From the Desk of the President

Telling the Story of the Journey Whether it is told sitting around the campfire, or explained with pictures to friends back home, each hiking experience has a story.  Stories are the means by which we communicate the truths we learned about ourselves and others.  Cole writes, “their story, yours, mine—it’s what we all carry with [...]

Do you know people who are joy challenged?  I do and one of them is me.  I’m still on step 5 of my 12-step joy program.  I grew up in the Midwest and joyous expressions were verboten.  We were taught to not draw attention to ourselves. In our tribe, Christianity required a serious demeanor.  Remember [...]

Have you noticed that people who have difficulty accepting grace also have trouble with gratitude?  Grace and gratitude go hand in hand.  While many believers express the belief that salvation is a free gift from God, their thoughts and actions say the opposite.  They think they earned or deserve all the good gifts they receive. [...]

A Christian couple, John and Sarah, wanted to have children, but after spending a fortune for fertility treatments they were still not pregnant.  They were told by friends it must not be God’s will for them to have children. They couldn’t understand how a neighbor’s child, a crack addict and abusive mother, was pregnant for [...]

Each semester we hear stories of students who did not have the financial resources to take the next class and God provided for their needs. Recently, one of our students was going through challenges in their business and mentioned to a friend they would not be attending seminary this semester. The friend stopped and prayed [...]

Kelly Walter, founding pastor at Rock Brook Church in Belton, MO., spoke at our recent commencement and challenged graduates to put this prayer at the top of their list: “God, let me humbly serve you in the authority of Jesus Christ.” In 2 Peter 1, one of the closest friends of Jesus identified himself as [...]

Chapel Service In this term’s chapel, the Seminary addressed the issue of sexual abuse in the Church. President Eldridge introduced the chapel with these words, “The Bible is not silent about sexual abuse.” The Bible is clear about our responsibility to protect others from the abuse of power. Suzie Paslay read the scripture, “Give justice [...]

  For some, the very word “seminary” is frightening. They envision struggling with languages such as Greek and Hebrew. They suppose seminary is only for perfect geniuses whose conversations contain strange words such as “dyophysitism” or “tropological.” Let me demythologize the term and take the scary out of seminary. The word “seminary” comes from the [...]

We live in an experience economy. Today it is not about the destination, but the experience. Adult learners are not interested in being silent spectators. They want to be active participants. If learning is indeed the experience and not the stamp on the passport, what makes for a good learning experience? There are many ways [...]