Seminary Update
Things have been a bit hectic over the last several weeks, so I have not had a chance to report regarding my sixth semester of seminary. Semester 6 started in January with me enrolled in three courses: Congregational Relationships, Recovery & Delivery, and Diagnosis & Prescription for a Healthy Church. The last of these was an elective, part of my specialization in church health & revitalization. Therefore, it lasted only 8 weeks, compared to the normal 16 weeks. When all was said and done, I completed all three courses with grades of A or A-, bringing me to an overall GPA of 3.88.
Semester 6, however, was not done with these three courses. During the first week of June, I traveled to Indiana for the Integration Capstone. This course was designed to be the culmination of the core seminary curriculum, and that is exactly what it was. In addition to some reading and new writing, we were expected to collate and reflect upon the major assignments of all our classes in a Capstone Portfolio. My portfolio, when completed, was nearly 600 pages long.
I am still waiting for a final grade in the Integration Capstone class, but I am hopeful that it will be on par with the rest of my work.
With the completion of the core curriculum and the Integration Capstone, I have reached a new milestone in my seminary journey. For six semesters, I have tracked through the core courses alongside a singular group of people. Although we have not often seen each other in person, we have spent many, many hours together studying online. There have been many weeks when I spent more time with them than my family or church members. Of course, there has been some splintering of our cohort throughout the program. Now, though, the cohort dissolves entirely, with each of us going our separate ways. During the week I spent at Integration Capstone, it really struck me that this is a bittersweet moment!
With the completion of the Capstone, I have exactly three elective courses remaining before I am qualified for graduation. The first of these, an independent study entitled Power and Change Management, has begun this week. The other two, Newcomer Integration and Contextual Evangelism, will begin in mid-August and conclude in mid-October. This means that, if all goes well, I should be able to graduate on December 14, 2019.
Certainly, I am excited about the prospect of graduating. Seminary has been a long road. am excited for my friend Paul, for whom Capstone was the true capstone. Others, I know, are slated to graduate next spring. Perhaps that is the one thing that I regret: that the cohort with whom I have trekked these past three years will now straggle across the finish line at different times. Like I said, bittersweet.