February is going to be a busy month. I have 3.5 preaching Sundays. (The .5 sermon is our church anniversary, where all of the staff contributes somewhere, but I may get out of that one. I mean, what I supposed to do to follow last year’s Mr. Roger’s Tillman’s Neighborhood?) I think some pastors would be glad to only have three preaching days, but with the spring semester of seminary underway and being bi-vocational, February is going to be a tough month. This may be the last post for a little while, but I thought in might be interesting to hear how Wesley Seminary‘s innovative M.Div. approach, which received some criticism before the first syllabus was even written, is benefiting my ministry.

At my church (sorry no link, our website is being redesigned), on Feb. 7th, I will be preaching on Zacchaeus meeting Jesus and Friendship without Hidden Motives. The topic is designed to correlate with this year’s church theme of “One Sent” and incorporates part of the Evangelism Strategy that I wrote in Dr. Arn’s Missional Church course. On Feb. 21st and 28th, I will be preaching at The Summit at Stockton on transformation (Balaam: Mouth-off to Mouth-piece and Gomer: A Real Desperate Housewife). This subject sprang from Dr. Vaughan’s Spiritual Formation: Change and Transformation course. One may think, Big deal! One should be able to get sermon ideas from almost any seminary class, personal Bible study, or any number of books, but these are more than sermon ideas. We are required to take a spiritual formation course every semester, courses which are designed to ensure we students are maintaining and growing in our relationship with God. These sermons are the overflow from last semester’s experiences. Also, in both courses we, along with members of our congregation, developed specific goals and action plans for our church, plans that are now being put into action. This work was in addition to studying the Bible, theology, church history, and contemporary writers and issues. I could not have gotten all that from a semester of Greek!

An additional bonus, or perhaps detriment, is the seminary seems to be using my face in all their marketing material (I hope they got my good side!). I have not received any royalty payments for the use of my image, but maybe I could get an additional tuition discount🙂 . Or maybe some pulpit committee will see my face and want to hire me as their semi-famous, semi-good looking pastor.