Weekly Email: September 23, 2024
You’ve made it to the final week of the first fall term—congratulations! I know how much effort you’ve put in so far, and now is not the time to give up.
This last week is usually the busiest, with your biggest assignments due. Remember, you’re not alone. The entire online learning team and I are praying for you this week. Stay focused and keep up the great work.
Student Tip
As we enter the final week of the term, there won’t be any new tips. You’re probably focused on finishing everything up. Over the past eight weeks, I’ve shared various strategies. If any of them stood out to you but you haven’t tried them yet, now might be a good time.
Life can get overwhelming, and it often feels like there’s no time to organize. We just keep going. But taking a few moments to make a plan can really help.
Here are some of the topics we’ve covered recently, along with links to the corresponding newsletters for your reference:
Manage your time writing a paper or project (August 12, 2024)
Student success story about reworking their schedule (August 26, 2024)
Parkinson’s Law and how we easily fill our time up with non-essentials (September 16, 2024)
Program News
In the Master of Divinity, you’re able to enhance your degree by earning graduate certificate(s) in specialized areas. Graduate certificates are not required for the Master of Divinity but they are a great way to focus part of your 21 hours of electives and earn credentials in a specialized area. I think these are helpful for both professional and personal reasons.
Professional Benefits:
Demonstrate expertise in areas like biblical counseling, apologetics, biblical theology, and biblical worship.
Showcase your specialized training and competency to current or potential church or other ministry employment.
Personal Benefits:
Set and achieve specific academic goals.
Deepen your knowledge in areas that interest you.
Available Graduate Certificates Online
We currently have enough online courses developed for you to complete a graduate certificate in 12 out of the 19 graduate certificates that we offer: Apologetics and Philosophy, Biblical Counseling, Biblical Theology, Biblical Worship, Christian Leadership, Church History, Greek Exegesis, Hebrew Exegesis, Islamic Studies, Missions, Church Planting & Revitalization, and Systematic Theology.
Upcoming Resources
We are currently working on building out a database that we can share on the The Global Campus Hub that will show all the online courses we have developed and their corresponding graduate certificate so you can easily know at any point what is an option. We have this information up to date for our internal project management tracking but working on the best way that we can share it with you in a format that is easy to read, sort, and keep up to date.
In the meantime, I thought it would be helpful to share part of our scheduling philosophy:
Core courses: offer our core courses multiple times a year
Elective courses: Each elective is available at least once a year, ensuring no overlap within the same graduate certificate in a single term.
This approach provides you with the flexibility to advance in your studies, whether you need core courses or electives.
By integrating these graduate certificates into your Master of Divinity, you can tailor your education to meet your professional goals and personal interests.
Faculty Devotional
This week’s faculty devotional is from Dr. Andrew Walker. He serves in many roles here at Southern including Associate Professor of Christian Ethics and Public Theology, Associate Dean, School of Theology, and the Director for the Carl F.H. Henry Institute for Evangelical Engagement. He is also a fellow in Christian Political Thought at the Ethics & Public Policy Center and the managing editor of WORLD Opinions.
Discipline: Here, now, and for eternity (1 Timothy 4:8–10)
If you know anything about me, I’m a long-distance runner. But running at age 39 does not have the ease that running had at 32, to put it mildly. The onset of age means inevitable physical decline. You cannot stop the effects of time on the physical body. But in 1 Timothy 4:8–10, Paul instructs Timothy that while physical discipline of the body is good, it has a temporariness to it that cannot measure up to the eternal value of godliness. This is an interesting juxtaposition that Paul makes. He’s not discounting the value of physical discipline and treating one’s body well; he’s subordinating it to an eternal reality that has ramifications for the present: In the physical discipline that one exerts to protect one’s body in the now, one should demonstrate an even greater energy toward godly discipline because it holds promise for the life to come. Crucially, Paul says such discipline is not only realized in a beatific reality (though it is realized more fully there), Paul says that discipline in godliness benefits us in this age, too. It benefits us in the Christ-shaped life that we are called to practice when we love our families, practice humility, extol gentleness, and connects godliness with one of the most unsung and yet desirable qualities of all: Contentment (1 Tim. 6:6).
As we go about our day vigilant about our physical bodies in this now-focused world, let us be mindful of how our physical discipline should drive us toward the discipline of an eternal godliness that gives us contentment in the present.
That’s all for this week! Thanks for reading and check in next Monday. You can find an archive of each week’s email here.
