The last few days have been crazy, as I just experienced a rather traumatic flight boarding and how the Lord saw me through. Then today I had another rather mind boggling experience, less traumatic, but more impactful in the long haul for me.

Not only has the Lord opened the door for me to regain my preaching to the flock, but I am also nearing the end of my Seminary for MA Biblical Studies. As most who knows about seminary or Bible school in some countries, we do MDiv for preparation for full time pastoral ministry. And in RTS it will take 106 credit hours to complete that, on top of that you would need to 400 hours of ministry in church certified, and answer verbatim 3×15 questions from Westminster Confession. And that also requires Greek Language & Exegesis, and Hebrew Language & Exegesis. Many seminaries in the US have dropped these biblical languages, but we wanted to have them for academic competency and biblical research and exegesis. I have to say, the two hardest classes are Greek & Hebrew. It’s pretty much hard core memory. But I love writing research papers. I have really loved writing since I get acquainted with writing for academic papers, and started blogging.

Where MABS is only 66 hours, MDiv requires 106 hours. You can see that it almost doubled. What’s mostly added to the MA degree is really the Applied Theology and the Pastoral Theology: like Discipleship & Leadership, Devotion, Worship, Church Polity, Communication, Preaching, Counseling, most of the good stuff that get to be used immediately in church. As a matter of fact, if you want to be ordained in America, generally you would need a MDiv, not just an MA degree.

So I started applying for a hybrid MDiv degree from RTS Orlando, transferring my almost finished MABS from RTS NYC. However, the tricky part of it is that they require 32 residential hours. Just to give you a sense of these “hours” or “credit hours”, a class of 3 credit hours will take 3 months of weekly class of 2 hours a week, and hence 4 hours self-work from home per week for 3 months. And that’s only for 3 hours! Or even 2 hours. Because I have done like 56 hours MABS, I have done most of the core subjects in the MDiv, and what’s left are really the Applied theology and pastoral theology. But by paper, they would still require me to attend 32 hours of residential in campus in Orlando. For that I will need to fly from NYC to Orlando, book hotel for 2 weeks a year. And because I have done most of the residential hour’s subjects, I would find myself sitting there taking like 2 hours in a one week intensive hybrid week, which normally would cover 9 credit hours. So I bailed out and dropped the ball and suggest they accept the hours we have already done in other RTS seminary campuses.

Then I got an email from the professor in charge, who told me that will accept me taking 20 hours in campus in view of the fact that I have completed most core subjects! Bingo! I am fired up and I am back on MDiv program.

I just want to conclude here that, the Lord watches over us, coming in and going out. I have been pondering over Proverb’s in asking the Lord for prudence and insight in life. So much wisdom in that. I know that I will some major decisions to decide and the Lord is making all these happen now. I am also invited by two churches to preach regularly now and the Lord is good. Amen!