Back to School

So, I’m a student again.

Last night was the first step in my long-anticipated effort to finish my Master of Divinity degree at Western Seminary in San Jose. It’s a three-year program if you go full-time, but I’ve never been able to do that while keeping my job, my ministry, my wife, and my sanity. So I’m on the 10-year plan, and it looks like I’m on track to graduate on time! Woo!

Anyway, last night was my first time back in a classroom in nearly four years. After the requisite back-to-school shopping trip, I marched off to class, brand-new spiral notebook in-hand, ready to conquer the halls of academia. And truly it was a wonderful time, filled with introductions and course requirements and syllabi; the stuff of a new semester.

The class is entitled, “Growing Disciples Intentionally,” and it focuses on taking the disciple-making command of Jesus in Matthew 28:19-20, unpacking its original first-century context (what the Twelve would have understood the command to mean), and applying it to our 21st-Century world.

I’m sure I’ll talk about class here on the blog from time to time, but if you’re really interested in what I’ll be doing for the next 12 weeks, you can check out the course syllabus.

And feel free to pray for God’s grace in my academic pursuits. I’m fairly confident that I’ll need it this semester.