Ross's Seminary Experience
I know that I’m a little behind here, but I would like to put my $0.02 in about the seminary experience. Now don’t forget, I’ve only been in seminary for one full semester, so my thoughts perhaps will change as I go further along.
1. What is the best thing about seminary education (particularly at Southeastern)?
So far, I would say that by being a full time student Seminary has enabled me to devote more time to study which I wasn’t able to do previously. I think that with seminary, as with most endeavors in life, you get out of it what you put in. The aspect of the Southeastern experience that I’ve only began to benefit from is the unique apologetics track here. Since this is the field that I want to study and eventually teach, I’m glad that this specific track is available.
2. Where, in your opinion, is the system lacking?
Drew already hit on a one aspect that I wish could be improved – the size of the classes. It has been difficult for me to cultivate a relationship with the professors of my classes, especially when they have 50 students and probably don’t even know my name.
I believe there is another difficulty in the Seminary system in general, but I’m not sure what I would propose to improve the state of things. My experience at seminary has been that there are two basic classes of folks (broadly speaking). The one class really wants an in-depth study of the material that is being taught, whereas the other group just wants to pass the class so they can get the MDiv to hang on the wall so they can get to preachin’. This is similar to Charlie’s differentiation of the academic track and the ministry track, but there are tangible differences. I think that many folks who are on the ministry track still want to learn all they can in the classes, so I definitely wouldn't want to include these folks in my second group.
I supose that my frustration stems from the simple truth that there is still a bit of underlying anti-intellectualism in some corners of Baptist life. So perhaps I would agree that something should be tweaked in the track system, but I’m not sure that this would fix the problem.
I also would like to see a little more flexibility in the class selection process. Being that I want to take the “scholar’s track” I wish that there were more elective opportunities. Without naming specific classes, I believe that some of the required MDiv core classes could be changes to electives, or at least combined in some way to give more hours for specifying your educational experience.
3. How has God used seminary in your life to teach you more about Him?
I think that my constant struggle has been not to equate intellectual acumen with spiritual health. So to be here and see the professors as examples of people who have the head, heart, and hands all in line with the Lordship of Jesus has been a great help.
4. If you could start seminary all over again (uggh...that's an unpleasant thought), what would you do differently?
I think it’s a bit too early for me to answer this question, so I’ll pass on this one :-)
1. What is the best thing about seminary education (particularly at Southeastern)?
So far, I would say that by being a full time student Seminary has enabled me to devote more time to study which I wasn’t able to do previously. I think that with seminary, as with most endeavors in life, you get out of it what you put in. The aspect of the Southeastern experience that I’ve only began to benefit from is the unique apologetics track here. Since this is the field that I want to study and eventually teach, I’m glad that this specific track is available.
2. Where, in your opinion, is the system lacking?
Drew already hit on a one aspect that I wish could be improved – the size of the classes. It has been difficult for me to cultivate a relationship with the professors of my classes, especially when they have 50 students and probably don’t even know my name.
I believe there is another difficulty in the Seminary system in general, but I’m not sure what I would propose to improve the state of things. My experience at seminary has been that there are two basic classes of folks (broadly speaking). The one class really wants an in-depth study of the material that is being taught, whereas the other group just wants to pass the class so they can get the MDiv to hang on the wall so they can get to preachin’. This is similar to Charlie’s differentiation of the academic track and the ministry track, but there are tangible differences. I think that many folks who are on the ministry track still want to learn all they can in the classes, so I definitely wouldn't want to include these folks in my second group.
I supose that my frustration stems from the simple truth that there is still a bit of underlying anti-intellectualism in some corners of Baptist life. So perhaps I would agree that something should be tweaked in the track system, but I’m not sure that this would fix the problem.
I also would like to see a little more flexibility in the class selection process. Being that I want to take the “scholar’s track” I wish that there were more elective opportunities. Without naming specific classes, I believe that some of the required MDiv core classes could be changes to electives, or at least combined in some way to give more hours for specifying your educational experience.
3. How has God used seminary in your life to teach you more about Him?
I think that my constant struggle has been not to equate intellectual acumen with spiritual health. So to be here and see the professors as examples of people who have the head, heart, and hands all in line with the Lordship of Jesus has been a great help.
4. If you could start seminary all over again (uggh...that's an unpleasant thought), what would you do differently?
I think it’s a bit too early for me to answer this question, so I’ll pass on this one :-)
posted by Ross at 4:52 PM
1 Comments:
Thanks for your thoughts, Ross.
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