the paid version on my ipad.
Back in 2009, I wrote a post entitled, “Where to go to seminary? A preliminary comparison between seminaries in Canada, the United States, and Korea.”
Since then, a lot of things have changed – especially my outlook regarding seminary and the usefulness of theological education. I touched on that topic briefly in my post, “The Future of Seminary.”
Well, after viewing some activity over those two previous posts, I thought I’d give my view as to where I think the future of seminary education is heading by explaining where I’m at. Namely, why I ditched the M.Div (Masters of Divinity) and am still a pastor.
Here it is…
I’ve been wrestling with the effectiveness of traditional seminary programs for engaging postmodern culture with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Before I share my thoughts on the subject, I thought I’d just throw this quote out to see what you think.
It comes from Steve Ogne’s and Tim Roehl’s Transformissional Coaching
“Neither seminary nor seminar will prepare us to do ministry in the postmodern future. We believe that ministry equipping for transformissional church leaders will be just in time, on the job, on the Internet, in the church, and in the trenches.”
What do you think?
Follow up (Jan 19, 2011) – After writing this post, I thought I’d follow up with where I’m at now – Check out my post “Why I ditched the M.Div…and am still a pastor.”
Today, during our 2009 Onnuri Spirituality and Leadership Conference, Richard Foster said something along these lines – “After coming to know the Lord, Paul spent three years in the desert being trained (Gal 1:17-18) – this wasn’t seminary…this was after seminary” (my paraphrase).
He went on to talk about how the Lord taught and trained Paul during those years and how as pastors, we must be ready to go through a time of “tucking away” or being trained so that God can teach us the prayer of relinquishment. Just as Paul went through that type of training, so did Jonah, David, Job, and Abraham. And who can forget Jesus (Matt 26:39), who had to learn the prayer of relinquishment in one of the most difficult ways – through facing death.
Often times, we think that going to bible college or seminary automatically grants us the God-given-privilege to pastor and lead others. What many of us don’t actually grasp is that pastoring isn’t a job, it’s pure honor and a serious, yet joyful calling. One can’t just learn in a classroom – ministry is best learned in the field, while doing it. Continue Reading…
This post arises out of a unique journey of mine. Believe it or not, I am actually enrolled in 4 seminaries at the moment, pursuing my Masters of Divinity (M.Div) at all of them! Okay, before I qualify that statement, I am actually only taking courses at one of the four seminaries, but I still have student numbers at all of the other ones.
Let me briefly explain my journey, and then I’ll do a brief and preliminary comparative analysis between three out of the four seminaries. Continue Reading…
