Spring 2011

What I learned this semester at Talbot

This blog is mainly for myself. It helps me to record and reflect, because I don't want to forget
Btw I took 6 classes for a total of 9 credits!

I haven't been sleeping too well for the past month. These last few weeks have been pretty stressful. I only have one more week which is finals week.

\/ HEY READ MORE!  \/


Spiritual Formation
This class focused on vocation and calling. I was excited because they were going to cover spiritual disciplines too, but we never got to it. We read a book called Courage and Calling. I learned that there are different levels of calling. The first foundation is a call to Christ and salvation. Built on that is a general call for Christians to live according to God's Word. This is where it gets a little tricky. On this second level there are two callings that are built on top. One is for our personal vocation and life purpose. This is not limited to a career. Then we also have God's daily calling for us. We had to do a spiritual retreat and were asked to pray about our past, present and future. I think i have a pretty good discernment of God's will for myself, but I struggle with having enough courage and boldness to meet his callings.
Career wise, im also wondering if I'm to pursue a PhD in a graduate psychology program. it's at least 5 years, plus internships. It'd be great for counseling, but the amount of time, money and energy is quite intimidating. Perhaps a social worker or therapy degree might be more realistic.

Spiritual Direction
I met with a spiritual counselor 5 times this semester. It was good to just verbalize internal struggles, fears or anxieties. The focus of this class was to ponder and observe how God is working in my live.

Pastoral Care and Counseling
This class was interesting. We learned the importance of compassion and listening. We are to listen to 3 ears. Listen to what the person is saying, listen to ourselves internally, and listen to what the Holy Spirit might be saying. In counseling, we learned that the goal is not to give them solutions to their problems, but rather direct them to God. Listening skills include reflecting their content, validating their difficulties, look for feeling words of equal intensity to describe their situation and to ask for confirmation. This is actually much harder than it sounds, because our initial habit is to just offer our advice. We are then to ask them more God leading questions about their situation. We also had to run a transforming community group, this is like a small group but focused on hearing about each others lives. In my group of guys there was actually a lot of healing from just having a group of people who would listen. Being vulnerable and honest with others is something we don't always do too often. I liked the emphasis on the importance of church and a christian community.

Theology IV, Eschatology  and Ecclesiology
This is the study of last things and the church. This class got pretty intense. We studied different views of the events described in revelation. It's pretty confusing because all of it is futuristic and prophecy is hard to interpret. We read a book on the 3 views of dispensationalism. Basically, time eras of how God issued his plan. We covered Premillennialism, Amillennialism, and Postmillennialism. Then we covered Ecclesiology, and the nature of the church body. I spent the last month working on a 17 page paper. I must have spent at least 25 hours working on it and 100 hours stressing out about it. It was tough because we need at least 10 sources.

Research Methods
I took a class that taught us just how to write in Turabian format and how to cite footnotes/bibliography. Who knew writing a paper was so complicated!

Field Education
I was supposed to be more involved in ministry and to write up my experience about it. I was also supposed to make a 2 month discipleship program. I didn't do it, but I the professor allowed me to just write about my experience of trying to lead in a youth ministry.

Exegesis in the Gospels
This wednesday i pumped out a 12 page paper in 15 hours. I stayed up to 8am! it was tough because i had 16 sources and a lot to discuss. I usually really suffer with my greek classes, but this class focused more on hermeneutics. I enjoyed learning all sorts of techniques for reading and interpreting the gospels. Literary includes the plot, characters, the author's intent, the book themes, Old Testament references, the structure of the narrative, tracing common themes within surrounding passages, and trying to read the text in its larger context. Start with the big context and work down to the smaller context.

world view
cultural values, social codes
historical experience
genre of text
occasion for writing
whole document
paragraph
verse
clause
word

Grammatical things include word studies and using more of the greek. Syntactical diagrams of breaking down clauses helps, but this more helpful in the epistles. Cultural backgrounds can be huge because there are a lot of Jewish customs and traditions that we don't really know about. It's important to read the text then and there and then move to here and now. Historical backgrounds include dates, events, rulers, etc.

Then you gather your theology from these and try to condense the main point into a specific sentence of interpretation. Then from there you can make applications.

How to prepare a sermon

Translate from its language
read passage in other versions
if in the gospels read its parallels
Syntactical diagram, breaking down clauses and flow of argument
read paragraph by paragraph writing a one sentence summary for each
connect surrounding themes, read the entire book a lot, and its surrounding chapters
the author's intent and book themes, word studies
historical, cultural, commentaries

I also learned some homiletics, how to preach God's Word effectively.

Target your audience and their needs
create a teaching outline objective,
Introduce the main point

These 5 points should be the goals of the sermon
Focus on
1) Right Relationship
2) Right Teaching  orthodoxy  Know
3) Right Practice   orthopraxy  Will
4) Right Affection orthopathy  Emotions
5) Right Will, desires

It is a matter of the mind, the will, and the heart; it reaches to every one of our constituent parts

Tell them what you are gonna tell them  intro
Tell them what your telling them            body
Tell them what you told them                 conclusion

In the body state your point
explain point
prove / illustrate point
restate point
transition to next point

Basically repeat your main point
five or ten minutes of listenable preaching is better than forty five minutes of boring preaching

yup that's what i've learned in a nutshell, in the summer I'll be taking Theo III Soteriology Christology
In the Fall i'll be taking Exegesis in the Epistles, Romans, Theo I and Expository Preaching