Seminary thoughts and recomendations

By blee25 Mon, 01/04/2010 - 8:36am
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blee25
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I am woundering if I can get everyone's wisdom on seminarys. I am the pastor of a church in Ohio where I have been serving for nearly 5 years(2+ as an assistant pastor and 2+ as senior pastor). I have only an undergraduate degree in bible from Cedarville and would like continue my education. Because of my present ministry I am looking for seminaries that provide distiance education. If there were no location or money considerations my top choices would probably be SBTS, DTS, and BBC in Clark Summit, however location and/or money are an issue with all those. That being said I am considering Faith through their one and two week modular program and Liberty through their online program. What I would like to know is your thoughts on these two seminaries as well as an other recomendations for seminaries that will allow me to complete at my masters from a distance.

Things that are important to me.
1. That I can complete my masters in bible or theology without relocating.
2. That the masters degree flows nicely as a stepping stone to getting my Mdiv later.
3. That the school provide a quality education that is respected by other schools. (to make continueing my education simpler)
4. Cost is a factor.
5. I have a calvanistic and progressive dispensational view or scripture and don't want a school that is open and accepting of these views

Any thoughts would be greatly welcomed.

Blee

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Mon, 01/04/2010 - 9:55am
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Brandon King
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Seminary

I tried out a few different schools toward my MDIV. I received my undergrad degree from PCC. I first attended BJU, and felt that the learning was similar to that of my undergrad degree. I then went to New Orleans Baptist Seminary, I really enjoyed the discussion, the teaching was super; though at times they had teachers that came from a more liberal point of view. New Orleans and BJ require a certain amount of classes to be taken on campus. Then through friend I enrolled at Luther Rice University in Atlanta GA. The teaching was excellent, all classes can be taken by module, online, or video correspondence. I finished my degree primarily though online mode. I attended maybe three modules over the 90 + hr degree. Hope this helps.

Brandon King

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Mon, 01/04/2010 - 11:02am
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Joe Whalen
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Calvary

Wonderful to hear about your desire for futher education!

I recommend checking out Calvary in Lansdale. A regionally accredited, dispensational, baptist seminary offering on-line and video classes, along with their resident classes.

Give Paul Gibbs (the registrar) a call at 215-368-7538. He will be a good source of information for you.

More information at their web -- www.cbs.edu.

Hope this helps.

Joe Whalen
Great Hope Baptist Church
Honey Brook, PA 19344
www.ghbc4me.org

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Mon, 01/04/2010 - 1:51pm
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Greg Long
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I received my M.A. and M.Div

I received my M.A. and M.Div degrees from Faith and would highly recommend it! Great school with great faculty.

__________________

Pastor of Adult Ministries
Grace Church, Des Moines, IA

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Mon, 01/04/2010 - 6:30pm
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blee25
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Thanks for the

Thanks for the recommendations. I had never heard of Lurther Rice but it looks like it could be a possibility. Does anyone have any thoughts on Liberty?

Brandon Lee

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Tue, 01/05/2010 - 4:37pm
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Joseph
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Brandon, I attended LU as an

Brandon,

I attended LU as an undergraduate, and I have some thoughts about the seminary, but I'm not sure how helpful they are for two reasons. First, I tend to evaluate seminaries, as academic institutions, from a strictly academic perspective. That is, what seminaries can do well that other institutions cannot, like a local church, is provide a rigorous academic education. But not everyone shares my perspective here. Second, I don't have a lot of semiaries to compare it with.

With those caveats in mind (and the general ones I have about distance education), Liberty is affordable, I think, and has some good professors, but their seminary is not very good academically when compared to schools like Trinity, Dallas, etc. It's probably more similar to Clarks Summit, from what I know about that school. A lot of the seminary faculty are old-school Dispensationalists; I'm not sure there are any progressives on the faculty of the seminary (I doubt it, but I may be wrong).

However, they also offer academic masters degrees (the M.A.R.S. is overseen by professors in the graduate school, not seminary) that may provide a more rigorous academic experience. That said, "rigorous academic experience" and "distance learning" do not combine well; distance learning is what you make of it. If you are disciplined and really want to learn, I'm sure Liberty would be a fine choice.

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Tue, 01/05/2010 - 7:39pm
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Joel Shaffer
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Brandon, I graduated 3 and

Brandon,

I graduated 3 and 1/2 years ago from Grand Rapid Theological Seminary and I fully recommend GRTS. They are progressive dispensational, they are Calvinistic, you could take some classes on line and some during 1 and 2 week modules so you wouldn't have to relocate, it is fully accredited by ATS, and they will work with you when it comes to financial aid.

However, they are primarily connected with Conservative Evangelical churches and some area fundamental GARBC churches and IFCA churches, which means there is alot of denominational diversity (Christian Reformed, Baptist, Evangelical Free, Wesleyan, and etc...). Some fundamentalists have a problem with this, however I was enriched by it because it actually helped me appreciate certain aspects of my GARBC heritage even more.......

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