Imperishable Inheritance

I went this week­end to visit The South­ern Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary, and it was an encour­ag­ing time where God solid­i­fied that it is a place for me to be. I got the chance to talk with the deans includ­ing Rus­sell Moore, and I asked him about classes in bib­li­cal the­ol­ogy. He pro­ceeded to tell me that they’re work­ing on a new degree pro­gram spe­cial­ized in that field. I now know what I want to major in. While I want to take some mis­si­ol­ogy courses, there is no field of Chris­t­ian the­ol­ogy that inter­ests me more. I just have so many inter­ests from apolo­getic to church planting/missiology to pas­toral care and the­o­log­i­cal stud­ies. Our God is def­i­nitely never boring!

I appre­ci­ate how ded­i­cated the staff are to the stu­dents. They gen­uinely seemed con­cerned about the spir­i­tual and per­sonal well-being of their stu­dents. I also appre­ci­ated how they didn’t divorce sem­i­nary life from the local church. After expe­ri­ence that in Cru­sade I don’t want to do it again. I want to push more and more for a bal­ance between minstry inside and out­side the church. They also have a very seri­ous focus on hav­ing both con­ser­v­a­tive the­ol­ogy and a con­ser­v­a­tive world view. They are def­i­nitely not out of touch with the sur­round­ing cul­ture, and it’s good to know they’re engag­ing it head on.

I did how­ever find out that you only qual­ify for the SBC rate if (1) you get approved by an SBC church or (2) you fill out a covenant agree­ment which only cov­ers your first semes­ter. While I was plan­ning on doing (2) they told us that it is only meant for peo­ple who know for sure they want to go into min­istry with the SBC. They said they don’t track down peo­ple after grad­u­a­tion, but that it’s a mat­ter of integrity. It looks as though I won’t be get­ting the dis­counted rate for sem­i­nary. At this point I can’t say for sure that I want to go into min­istry with the SBC; I still have many eccle­si­as­ti­cal ques­tions that need to be answered before I can say that honestly.

I also got to see Lenny, John, and Tyler. Man how I miss being around those gen­tle­men! They were so inte­gral in my spir­i­tual devel­op­ment, and it’s a shame that I can’t spend more time around them. Lenny is about ready to grad­u­ate, and the oth­ers have a year or so left. It looks like I’ll be arriv­ing when they leave. I’m encour­aged to know that such Godly men are being sent out into the harvest!

I’m also com­forted by the seem­ingly well-stabled econ­omy in Louisville. It is also one of the cheap­est places to live in the coun­try right now! It looks like, unless God wills oth­er­wise, that I will be down there sin­gle; and it just helps to know that I will be able to sup­port myself while going through school. Many mar­ried men are sup­ported by their wives dur­ing sem­i­nary, and it looks as though I won’t have that luxury.

It’s all excit­ing, and I’m look­ing for­ward to start­ing in fall 2008.