Weekly Email: March 2, 2026

Mar 2

In this week’s email:

Student Tip: Where Your Heart Is
Program News: Church Partnerships

Student Tip: Where Your Heart Is

Goals. Intentions. Plans. Motivation. At some point, these naturally start to wane and slow down. Whether it is three months into the year, or halfway through an eight-week term, there is a predictable moment when the early energy fades and real life takes over.

That is usually where you get bogged down. Life is most often lived in small decisions throughout the day, day by day. If you’re not careful, you start putting things off. You skim a reading instead of reading it the way you normally do. You delay a hard assignment because it’s been a busy week. And the tricky part is that these small decisions are never isolated. They sit inside bigger intentions, and those bigger intentions sit inside bigger ones, all the way up to your priorities and values.

The problem is that we treat those small decisions like they are standalone choices, when they are actually downstream from what you say matters most. In any given moment, there is a present intention guiding what you are doing right now, and it is inside broader intentions like plans, goals, priorities, and values, whether you notice it or not.

Our actions express what we value.

That sounds obvious until you watch yourself on a Tuesday night. You open the course. You see the reading. You feel the resistance. And without even thinking, you pick an easier version of the moment. Two pages instead of twenty. A quick skim instead of a careful read. “I’ll do the hard part tomorrow.”

In that moment, you are not only making a study choice. You are expressing a value. Not in the grand, dramatic sense. In the practical sense. The decision says something about what is most real to you right now.

This is why seminary can feel like a factory of tasks. Reading, quizzes, LiveSyncs, papers, discussion forums. When you’re tired, sick, or behind, the work can feel like pushing a heavy cart uphill with a flat tire. In those moments, you do not need a new personality or to conjure up more motivation. You need reconnection. The work in front of you needs to be reattached to the deeper reasons you are doing it.

Because seminary is not only training your mind. It is exposing your heart.

It is a microcosm of other spiritual battles. In ministry, the work of ministry can hide your devotion to Christ. You can be doing the right things while slowly losing the why underneath the doing. Seminary gives you practice noticing that drift early, while the stakes are smaller and the habits are still forming.

So when the term starts to feel like a grind, do not assume something is wrong with you. You are just hitting the honest middle, where your loves get tested and revealed.

Seminary does not only measure what you know. It shows what you reach for when nobody is watching and you are tired and you still have one more thing to do.

That is what makes it formative. Not because every reading feels meaningful, but because even the ordinary work can become an act of worship when your heart is pointed in the right direction.

Program News: Church Partnerships

I know many of you are already serving in local churches, often being trained and supervised under a pastor or ministry mentor. We do not want your seminary training to compete with that kind of formation or force you to duplicate it.

That is why we are formalizing new church-first pathways that build on what your church is already doing.

First, our revamped Ministry Apprenticeship Program (MAP) is designed to connect real, supervised ministry work to seminary credit. In many cases, MAP can apply toward core credit in practical areas like pastoral ministry, preaching, leadership, evangelism, and more, depending on the training and oversight happening in your local church.

Second, Contextualized Leadership Development (CLD) creates a pathway for structured classes taught in your church by a qualified instructor to be recorded for seminary credit, recognizing the teaching and discipleship already happening in your congregation.

I’ll be sending more communication soon with details and next steps. If MAP or CLD might fit your situation, message me and I’ll help you sort through what’s possible.

You can find out more information here.