8.18.2009

day 1

today started my first day of seminary at nobts. first day of grad school. i haven't been to all of my classes yet, in fact, i've only had 2 so far, but i can already tell its going to be a good bit of work.

intro to greek is going to be interesting for sure. i am excited about the end product of learning greek, but not all that excited about actually learning the language. as far as the work goes, the course is nothing unreasonable and the professor seems like a pretty good guy.. its just the task of learning a new language with an unfamiliar alphabet, structure, etc. i'll keep you updated.

philosophy of religion is going to entail an enormous amount of difficult reading, as well as a number of pretty lengthy, in-depth papers. dr. stewart is an awesome guy and is very knowledgeable in the study of philosophy, apologetics, religion, etc. he has an incredibly dry sense of humor, which makes class extremely enjoyable. i'm really excited about getting deeper into the subject matter of this course because i know he has a lot of knowledge to offer and i can learn a great deal from his lectures and from the course readings. but its definitely not going to be a cakewalk either.

next up is worship leadership. haven't been to it yet so my only knowledge is what i read on the syllabus online. it'll definitely have some nuggets that i can take from the class and apply in worship, ministry, and just in my daily walk. one of the projects in the course requires us to attend 3 different styles of worship service.. examples included Jewish, charismatic, Episcopalian, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Vineyard.. anyhow, it'll be really interesting not only to attend these services, but to be there with the primary purpose of taking notes and learning from the way in which these other groups "produce" worship services

spiritual formation is a thursday only course. it's basically a small group (8 people) discussion course designed for first year graduate students. i'm also taking an Old Testament hybrid course which meets on Fridays once a month and supplements the rest of the course with online material and independent readings.

so thats where i'm at. not much else has been going on in life. i need to find a job and i need to find one soon. if you know of anywhere that is hiring, please let me know! tuition and books wiped out the rest of the money i had collected for the trip to ecuador, which, by the way, was incredible! i just realized i still havent posted a "post-ecuador blog" so i'll have to get on that pretty soon.. if you havent seen the pictures, head over to the facebook and look at em there. the landscape/scenery/terrain was amazingly beautiful. everywhere i looked there was another view that just blew me away.

enjoy.