Have you thought about sharing your seminary journey with the world? Perhaps you are interested in pontificating about how seminary could be better, or have questions that you’re not finding answers to regarding your seminary journey. Maybe you already have a blog, but not the readership you’d like to have.

Now is your chance to build readership, pontificate about seminary to your heart’s desire, or give blogging your first go around. AND, we’re going to give you your choice of an e-reader to do it.

Submit your 500 to 750 word article on whatever topic you like as long as it has to do with seminary. You must currently be a seminary student and the articles must be original work not previously posted or submitted to another website.

Out of the entries we’ll select the four winners. Those winners will then submit three more articles, one per month, over the next three months. At the end of those three months they will get their choice of the e-readers. A Kindle, a Sony e-reader, or a Nook. All four writers will have their choice! Or if a new ereader is on the market around the $259 price tag we’ll gladly substitute it instead.

To submit your article email it to justaguy[at]goingtoseminary.com. We’ll announce the four winners on April 1^st. And this is most certainly not an April Fool’s joke.

————Update 3/9/10———–

Submission deadline is 3/30/10

Thanks to a 2008 California law the Open Educational Resources Center for California now provides over 400 open textbooks to the public.

The site was intended for California’s community-college faulty and staff members, but it is open for anyone to use. As the number of visitors to the site grows to a significant level they will begin adding forums.

Four hundred is a relatively small number when we’re talking about textbooks, but this is only the beginning of a large push to make education available and affordable to larger audiences.

Jack was frustrated as he stared at his laptop screen. He was on an annual personal retreat planning his twelfth year as senior pastor at Christ Community Church.

The screen showed all his learning activities from the year before – the conferences, seminars, and classes he had attended; the books he had read; the sermons he had studied; and the leadership groups he had joined. He was passionate about learning and kept himself accountable by compiling and checking this list each year during his retreat.

But this year he was not satisfied just having a list – he wanted to know if it was the right list. God was stirring his heart about fresh ministry horizons, and he knew he wasn’t prepared. Shouldn’t he be matching his learning to his future journey? All the items on the list had been helpful to him, but had they been strategic?

For instance, the books he read were chosen more by accident than by planning – he overheard someone talking about one and happened to see another advertised online. Could other books have been more helpful? And one of the conferences he attended was more out of habit than for ministry development.

Jack thought to himself, “I need to get a better handle on my learning choices.”

Can you relate to Jack? If you are reading this article, you are probably a leader with a long list of completed seminars, conferences, books, and courses. The continuing education possibilities for leaders today are endless – and that is the problem. A busy leader may be tempted to choose learning based on opportunity, schedule, and cost rather than according to personal development needs.

I call this “shotgun learning.” It may have worked well a generation ago when you could choose a seminary program, seminar, or conference simply because it fit your schedule or your pocketbook. You could always count on stumbling across information somewhere that was helpful to you. Today, your choices are too many and your time is too valuable to make “shotgun learning” decisions. A better way is to develop a learning focus based on your ministry development needs.

But how do you do that?

A “Personal Learning Plan” can guide you to make strategic learning choices and serve as a tool to evaluate their usefulness later. The effectiveness of your plan depends on how well you tie your learning to your calling. Here are four steps to help you get started:

Step 1: Rediscover your ministry horizon
How is God stretching you? What do you see on the horizon of your journey with God? How is your call unfolding? What is the direction of the faith steps God is asking you to take?

No matter how long you have been in ministry, God has a ministry horizon for you – future ways he wants to stretch you and use you. Sometimes leaders make the mistake of connecting all of their strategic planning to their current ministry position, causing them to lose touch with their personal calling. They forget that their calling is a journey of experiencing God that is greater and lasts longer than any ministry position.

Step 2: Conduct a personal assessment
Assessing the gap between where you are now and the future ministry horizon you envision is important. Yet it may be the most difficult step, since personal assessment can be so easily influenced by denial and self-deception.

Daniel Goleman defines “emotional intelligence” as “the ability to know yourself.” Spiritual leaders develop emotional intelligence through the discipline of personal and spiritual reflection, through the practice of journaling, and through relational channels of accountability and feedback.

Honest personal assessment is most difficult for the leader not yet free to be that unique person God designed and shaped. Trying to be someone you are not, even after years in ministry, can keep you in denial about the “real you” God wants to develop. Rediscover your personal ministry horizon and honestly assess how prepared you are for the challenge. Then think about the ministry competencies that need further development.

Step 3: Identify priority learning pathways
Once you rediscover your ministry horizon and honestly assess your starting point, you are ready to identify priority learning pathways. These learning pathways will guide your personal ministry development in the direction of your calling.

Keeping the number of pathways to three of four at a time will help you focus your learning. Once you are pleased with your development in one area, you can replace that pathway with another.

For instance, Jack saw on his ministry horizon a greater emphasis on mentoring future leaders. Yet his tendency to be emotionally distant made close, authentic relationships difficult. One of three priority learning pathways he chose was “to learn how to authentically express my feelings in community.”

Step 4: Consider the resources available to support you
With his learning pathways identified, Jack saw with “new eyes” the learning resources available to him. He immediately thought of books, conferences, study programs, and learning clusters with other leaders that could help him develop. Choosing resources became much easier with his learning pathways identified first. Now he could get a better handle on his learning choices!

Jack opened a new file on his laptop and smiled as he typed at the top “Personal Learning Plan.”

This article is adapted from the Rockbridge Seminary course “Developing the Focused Life.”

Today’s guest post is by Dr. Sam Simmons. Dr. Simmons is co-founder and vice president for learning design at Rockbridge Seminary. ©Copyright 2010. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Today’s guest post is by Dr. Sam Simmons. Dr. Simmons is co-founder and vice president for learning design at Rockbridge Seminary. ©Copyright 2010. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Bob rubbed his tired eyes. For three hours he had been staring at seminary Web sites trying to decide where to apply. He was particularly interested in three seminaries but felt like he needed to probe a little deeper before making his final decision.

Returning to the three Web sites, Bob wrote down the phone numbers, and then pulled out his cell phone to make the calls. While dialing the first number, he slowly closed his phone, realizing he needed time to think more carefully about what questions to ask.

I have listened to questions from prospective seminary applicants like Bob for 25 years. In almost every instance, the most important questions were never asked – questions relating to learning design. A seminary’s learning design is how a seminary intends for you to change as a result of completing an academic program – change in knowledge, understanding, attitudes, and skills.

If I could catch Bob before he makes that first call, here are three questions I would suggest he ask before he settles on where to attend seminary.

How will your seminary help me understand and fulfill God’s call?
A generation ago, students entered seminary with a calling to one of a handful of ministry
multiple ministry roles. Seminary courses were developed accordingly.

Today, seminary students are more likely to view God’s call in terms of Kingdom, journey, and relationship. Rather than entering seminary with a calling to a specific ministry role, they are more likely to be committed to a journey of obedience that could include multiple ministry roles.

Seminaries are beginning to adapt to this new kind of student. Some provide an entry course that helps incoming students clarify God’s call and process how they are designed and shaped uniquely for Kingdom influence. With the average age of incoming seminary students approaching 40 years old, help is often provided so an older student can understand how life experience and secular work skills relate to God’s call.

Without some perspective of calling, a student can be overwhelmed with the vast assortment of programs and courses from which to choose. Charting a course of study is easier when a student has a clearer perspective of God’s call and a sharper focus of where ministry development is needed.

How will your seminary help me be more effective in ministry?

The root of the word “seminary” is “semen” or “seed.” The original idea was that seminary would be a season of planting seed into a young minister’s life – seed that would start bearing fruit after the student left the protective care of seminary life and assumed his first ministry position in the real world. Traditional seminary education was built on the assumption that a student would complete seminary before assuming full-time ministry responsibilities.

Students entering seminary today are more likely to be serving already in a full-time ministry position. Instead of enrolling in seminary for credentialing in order to find a ministry position, they enroll in seminary because they need help in being more effective as a minister.

Increasingly, seminaries are seeking to make theological education more directly relevant to local church ministry. Some are responding by designing curriculum that is competency- guided. Others are building assignments in a way that use a student’s ministry position as the primary platform for learning.

When I graduate, how will I know if your seminary has helped me?
Seminary is more than passing courses and receiving a diploma. It is a learning journey of growth and development. The entrance into seminary represents one point in your journey.

Graduation represents another. In between, seminary study has influenced you. After three or more years of study, you have a right to ask how.

Did seminary study help you grow? Are you better prepared to minister? Did the seminary program influence you in the way it was intended? These questions will be difficult to answer unless a seminary has embedded these evaluation tools into the learning process from start to finish.

• At the front end, a seminary should help you construct learning objectives based on God’s call and your ministry development requirements.
• As you take courses, a seminary should help you capture learning snapshots that track your progress.
• As you near completion of your academic program, a seminary should help youevaluate the degree to which your learning objectives were met .

Perhaps you are considering seminary education. If so, gather and study information on your prospective seminaries prayerfully. And as you do, be sure you ask the most important questions.

(art: "Saint Jerome" by Caravaggio)

[This article is based on parts of the manuscript for a message I gave on "Beauty" at Epiphany Fellowship. On my personal blog and the webzine I run you can find the audio, manuscript, and full blog series inspired by the message.]

We all know, as I’ve mentioned before, that there is a potential risk of seminary becoming too intellectual an enterprise. This is nothing new. It’s nothing we haven’t heard before. In light of Advent, which began last week, I’d like to send out this call to all the seminarians out there in the midst of papers and final exams. In this article, I’m not seeking to give you anything new, but rather to stir your affections for the study of the revelation of this Beautiful God. I want to talk about what makes theology beautiful, and what makes theology grotesque. “Theology” is the contemplation of the Beauty of God; and as the study of this God, it is also the study of Beauty Itself; it is the contemplation of the various complexities and revelations of God in order to better enjoy Him. John Calvin talks about this in his Institutes of the Christian Religion. He says that if your quote-on-quote “theological study” isn’t leading you to greater praise and enjoyment in God, then you’re not really studying theology! At that point it’s just studying literature – getting a better idea of this “character” named God in this “novel” called “The Bible”.

This is one of the reasons why I had to leave seminary. I was in the midst of such beauty and I was numb to it! I was too immature. I didn’t have the spiritual infrastructure to see it for how beautiful it was! This infinite complexity being placed in front of me day in and day out was not leading me to enjoy Him. How many of us live our lives surrounded by the objective beauty of Christ and it does nothing to us? This contemplation of the Beauty of God can help us. Charles Spurgeon once said, “There is something exceedingly improving to the mind in a contemplation of the Divinity. It is a subject so vast, that all our thoughts are lost in its immensity; so deep, that our pride is drowned in its infinity. No subject of contemplation will tend to more humble the mind, than thoughts of God.”

If the end goal of theology is enjoyment in God, then, how do we know whether or not we’re actually enjoying him? What does this process of enjoyment look like? Let me offer a potential model: First, does your theological education lead you to praise God? By “praise”, I do not mean anything that has to do with your words, actions, or even your thoughts. Praise is the process of turning one’s deepest affections towards the object of one’s contemplation. It is a devotion that is pulled out of your heart and not just decided by your will. It’s acknowledging beauty at the deepest part of who you are. But praising is not enough. Seeing something beautiful and calling it such does not complete the purpose for which that beauty exists.

The Beauty of anything has an attractive quality. It draws you toward it at a very deep level. The next step, after acknowledging this beauty is to allow it to suck you in. I call this participating with the Beauty of that thing or person. All other forms of beauty can only draw you near to themselves. God, in theology, can and does actually draw you into Himself, Himself in you, and then uses his world to communicate Himself even further to you. Let your theology cultivate in you a view of this God as One whose grace can be experienced in everything. Every good-tasting piece of food, every sunset, every cool breeze, every joyful moment all then become moments where God communicates Himself and His grace to you so you might participate and be joined to Him in His Beauty. John Owen, my favorite Puritan, says “O to behold the glory of Christ…Herein would I live; herein would I die; herein would I dwell in my thoughts and affections…until all things below become unto me a dead and deformed thing, no way suitable for affectionate embraces.” Oh that we longed for God like that! In Theology, there is a participation in the Glory, Beauty, Majesty, Goodness, and Love of God that is at hand for those who believe and far for those who don’t.

But even this does not complete the process of enjoying God in theology. Next, we proclaim the beauty we have seen in this revelation of God. The Beauty of anything longs to be known and spread – almost like a virus. It wants to inspire you to tell others about it, so that those people might participate in it as well. This process in response to God’s Beauty in Theology is typically referred to as preaching (and not just behind the safety of a pulpit). Speaking of this God should be the natural response to someone who has praised and participated in the Beauty of God. It is out of the overflow of this in someone’s heart that they speak; not out of begrudging compulsion or sheer white-knuckled obedience. We tell others about the things we find most beautiful. Should this not also apply to the highest of all beautiful persons – God?

This brings us to our last part in the process of responding to the Beauty of God in theology. God, in His love for us, calls us to respond to beauty not only by proclaiming beauty in word, but also producing beauty in deed. This is shown in two ways. First, this shows itself in holiness. Seeing the Beauty of God should inspire us to holy living and loving of others. It should drive us to serving those around us in order to replicate the Beauty of God that we have seen. If your seminary education is not leading you to increased practical holiness, you are an affront to the purpose for which you are supposedly there. Repent or drop out. The second way we produce beauty in response to God’s revelation in theology is by, well, producing beautiful things. We are built in the Image of a God who doesn’t just desire, delight in, and display Beauty, but a God who also makes Beauty. The longer I live, the more I am convinced that everyone has some creative ability in them. Of course this will look different in all of us, but we all have it. Find it. Do it well. Do it often. And do it as a response to the Beauty that is around you in both God and Creation. Seminary should not terminate on itself. It should spur you to create! You are built in the image of a Creator God! You have not only the ability but — I fully believe — the responsibility as well to bring forth more beauty in this world and further participate in God’s “re-knitting” of the broken strands of this universe.

May I challenge all of us, in this season of Advent and reflection, to press in and seek the complexities of Who this God is and how He has revealed Himself? Understanding the Beauty of God in theology is of the utmost importance to the Christian, because His Beauty is completely pointless. It can’t be manipulated, used, or abused. It can only be enjoyed. Something I’ve learned over time: whenever spirituality of any kind goes awry and goes off track, the Beauty of God is one of the first things to go. The inability to accept the mysterious complexities of God is the beginning of all heresy. You can’t have a right enjoyment of the Beauty of God and be a legalist, libertine (someone who abuses grace), or a hypocrite. Seeking to enjoy the Beauty of God is a guard against all these things.

In my reading on this topic, my favorite resource I found was from a Catholic theologian named John Navone. He says in his book Toward a Theology of Beauty that Christian theologians (which I would argue should be all of us) are people given the task of articulating and putting into words how everything in life is given to us by God. Navone calls this the “givenness” of life and selfhood. This means that all of life is grace – unmerited favor; and that even things that are usually seen as secular (types of visual art, media, culture, jobs, and types of “non-Christian” music) are actually things that “mediate the mystery of the dawn of Christ’s Kingdom, as epiphanies or manifestations of grace. We as theologians are charged with the task of ushering in and articulating the mysteries of beauty which we will rest in forever.” That’s amazing. “Theology” is the study of these “mysteries of beauty” that we then articulate to the world around us. He goes on to say that “Theologians are engaged in a dialogue, not only with their public, but with the object of their contemplation.”  In this time that the Church has historically set aside to reflect upon the incarnated living Word of God, may I plead with all of us to spend some time, even in the midst of intense cramming, to reflect upon the study of the inspired written Word of God.

Contemplate this God. Contemplate His revelation. Enjoy this revelation. Enjoy this God. Repeat.  Happy Advent.

We’ve heard hundreds of horror stories of students losing their paper. Whether it is computer theft or a hard drive crashing, we are all vulnerable to loss of intellectual property. Days, even months of work can disappear in an instant. Each term we exhort students to back up their data frequently, but faculty members are just as guilty of not taking the necessary precautions to preserve data.

Thankfully, there are some free or inexpensive solutions to this problem. You can rest easy at night knowing that your documents, email, contact, calendar, and all other data are safely backed up; not just once, but four different ways.

Items to keep in mind regarding Backups.

The first thing you must remember when selecting a backup system is that it must be a “Set it and forget it” system. Anything that relies on a human to start the backup each time will never work. We get distracted and forget. The second thing to remember about backing up is to have more than one system in place in case one has a hiccup. Lastly, have at least one back up in the same location as your machine, and at least one in a completely different geographical location as the machine you are backing up.

The Hardware & Software of backing up

In the old days we used to use tapes to back up and we would rotate them out to a safe deposit box once a week. Was that ever a pain? Working for a digital seminary like Rockbridge brought new challenges since all our staff work in separate locations. We have used MozyPro for about three years and it has worked well. It’s Mac and Windows compatible and centrally managed through their website. It also fulfills our need for an offsite backup.

Alongside Mozy, we each use Drop Box to store all our documents. Drop box not only stores your documents, but also automatically syncs them across any computer you wish. It also allows you to share files with family, friends, or coworkers. Let’s say you are traveling without your personal computer, but you need to access a document. If you can borrow the use of a computer get on the Internet, you can access your account containing all of your documents. Any changes to the document will be sync with all of the computers that are storing your data. You can use the free version of Drop Box (2 gigs) or purchase additional space (50 gigs costs about $10 a month).

You may also want to use NAS (network attached storage) device to back up all the computers in your house. This device is simply an enclosure that has both wireless and wired network access and houses a hard drive. Mine has two hard drives that mirror, or automatically copy each other, in case one of them decides to stop working. However, if you are just concerned with one computer, a USB connected external hard drive? works just as well. Nearly all of these come with backup software. Apple provides Time Machine for Macs that creates automatic backups and works wonderfully.

Archiving the most important files

If you have files that need archived and are critical must haves, such as tax filings or a movie of baby’s first steps, it’s always a good idea to burn a CD or DVD and label it with as many descriptors as you can. In a year when you are flipping through the disk on your desk and can’t remember what’s on a specific disk, you’ll thank yourself for being so detailed. There is also some new technology that we have yet to try, but it’s on our to do list. DVDs that can be burned by personal computers last around 5 years before becoming corrupt so don’t count on them to work in 10 years. Cranberry 1,000 year DVDs are for the documents, images, or database files that must be safe.

What do you use for backing up? What have you used? What didn’t you like, or worse, didn’t work when it needed to? Sing praises or vent in the comments.

Cyber Monday, or everyday: The good folks over at Logos Bible Software are offering the GtS readers 25% off the latest Logos software. Either click here or use coupon code GTS1 when checking out.

iPhone users should check out their recently launched iPhone app.

How many of us will come out of seminary, just to relate to our friends “out there” “in the world” in this way?

Don’t.

Thanks to my friends at Patrol Magazine for originally posting this video.

May I confess something before we get started? I assume this is a safe place. I am terrible at time management. There, I said it. I am not an expert at it in the slightest. This is borderline embarrassing, but I was given the “ok,” to write this article back in February! It is now November and I am just now getting to it. I didn’t even make time to write an article on managing time! Notice that I said, “make” time, as oppose to “have” time. I had the time. We all have the time to do whatever it is we need to do; we just simply don’t do it at times. My wife, Natalie, says, “We make time for the things we want to do.” So when I try to use the excuse of, “I didn’t have time to go run.” She replies, “No, you didn’t make time, because it wasn’t important to you.” Stings, but it’s true. Why don’t we do _________ ? It’s not because we didn’t have the time, it’s because we didn’t give it time. So whether it was an assignment, a ministry deadline, or time at the gym, it comes down to giving not having.

Instead of using words like, “making,” “balancing,” or “management,” let’s use the word “delegation.” We all have 24 hours in a single day. Our fruitfulness hinges on how well we delegate our time between our different activities and roles.

Was not writing this article back in February a bad thing? Was it a bad delegation of time, or was it a proper use of my time? This is precisely what we need to explore and apply to our lives. “How do we use our time in accordance with the responsibilities God gives us?” Our roles and priorities answer this question. We must strive to organize our lives in such a way that our various roles receive the appropriate amount of love and attention needed to glorify God and love others.

Whether you are only one semester into your journey at seminary or you’ve been attending for several years, balancing your studies with other responsibilities is of utmost importance. God-glorifying time management is a task we will pursue for the rest of our lives.

Here is reality. With every new season or life stage, life only gets more loaded with roles and responsibilities. Those of you who are married know exactly what I am talking about. And if you have children you know what I am talking about even more! Being married with children is a busy and wonderful life! Then add ministry into the recipe and we are cooking up some busy schedules.

Let me give you a quick snapshot into my life and see where you can relate.

• Married for only two and half years
• One year-old baby girl
• One of the Pastors at a church planted less than two years ago
• Preach roughly 15-20 Sundays a year
• In the process of appointing elders
• Setting up membership
• Attending to discipline issues
• Leading a college ministry
• Discipling multiple groups of guys
• Leading a ministry team
• Seminary (5-6 hours a semester)

That’s just to name a few things I’m involved in! Consider your involvements.

Honestly, we are all busy. And we ought to be. Our lives or not our own, they belong to Jesus (1 Cor. 6:19-20). We’re to work like an ant (Proverbs 6:6-11), ox (1 Timothy 5:17-18), a good soldier, an Olympic athlete, and a fruitful farmer (2 Timothy 2:4-6). However, it seems that busyness has almost become a badge of honor. In response to, “How are ya?” people often say, “Great! Really busy.” This begs the question, “With what?” Are we busy with: Facebook, Twitter, blogging, reading blogs etc…? We must not confuse being a busy with being fruitful. We need to aim at being faithful with our time and lives for Gospel work, not just active. (Acts 20:24).

Church history provides amazing examples of hard workers, oxen-like persons, who impressively delegated their time. In a biographical sermon on George Whitefield, John Piper said Whitefield would sometimes preach forty hours a week! That’s forty hours of actual preaching, not preparation, but preaching! Steve Lawson, in his wonderful book on the preaching of John Calvin, shared how Calvin felt like one month he had hardly done anything. Calvin felt ashamed and useless. What’s amazing about this is that Calvin had preached twenty sermons and delivered twelve lectures that month! (Steve Lawson, The Expository Genius of John Calvin, Reformation Trust, FL. 2007, 45.)

How busy are we? We’re probably not as busy as Calvin or Whitefield. But this begs another question. Was it right for them to be that busy?

At a recent Acts29 boot camp, Matt Carter, lead pastor at Austin Stone Community Church, preached a message on the lives and ministries of Wesley, Whitefield, and Edwards.
In that message he shared how Whitefield’s wife, lamented how much her husband labored. She said she loved George, but felt like a widow. Should he have been that busy?

If we give great chunks of time to our studies, books, and ministry but neglect our family, we are not honoring God. God is gracious and still does amazing things, but I don’t want my wife to feel like a widow or my daughter to feel like an orphan. We need to be very careful. Here we find our lifelong tension. How do we do everything we need to accomplish, do it well, and remain faithful to other areas of our lives?

This is where we get really practical. We need to think about prayer, priorities, and roles. In the next installment, we will discuss practical tips for managing our time.

Guest Writer: Jeff Medders is in his first year of studies at Dallas Theological seminary, and has hopes to transfer to Reformed Theological Seminary in 2010. He has been married to Natalie since, March 3, 2007. Between being the college pastor and a member of the preaching team at Redeemer Bible Church, a new church plant in Tomball, TX; he loves playing with his little girl, Ivy, born on November 21, 2008. Check out Jeff’s blog: EatBible.org

Big news in Bible software today: Logos Bible Software has announced the release of the newest version of Logos Bible Software, Logos 4. I’ve had my hands on the Beta version for several months and, let me just say, it is amazing. With far too many upgrades, features, and resources to cover in a single post, you can visit www.logos.com/4 to see what Logos 4 can do for you. If you’re already a Logos users, be sure to check out the amazing crossgrade and upgrade options available for you. All the base packages have new books added to them and there are even some new levels that offer AMAZING resources at an incredible discount… check out Platinum!