DD
I'm sorry if I acted wrongly to your initial post.
I took your logic to be:
If seminary should be required to minister, the apostles would have gone...
they did not...
so, seminary should not be required.
I thought/think that to be a fallacious argument. I'm hopeful that you not advance it.
I thought that logic faulty because we are not apostles!
I can sympathasize with you on two things :age and cost. When I began the MDiv work I was 50. I really did not wish to be a pastor. I wanted to learn so that I might teach. I was after the ThM and the MDiv (in my case, equivalency) was a requisite to beginning ThM study. I finished that at 54. Of course that training was expensive , so my family went without other things!! We had the essentials, but I did other jobs and we economized so that I could get that education. I taught public school fulltime all through my seminary work.
After that I finished the ThD with a foreign school of lower tuition than USA schools one month before my 65th birthday, and with the doc I began a new ministry of teaching in a seminary. So I understand "age."
[You DO know that Distance ed theological degrees are available through accredited foreign schools for about $3000...right?]
Still I wonder about three issues in your case:
First, I wonder why age is such a barrier for you because I thought that some schools allowed older students even without undergrad degrees to enter MDiv studies. Our school (TRACS accredited) does. I understood up to 10% ,with some accreditors, of a student population could fit that category.
Second, I am hoping that you are finding places to actively minister in your present educational status under the supervision of a church or pastor..or even without it. Before I finished Bible College, I went with , or without at times, the supervision of a pastor, preaching in rescue missions, prisons, and on street corners in downtown San Diego. I never have been ordained, but I have preached and taught in many churches and interim pastored in two.
I wonder if it is in your denomination that one's calling is evident to more persons than the one who feels called? In some denominations a local church seeing a gifted person will license that person to preach or teach. If a local pastor in your social circle sees your calling might he not give you traing and opportunities to serve?
If you just must leave your denomination to find such opportunities, I'd do that!
Third, I have little to contribute to the discussion of the financial cost of seminary. The school I am with charges $150 per quarter unit (I think). As most classes are four units , each course costs $600. Indeed to me that is a lot. But I know facilities, faculty, and staff are expensive.
Yet I wish that somehow ministerial training could be free:
I entertain the whim that a bunch of retired old goats like me who are content to wear clothing from Goodwill and forego vacations in Bermuda and live in inexpensive homes, and drive 22 year old cars, could get together a school taught by academically qualified (ie, usually an accredited doc in the area of instruction) retirees who are happy to live on pensions or Social Security and to teach only out of love and the joy of doing it and not out of a need to get money for teaching.
But at the same time why should I suppose that I should pay , dearly, the electrician or plumber or school teacher or politician but not pay he/she who teaches in seminary?
Why should the ox be muzzled?
On the other hand, where are the tentmakers who teach and do a secular job too so as not to burden God's people?
Will the readers of this thread not pray with me for DD and all who struggle to respond to God's call?
I'm sorry if I acted wrongly to your initial post.
I took your logic to be:
If seminary should be required to minister, the apostles would have gone...
they did not...
so, seminary should not be required.
I thought/think that to be a fallacious argument. I'm hopeful that you not advance it.
I thought that logic faulty because we are not apostles!
I can sympathasize with you on two things :age and cost. When I began the MDiv work I was 50. I really did not wish to be a pastor. I wanted to learn so that I might teach. I was after the ThM and the MDiv (in my case, equivalency) was a requisite to beginning ThM study. I finished that at 54. Of course that training was expensive , so my family went without other things!! We had the essentials, but I did other jobs and we economized so that I could get that education. I taught public school fulltime all through my seminary work.
After that I finished the ThD with a foreign school of lower tuition than USA schools one month before my 65th birthday, and with the doc I began a new ministry of teaching in a seminary. So I understand "age."
[You DO know that Distance ed theological degrees are available through accredited foreign schools for about $3000...right?]
Still I wonder about three issues in your case:
First, I wonder why age is such a barrier for you because I thought that some schools allowed older students even without undergrad degrees to enter MDiv studies. Our school (TRACS accredited) does. I understood up to 10% ,with some accreditors, of a student population could fit that category.
Second, I am hoping that you are finding places to actively minister in your present educational status under the supervision of a church or pastor..or even without it. Before I finished Bible College, I went with , or without at times, the supervision of a pastor, preaching in rescue missions, prisons, and on street corners in downtown San Diego. I never have been ordained, but I have preached and taught in many churches and interim pastored in two.
I wonder if it is in your denomination that one's calling is evident to more persons than the one who feels called? In some denominations a local church seeing a gifted person will license that person to preach or teach. If a local pastor in your social circle sees your calling might he not give you traing and opportunities to serve?
If you just must leave your denomination to find such opportunities, I'd do that!
Third, I have little to contribute to the discussion of the financial cost of seminary. The school I am with charges $150 per quarter unit (I think). As most classes are four units , each course costs $600. Indeed to me that is a lot. But I know facilities, faculty, and staff are expensive.
Yet I wish that somehow ministerial training could be free:
I entertain the whim that a bunch of retired old goats like me who are content to wear clothing from Goodwill and forego vacations in Bermuda and live in inexpensive homes, and drive 22 year old cars, could get together a school taught by academically qualified (ie, usually an accredited doc in the area of instruction) retirees who are happy to live on pensions or Social Security and to teach only out of love and the joy of doing it and not out of a need to get money for teaching.
But at the same time why should I suppose that I should pay , dearly, the electrician or plumber or school teacher or politician but not pay he/she who teaches in seminary?
Why should the ox be muzzled?
On the other hand, where are the tentmakers who teach and do a secular job too so as not to burden God's people?
Will the readers of this thread not pray with me for DD and all who struggle to respond to God's call?
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