Back in the Saddle Again

Back from Thanksgiving break and back into the swing of things. This time I got right back into school. Good thing too, plenty to do with only three weeks left. Back to my field church on Sunday. They offered fruitcakes for sale a while back. They came in and I picked mine up. Yum, yum. I think I am one of the four people in the world that like fruitcake. There is a real chill in the air up here. It got down into the upper 30’s last night. Cold! Got done with Greek tonight and got an 88 on my quiz. I missed the translation form on one set of verb endings.


We are done with our Worship Practicum class. Good to have a class passed. One down, five to go. I did finally get registered to go to Atlanta for my Cross Cultural experience in January. I have also been able to work things out to go to Tampa General over the summer for my CPE for 11 weeks. I have not even passed all of these courses and we have to register for next semester. I did that taking 20 hours, but only getting credit for 17. The Greek I am taking is a non-credit course as it is a requirement for getting into the program. That is why they offer the summer Greek so you can have it out of the way to start your first year. I am taking a heavier load then usual to catch up with what I will have fallen behind not taking Greek readings and Hebrew this year. I don’t want to be trying to catch up next year as from what I hear Hebrew is worse than Greek and I will still have Greek readings on top of the Hebrew.

We had a presentation of the pro side of the Church-Wide Assembly decisions today from one of the professors. Good presentation and included some things that I had not heard before. Mostly that while the Bible says that God blesses one way of life it doesn’t say anything about condemning another way of life, such as single, or married and childless for example. Interesting approach that I had not heard before to refute the scriptural approach so often used to speak against this way of life. We are supposed to have another professor speak to us in the same manner but against the decision of the CWA. This is very informative as speaking to both sides of this will be required I think to minister to everyone in a congregation. At this point I am still in the middle and don’t know which side I will move to IF I move to a side. It will be interesting to see what the Council tasked with developing the HOW all of this will happen comes up with. That might alienate even more people or it might allow some people to say, “I think I can live with this”. To me it is very interesting to be in the middle of this as it plays out. Of course my human impatience wants to know all of the answers now rather than wait for them to play out. For me this continued dialog is valuable. I hope others see value in it and I hope it continues.

If I don’t get back here before then, root for the Gators on Saturday afternoon against Alabama. They win and they go to the National Championship game.

I leave you with: “When they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the other apostles, “Friends, what are we to do?” “Repent” said Peter, “and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus the Messiah; then your sins will be forgiven and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” Acts 2:37-38