School Started

Well, school started today, thus back to the books! Actually it started at the first of the year, but I dropped two classes and shortened my schedule to one class over eight weeks. I have found it takes a few important elements to successfully navigate school while doing what I do:

1) If the difference between an A and a B costs me excessive time with my family, prayer, or studying the Word for Sunday I will take the B. I have a 4.0 right now, but I will throw it out like a filthy rag if it effects my rhythm of life.
2) If I don't schedule time with God; my school schedule can become a little man in a red suit with horns.
3) When I am in school I don't create so many additional things to do. That's a good thing.
4) Do a little bit each day; even when it doesn't not feel like enough.
5) I have to live with the perspective that God isn't going to favor me anymore or any less just because I have a seminary degree. After all, he called me when I had a bachelor's in Construction Management.
6) If I include what I am learning in my message prep, I remember it on the exams. Certainly it has to apply to the message I am prepping.
7) It appears I may not remember as much as I wish I could after completing last semester.

I really enjoy learning. Come to think of it, it was about a year ago this month when the Lord spoke to me to go back for another round and get a Master's. I have learned there are tons of people who go back to school to perfect what God started in their life.

In my opinion, with the convenience of Distance Education via the Internet, there is no reason any full-time minister should not be enrolled in higher education. Someone with 50 years of ministry experience told it to me this way. He said, "Jeff, your parent's started a church because of revival, but now is a new dispensation that will require you to have something more between your ears than passion."