Report on School

Most of you know that I am currently a PhD student at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.  Southern is the oldest and largest of our six Southern Baptist seminaries.  It is terrific place to receive a solid theological education.  I am part of Southern’s pioneer PhD program known as the modular format.  In a nutshell, being in this program allows me to remain in KC living and being a pastor while doing most of my research.  I physically go to Louisville a couple of times a year for a few weeks.
I wanted to use this blog to serve as a sort of update on my research thus far.
One course that I had to take this past summer was a Cooperative Program course.  If you grew up Southern Baptist, you probably know much about this wonderful and voluminous ministry.  The Cooperative Program is a collective effort (around 40,000 churches) that uses a portion of their tithes and offerings to support over 6,000 missionaries across the world.
Basically, the course dealt with issues involving the local church, some data on Baptist history, but a particular focus on Southern Baptist polity.  The course was a good refresher of the tradition I grew up in.  The Southern Baptist Convention is the largest Protestant denomination in the world.  That is not always a good thing, but in the cause of global missions most other denominations envy this organization that has placed and supported so many on the field.  We are also the only Protestant denomination that has went the path of liberal theology and made a successful return to a biblical orthodoxy.  I am thankful of the Southern Baptist heritage I grew up with.  Though we are not perfect, God has used our convention for the sake of His gospel and His word.