Going to Seminary

When I began my online seminary degree three years ago, I was a bit hesitant because I feared that the substance that the final degree – the actual paper I would receive – might not be as “weighty” in the minds of those who had received a traditional degree from a brick and mortar institution.  I also feared that places I might have opportunity to serve would not consider my Master of Divinity degree from an online institution a “real” degree.  I must admit that even now after completing my online seminary journey, I get questions from would-be seminary students about my experience at Rockbridge and inquiries for my evaluation of the value of the experience.  I am so happy when someone opens the door for me to talk about it.

My first response to these questions is an answer that I came to when asking myself whether or not I should pursure training online.  I had to come to grips with the “why” of my desire to go to any seminary. When I enrolled in Rockbridge, my call to vocational ministry had been clearly affirmed many times and I had over 15 years of ministry experience.  But I didn’t have any formal training to support the calling that was so clear in my life.  This training was not critical for me to continue ministry as I felt confident God would open doors for me to continue to be his servant.  Rather, the larger realization for me was my desire to learn more to be a more effective agent in His Kingdom work.

The other affirmation was my assessment of other training opportunities at my disposal.  When I considered my options for training as a man with a family, serving in a ministry that I was certain God did not want me to disengage, and a budget that did not include Masters level training – my options were limited to online offerings or some other type of distance learning.  To help assess these options, I sought the counsel of someone who both valued continuing education and was a product of the traditional brick and mortar learning experience: my senior pastor who holds several degrees including two masters and a doctorate from Vanderbilt.

His encouragement to me was the value of the learning experience – no matter what the final paper might suggest to others.  We looked deeply into the mission of Rockbridge Seminary as well as other opportunities that were available to me.  Our discovery was that the quality of the learning experience at Rockbridge would fit well my learning style and my available schedule to complete my training.  But even more importantly, we found that the driving force and purpose of Rockbridge founders was not to provide a piece of paper at the end of an agreed learning cycle.  Their calling was to provide quality biblical training that would prepare and equip ministers to serve God’s Kingdom effectively and efficiently.

Over three years later, I have absolutely no regrets about the choice I made.  Had I not enrolled in Rockbridge I would still be serving at my current church and I would continue to be affirmed in my calling – but I would not be as effective as I am now as a direct result of the investment I made in seminary and that it made in me.  My experience at Rockbridge has made a significant difference in how I approach ministry in the local church and even how I engage my faith as a believer.

I am also watching other traditional universities chase the online learning model as pioneers of online learning continue to set the pace and confirm its validity.  Although I believe that their motivation is driven as much by the opportunity of another revenue stream than anything else, the result for the learner is still positive.  I am thankful that Rockbridge and other quality institutions are continuing to set the pace that will give way for opportunities for learners to get training.  But more than that, I am so thankful for what it has provided in my life as a minister.  So what value do I place on my education from Rockbridge?  Invaluable.

This guest post is by Daryl Eldridge, President of Rockbridge Seminary.

Seth Godin wrote an interesting piece about education at the crossroads today. And he raised an interesting point:

School was the big thing for a long time. School is tests and credits and notetaking and meeting standards. Learning, on the other hand, is ‘getting it’. It’s the conceptual breakthrough that permits the student to understand it then move on to something else. Learning doesn’t care about workbooks or long checklists.

In another blog, Craig Groeschel raises this question, “How important is seminary?” All of us know people who have become successful without the benefit of a degree. Is “success” the criteria for why someone should get an education? Seth Godin says the point is not education or schooling, but learning. Is education different from learning?

I am a lifelong learner. I read a book a week, attend continuing education conferences, research on the web, and write. I believe in the admonition: “Leaders are learners.” People can sit in a classroom and not learn. People can get a degree without getting an education. People can learn a lot of things, but not be educated. There is a difference between learning and education; both are important. Here are some reasons why I believe it is important to get a seminary education.

1. A seminary education exposes students to fields of learning beyond their interest. Most of us read and learn about things we are interested in. I love to learn about leadership. If it were up to me that would be all I studied. However, my education would have been incomplete without my studies of theology, psychology, ethics, algebra, history, chemistry, and biblical courses. There is more to ministry than leadership. A good education provides a well-rounded experience. A good education lays the foundation for future learning.
2. A seminary education provides structure and encourages self-discipline. People can find out what books are required of seminarians and establish a learning goal to read all those books in 3 years. They could discuss their learning with veteran ministers in their geographical area. However, what percentage would structure their life to accomplish that? In the busy-ness of jobs and ministry, sharpening the saw through a self directed learning program is usually the first thing to go. Some people need the structure of a formal education. It is because schools have deadlines, provide accountability, and have standards that students learn to excel. A good education teaches students discipline and self management. I have several friends who have become very successful in life without finishing a degree in higher education and seminary. They would say they received their education in the school of hard knocks. However, every one of them have insisted and paid for their children to get a college or seminary education. They understand the value of a formal educational program.
3. A seminary education sharpens your thinking through interaction with others. Just because we have an idea, doesn’t make that idea right. You may like an author because you agree with his or her point of view. That doesn’t mean your view is the only correct view on the subject. A wise sage wrote, “Iron sharpens iron. So one man sharpens another. (Prov. 27:17, NIV) A seminary should be a sacred and safe place to explore ideas and have them sharpened through the interaction with others. A school is a community of learners seeking truth. A good education will expose you to a wide range of views and interpretations and help you develop critical thinking skills.

Don’t misunderstand me. I believe our educational system (including seminary education) is broke and needs an overhaul. The term “higher education” in some cases is an oxymoron. All education is not created equal. I have sat through boring lectures and taken exams that were poorly constructed and didn’t help me learn. There is much we can do to improve learning in higher education.

A residential seminary education is not the right learning pathway for some people, nor is online learning the best model for others. If I have learned one thing in life, it is that education humbles you. The more I know, the more I realize how little I know. I don’t have it all figured out. To not learn and not get an education is arrogant. It is saying I know all I need to know. Figure out how you can further your education and be a lifelong learner.

SPECIAL NOTE: Rockbridge Seminary is currently waiving tuition for all new students beginning seminary in the September 2009 term. To get in on the free tuition madness before it ends go to their site.

This guest post was written by S. Daniel Smith. He blogs at http://differentfrequencies.blogspot.com and is a US Navy sailor.

A few months ago, Going to Seminary covered the four schools that offer an entire online degree program at the master’s level. I know how this works first hand because I am going to one of those schools as a distance learner myself. Because of this interesting combination of US Navy sailor and seminary student, I’ve learned a few things about surviving in a distance learning seminary. If you’re on active duty, or even if you have an otherwise demanding civilian job, then I hope you’ll find some valuable information in this article.

I am a lot of things. First, I’m a believer, and while that sounds contrite to put it first, it is the most important truth of my life. Secondly, I’m a husband and a father to two children. Thirdly, I’m a sailor who has made two deployments in a 3.5 year tour.  Furthermore,  I’m a concerned sailor who wants his shipmates to come to Christ. Finally, I’m a distance learning seminary student at Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary, where I’m studying for a Master of Divinity. This, in a nutshell, is who I am, and it’s as busy as it looks.

Sure, I would rather be at a brick and mortar seminary, but with my schedule and my career, I need to  “go distance “. After a dozen semester hours to my credit, I have learned five things that I believe you can take away from my experience.

1. Seminary is an academic institution. My chaplain on board the USS Antietam made me painfully aware of this fact. Seminary doesn’t exist to do anything other than give you an education. You’ll need your own mentor, your own accountability partner, and your own work ethic. It’s not the job of the seminary to make sure your supervisor on your ship gives you an opportunity for ministry. That’s up to you. And just saying, “I’d like to be in ministry,” doesn’t make it so. The military context is in many ways different from the civilian context. What would work in the “real world” might not work here. What you can know, however, is that the seminary is there to teach you the scholarly parts of ministry.
2. Make sure you have a good internet connection. Take it from me: Do not try to take seminary classes with a very low bandwidth connection in the Persian Gulf! Please make sure you have the necessary bandwidth to complete all of the research, writing, and message posting you’ll be required to complete. If nothing else, remember that you need enough bandwidth to take your final!
3. It’s harder than you think it is. I earned a good portion of my undergraduate degree online as well, and while I had to work for those grades, nothing could have prepared me for the level of work I saw in seminary. No matter how hard one might think seminary is going to be, the student needs to understand that it will probably be harder. There is more reading, writing, and research to do in a seminary class than in an undergraduate class. It will trip you up if you’re not careful.
4. Don’t forget who you work for. As a sailor, I work for the United States Navy, and more directly, for my supervisors on the USS Antietam. Whether you are a military person or a civilian, always remember your employer will continue to expect good work from you while you’re in seminary. In fact, this is the best example of Christian life we can give to some of our unbelieving friends and coworkers. Producing good work in the secular job while getting good grades in seminary is a great witness.
5. Don’t forget your life. One of the controls my wife and I have put in place for our marriage is that marriage and fatherhood trumps seminary. For that reason, and a few others, I’m a part-time student. While raising two kids and being a good husband and sailor is not the time to be thinking about how fast I can get through seminary by taking more hours. Back off a little…your family will thank you.

I realize that not all of these apply exclusively to the military community, but all of them do apply in some way to the military community. Committing these five lessons into your seminary preparations can help you in more ways than you can imagine. And since I’ve already learned those lessons for you, all you have to do is take note of them! As my grandfather used to say, “You don’t have time to commit all of my mistakes, so learn from them.”

Best wishes for a successful seminary semester!

Last semester, I decided to go to school part-time, and took up a thirty-hour-a-week job to help us out financially. I wanted to do a few classes at the same time to keep moving forward with my studies, and ended up doing one class on campus and two virtual classes. It was a very rough and stressful semester for me because of those virtual classes. I was simply not prepared for them.  If you are planning on doing a distance program or taking some virtual classes, there are some things you should think about.

Be realistic. I think this was the biggest mistake I made. I overestimated how much I could handle. My job was not demanding in any way (it was a simple data entry job), but I think the low mental demand of the job made it very tiring. Working four days a week meant that I had to do most of the work in the evening. By the time I was home from work, had dinner, and had everything cleaned up, it was usually 9pm or later already, and needless to say, was difficult to get to work after that.

Trying to balance three courses and a full-time job was simply too much to handle. Looking back, I know I should have done one less course. If you are thinking about balancing a job and some courses like I did, be sure you carefully think through how much time you actually have.  Try to arrange your schedule so that you have free time during the day to do your work so that some of your evenings can remain free. There are a lot of other things in life that will get in the way, so you need to plan accordingly.

Carefully choose your courses. When I got the list of virtual classes I was able to take, I simply picked according to the name of the course and the instructor. What I should have done was requested to see the syllabus before I enrolled. If you look at the syllabus beforehand, you will know the amount of work that will be required of you and will be able to see if that is a load you can handle, or if it will be too much.

One of the courses I took had an inordinate amount of required work, far exceeding any other course I have ever taken. For that course, I had to listen to twenty-four 45-minute lectures; answer five or six questions for each lecture, all of which required at least 75-100 word answers (with 10-15 requiring answers of 500 words or more and additional research); read about 1000 pages of material corresponding to the lectures plus an additional 1000 pages of collateral reading; write a 25-page paper; participate in an online interactivity forum; dialogue with a mentor about the content of the course and then write a seven or eight page response paper on that conversation; and take a midterm and final exam. When my mentor (a college professor) saw the requirements, he couldn’t believe how much work was required.  The work became tedious and redundant for me.  I did not enjoy it, and in the end did not get much out of it.

I strongly encourage you to find out what level of work is required before you enroll in a course. Obviously you do not want to pass on a course simply because it is a lot of work; a good challenge is always a good thing. But you want to stay within the bounds of what you can realistically accomplish.

Find people to work with. Taking virtual courses is a solitary affair. Sitting at your desk late at night can be pretty lonely. Find some friends who have work to do as well (even if it’s not the same stuff) and hit up a coffee shop in the evening or on a Saturday. Even if you are not talking to each other, the presence of another person can be an important thing and a helpful motivator.

Take a break. If you get too bogged down and stressed out, you need to just step away from the work for a bit. Take a night off and go out for dinner with your wife. Go play a round of golf with your friends on a Saturday afternoon. Turn on the TV, lay back on the couch, and take a nap. Every once and a while you need those down-times to regain your composure and focus. Don’t feel guilty about it, just enjoy it.

Talk with others about what you’re studying. When you’re in a classroom setting, you will always end up discussing the material you’re learning with your classmates—that’s a significant part of the learning process. This doesn’t happen with a virtual course, however. Be sure to talk with people now and then about the material you’re studying. It’s a good way to collect your thoughts and critically engage with the subject of the course. Blogging can certainly help with this as well, but don’t do that at the expense of real conversation.

Prioritize and set goals for yourself. As much as we complain about deadlines in our classes, they are a good thing. When a professor sets a date for a test, there’s no getting around it. You have to do it on that day, and have to be prepared for it. Virtual classes don’t usually have those requirements, and so the onus is on you to get all the work done in time. This was one of my weaknesses, and if I do another virtual course, planning out the semester will be the first thing I do.

Get a calender, and mark out the time frame of your course. Look at the big assignments you have to do, and set dates to have them done by. Then try to schedule your reading and whatever other work you need to do. And stick to it. That’s the hard part, but it will make this process far easier, and you will get much more out of the process.

I will leave my suggestions at that. From the comments we have received on the site, I know a number of you have taken virtual courses or are enrolled in distance programs. So chime in—what advice would you offer to students taking virtual classes?

For those who have read about my experience with taking distance education seminary classes you might think that I am not a fan of them… Quite the contrary. I think they are great. In fact, here are 6 things I think are great about online and distance education programs for seminary:

1. Time – Are you a morning learner? A night owl who like to read at 2 a.m.? Well, the beauty of online and distance education programs is that you can take the class whenever works best for you. No longer are you bound to the school’s schedule. 8 a.m. class… Be gone! You now have the ability to chose when would be the best time for you to learn.
2. Pace – Taking seminary classes online or through distance education allows you to set your own pace. Most programs allow you up to 7 years to finish your degree… so, you set your own schedule. This is especially great if you are trying to save some money as you can put off the next class until you have the funds to pay for it… but be careful… 7 years will fly by before you know it. However, it is nice to know you have some time.
3. Money – Now, tuition and books will cost the same, but taking online an distance education classes for seminary will allow you the ability to study around your work. On a traditional campus the schedule is set by the school and your work must be set around that… not always good when you need a job to support your family. Taking distance classes allows you to work the hours your job gives and take classes when the time works for you… thus, you’re ultimately saving/making more money. Along with this is the fact that you are taking less classes at a time, so when tuition is due it is a much easier pill to swallow.
4. Context – If you’re like me there isn’/wasn’t a good seminary in your current town. This, most likely means that you are going to have to move… and that means leaving your church. The beauty of online or distance education is that you can continue to be involved and minister in your local church context. In fact, your classes will often open many new and exciting ministry opportunities in your church and community.
5. Focus – Unlike on a traditional class, most distance programs are done one class at a time. This allows you to focus all your energy on the information you are learning in the one class… theoretically leading to a greater retention of the material.
6. Relationships – Most distance programs (as best I understand) require that you have a mentor through your seminary experience. It is truly amazing to have a person (or couple people) who have been down this road and are seasoned in the ministry to help you along the journey. I cherish all the coffees and lunches I had with my mentors as I discussed the challenges and triumphs I experienced in my classes. If you’re program doesn’t require it, I highly recommend you get one on your own initiative… trust me, it will make the classes that much more rich!

So, I’m five days deep into taking Hebrew 1. To make the class harder the seminary has it as a winter session class (2 weeks) and it is done online! That’s right… online Hebrew.

Here is how it works:

The class has a CD that essentially contains a ‘web’ based class. Meaning the CD runs off your internet browser showing the pages that have been hard coded onto the CD. The CD has 2 sections. One section is the language section and the other is the software section. This class utilizes Logos Bible Software, so the software section has lessons dealing with how to use the program to study the original language… however the first couple lessons were more like, “this is a computer… to open the program double-click the…” which was a little annoying.

The language section is divided into 10 lessons. Each lesson covers different aspects of the language… from the alphabet, to grammar, to pronunciation. In the lesson you basically read about how the language works and then work to apply it. So, yesterday was personal pronouns (weeeee). So, I read all about how personal pronouns work in Hebrew and then did a lot of practice problems applying the lesson.

While the pages aren’t much to look at, they are very functional. Every time you see a word there is a button to click so that you can hear the proper pronunciation and make sure you are reading it correctly. The practice questions all have mouse-over effects that allow you to immediately check to see if you have the right answer.

Along with the class CD we are using Blackboard. This site is pretty common for distance education classes and it is pretty good… I feel like it could be a lot better, but it gets the job done. Specifically, this area acts as the actual classroom. In there are announcements from the professor and a classroom forum. In the forum the students and professor interact by asking questions and discussing class material. Even though part of your grade is class interaction, the forums are surprisingly well utilized (you can tell people aren’t just posting for the grade). I find myself checking the forum more than my email (and I check email a lot).

Finally, in Blackboard we have daily quizzes on the day’s material. We’ll also have a midterm and final.

In all, I was VERY skeptical to begin with… I had no idea if this was going to work… especially based on my previous record with online seminary classes… but I am actually enjoying the class format and feel like I am really starting to grasp the basics of the language.

I’ll try to post again towards the end of the class to let you know how it wrapped up and my final thoughts on taking a seminary Hebrew class online.

I read an encouraging article today about how Dallas Theological Seminary is webcasting seminary classes into China WITH the government’s support. I was blown away by the news.

Seriously… an evangelical, Christian, seminary given permission to teach Chinese students… in China.

Praise God!

Thoughts?

While tooling around the net looking for seminaries with online and distance education options I found a good bit of help from a post on the Asbury Theological Seminary web site.

The elements you bring to online learning are vital to the learning process. Here are some questions to ask yourself as you consider the possibilities of virtual learning:

• How well do I manage my time?
• How do I rate my reading & writing skills?
• How do I rate my computer skills?
• How do I learn best?
• Will I have the support of my family and friends?

In the post they break down these questions a little further. Certainly something worth checking our if you are thinking about going to online or distance education route for seminary.

While tooling around the net looking for seminaries with online and distance education options I found a good bit of help from a post on the Asbury Theological Seminary web site.

The elements you bring to online learning are vital to the learning process. Here are some questions to ask yourself as you consider the possibilities of virtual learning:

• How well do I manage my time?
• How do I rate my reading & writing skills?
• How do I rate my computer skills?
• How do I learn best?
• Will I have the support of my family and friends?

In the post they break down these questions a little further. Certainly something worth checking our if you are thinking about going to online or distance education route for seminary.

So, I figure it would be good to work on a list of seminaries offering online and distance education degrees. Now, keep in mind that almost every school that offers a distance education will require, at least, some residential classes. This list will only include programs that are accredited or are currently in the accreditation process, and allow you to complete 90% of your degree off campus:

• Covenant Seminary Master of Arts in Theological Studies (MATS)
• Fuller Theological Seminary Master of Arts in Global Leadership
• Liberty University (too many to figure out which ones are totally distance)
• Reformed Theological Seminary Master of Arts in Religion (MAR)
• Rockbridge Seminary Master of Divinity (MDIV), Master in Ministry Leadership (MML), and Diploma in Ministry Studies (DMS)