Weekly Email: August 31, 2026
We are now in Week 5 of the Fall 1 term. This week I went through the survey responses that so many of you filled out and I want to tell you what I found and then I want to tell you what I hope you do with it.
In this email:
- Student Tip: What You Told Us
- Program News: Two Resources You Might Not Know About
Student Tip: What You Told Us
We had over 500 of you complete the survey, which is a fantastic response rate and gives us a real picture of the program rather than a handful of opinions. Students from all 50 states responded and 23 different countries showed up in the answers, though I know from looking at our enrollment that the actual country number is higher than that. Canada, Singapore, Japan, Malaysia, the UAE, the Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan, Italy, South Africa, Switzerland. That is who is sitting in these courses with you.
The overall picture was encouraging. The large majority of you rated your experience in the online program highly and what interested me more than that was how steady it stayed. Students in their first semester and students who are almost finished with their degree rated it about the same. People are still having a good experience in their courses throughout their time as a student.
You were also clear about where we can do better. I'm not going to lay all of that out here but I read it and our team has it in front of us. Some of what you raised is already in motion and some of it has been good feedback to look into.
The thing that stuck with me, though, was not in the ratings at all. It was in the open-ended answers, where I read the same situation over and over again in different ways of responding. When I asked what the hardest part of studying online is, more of you named some version of connection, community, loneliness, or missing a cohort than named anything else. Right behind that was discipline and scheduling. A lot of you also named work, family, or a full-time job specifically.
The reason you are doing this degree online is your life. You have ministry responsibilities, a family, a job, a church that needs you on Sunday morning and moving to Louisville was not on the table. That very thing that makes online education possible for you is the same thing that makes online education difficult and there is no version of this where you get one without the other.
Just one of your fellow students said this: "Finding time for the assignments and not being able to make connections with other students. But I also acknowledge that I haven't invested much into building connections." Another one wrote, "One of the harder things is that the pressure is simply on me to reach out and be connected. If I don't, then I will not be connected in the community." I read dozens of answers like that and almost none of them were complaints. Most of you named the tradeoff and then took some responsibility for your side of it, which tells me a lot about who is in this program.
So if you are feeling bogged down right now, if there is a ton going on and you are not sure how you are going to get through the next four weeks, I want you to rest in two things.
The first is God's goodness and his direction. He has called you to this and he will sustain you through it. That does not mean it will be easy and it does not mean there won't be days where you have no idea how to take another step in your degree. But if he has called you here, he is not going to walk away from that halfway through.
The second is that you are not in this alone and I mean that plainly. More of your classmates named that same struggle than named anything else on the survey. It is not unique to you and it is not a sign that you are doing this wrong. Like I said last week, talk with the people in your physical orbit about what you are learning in your classes and take advantage of the Southern Seminary app to find other students in situations like yours. Send someone a message. Post a question in the forums. If a few of you connect and want to take a study group off the app entirely, that is completely fine with me.
One of you wrote about balancing a spouse, kids, and a management job and then finished the answer this way: "We're in it as a family though, all for the glory of Christ." That is the posture I want you to carry into this week.
My prayer for you is something like this. God has led me to this place today. I know I cannot do it on my own strength. I know the reason you have led me here is not to further my career but to be equipped to equip others, to be trained so that I can train others, to be given a foundation solid enough that I can walk with people through hard things and teach the beautiful things you reveal of yourself in your word.
Program News: Two Resources You Might Not Know About
One of the clearest things to come out of the survey was that a good number of you did not know two of our best resources existed, or you knew the name but had no real idea how to use them. That is on us to communicate better, so here they are.
The first is the Writing Center. It is more than a proofreading service. The goal is to equip you with the tools you need to communicate well and that matters whether you are writing a research paper this term or writing sermons ten years from now. You can upload a finished paper or something you are only halfway through and one of our Writing Mentors will read it and give you feedback. If you have ever turned a paper in with that nagging feeling that the argument might not hold together, send it there first instead of finding out in the grade.
The second is the library. I think a lot of you picture the library as a building in Louisville you are never going to walk into. Nearly everything you need from it is digital and available to you from wherever you study. Ebooks, journal databases, and a scan request form for the chapter or article that isn't online. The part most students don't realize is that you can also schedule a phone call or a Zoom meeting with one of our research assistants. Bring them a paper topic you are stuck on and they will help you figure out where to start looking. That is their job and they are good at it.
If your term is going fine right now, you may not need either one this week. Bookmark them anyway. The time to know they exist is the week you are in over your head.
Quick Reference of Upcoming Term Dates:
- Current Week: Fall 1, Week 5 (August 31-September 7)
- Fall 2 Term Begins: October 5, 2026
- Winter Term Begins: November 30, 2026
Register for Courses →
Registration for Fall Experiential Modulars is open now
