Ministry Reflection Paper

After a car accident three years ago, God used the recovery period to hone my old skills and birth new. Over the course of the process, He repositioned me for a different journey. The new path led to a transition from a secular K-12 setting to Christian higher education; yet, still within the context of supporting a diverse student population. My purpose became preparing and teaching ministerial leadership in a

I am very good at working under pressure and meeting deadlines. This is because my very favorite thing to do is to procrastinate which obviously is not the best thing. Despite this, the ability to thrive under pressure is a very sought-after skill. This gives me the ability to stay calm and handle things one step at a time in situations in which many others would be very overwhelmed. One example of this would be this past week. I had a TRP (four paged theological reflection paper) due in Old Testament, my first Old Testament exam and my first Chemistry exam. The day before my TRP was due my computer crashed on me and I lost my completed paper. Instead of panicking about the paper I had just lost, that had taken me two days to complete, and

This philosopy of ministry is simply my personal way of doing things . In my view, every christian should believe the same primary, fundamental doctrines, however, not all churches and ministries should have the same style, or the same philosophy of ministry. Just as there is variety in the body, so the world needs all different styles of pastors, leaders and teachers. No one style will reach everybody with the gospel of Jesus. As you read the Bible you'll see that while God does tell a church what to believe and think, he never tells the church exactly how to operate. The church is free to creatively operate within biblical teachings and principles.

Ministry is more than just choosing a vocation for life; ministry calls the individual and beckons them to follow. At 53 years of age, I have taken a long journey to get to where I am today in ministry, yet I can say with all honesty, "I have not yet arrived." In describing the ingredients to a lasting ministry, Kevin Miller states, “A ‘call’ to ministry is not easily defined, but nothing could be more solid to most pastors. The call of God is

This paper is the final results of my internship ministry practicum II experiences reflection in my church organization work settings and training. My experiences from different areas of exposure sharpened my skills for my professional role of the Doctor of Ministry Program in the theological field of counseling and teaching. My ministry practicum consists of direct involvements with hands-on, real-life interactions under the supervision of my Supervisor, Chaplain Andrea Fletcher. This Comprehensive Written Review analyzes the full spectrum of my observation and participation in tasks from my Ministry Learning Agreement Form. The opportunity allowed me to view other leaders in ministry exercising their gift and in turns

One text that has been incredibly formative in helping me understand my calling is “The Summons”, by Dennis McCallum. This is the story of a young girl being called by God to accept Christ and to share his teachings with others. McCallum uses a narrative format to share several wonderful sermons with the readers. There is one section in particular that touched my heart. The bible study instructor is asking the group to open their hearts to God. “This is what God wants for you tonight. He doesn’t want you to commit to keeping a religious discipline. He wants you to come to Him with empty hands and an honest heart, and forge a relationship with Him” (McCallum, 1993, p. 79). Reading these words forced me to reexamine how I was living my life. I attend church regularly. I even work for my church, but was I really developing my relationship with God? I found that I was going through the motions. I needed to truly commit my whole life to the Lord, not just part-time. My relationship with God needs to be nurtured and cared for, just as any other relationship in my life. That is why I want to attend seminary. I want to learn everything I can about my Lord. I want to be able to share His word with others.

I was born in the year 1972 in Springfield, Missouri and I grew up in Polk County. I had lived an uneventful, "westernly" normal life up until which point I realized I am called into full time ministry. In retrospect this is a calling or concept which I knew fairly early in life and yet denied with all my strength. I had all the excuses, i.e. "I am terrified to speak in public", "I hate crowds", "I am inarticulate", "What do I know about the Bible"...This list goes on. Sometime in the late 2000's I decided I would go back to school and get a degree in psychology or counseling and put it to some sort of use "at church", I took classes, got the Biblical Studies certificate through CCU, changed majors two or three times, and did very much average work. I

“I was at church camp the week of June 5-10, a few years ago and there was an awesome youth pastor named Reggie Dabbs speaking to us that week. He was great, he made the lessons and bible stories that went with his lessons come alive and he made them personal to fit his story and so many others’ stories. On the last night at the end of his message, he asked if anyone felt called into ministry to stand up. I stood up, not having really any clue why I stood up. I now know that it was God prompting me to stand up because He was giving me a glimpse into what He wants me to do. I am glad I did.”

I spent many hours designing the “perfect” retreat, focusing the training on leadership and time management skill building. Driving to the retreat that morning, the Lord spoke clearly to me that all of the opportunities He blessed me with in my secular career were “…for such a time as this.” (Esther 4:4) With new motivation, I began to seek opportunities that would stretch me personally, teaching me to rely on God to give me the tools to complete the tasks He had called me to do. This has led to positions in MOPS regional field leadership, in the role of Area Coordinator for Operation Christmas Child, as a Small Group Coach at my church, as well as a position on our Community Outreach Ministry’s Advisory Team. Over the past year, the Lord has begun calling me to go deeper into the study of His word. It has long been on my heart to finish my college degree, but it was only recently that I felt a clear vision of what the Lord intends for me to make my focus of study. Because my desire to achieve a Bachelor of Arts in Biblical Studies is coming from a direct calling from the Lord, my motivation has a higher level of

Recently I sat down with my pastor to discuss my future in ministry. I had some very heavy things weighing on my heart. After laying them out, I stated that “I often feel like I don’t have the needed self-confidence to do this ministry thing” and that “I think that I’m going to need a very supportive pastor in order to survive my first pastorate.” It was there that he stopped me cold and made if very clear that I could not and should not enter into ministry with that mindset. I could not expect my self-confidence to come from other people. I had to seek that from God. In the moments to come, through some very introspective conversation, I realized that I had been approaching the entire idea of ministry from the wrong direction. Without realizing it I had made it a “strong on the outside” thing. I had completely avoided the true spiritual formation that needed to be occurring on the inside.

Never in my life did I think God would lead me to become a pastor. However, around the end of 2012, I really felt God calling me toward vocational ministry. I wasn’t really sure what that would look like in my life, and I struggled with God for a long time about the idea of giving up a “sure thing” with the army, for the unknown of serving in ministry. I just kept thinking, “Is this really what God is calling me to do?” This went on for quite a while. One night, in May 2014, God made it abundantly clear to me. My wife and I were attending the wedding of some close friends of ours. The pastor who was performing the ceremony was the pastor of the church my wife and I attended before I joined the military in 2010. After the ceremony, I was talking with him and mentioned that I was feeling like God was calling me into pastoral ministry.

I really enjoyed executing this interview. It was a privilege to be able to include my interviewee in my assignment, as he has been supporting my decision to further my education and proceed with my calling through Christ. Bill Kidd has been an associate pastor for over 7 years at Bethel Baptist Church. Pastor Kidd was in school at the same time as myself and we always were able to connect and relate to each other whenever we got together at meetings or other gatherings. I look up to and respect his achievement in ministry and I am looking forward to learning from him as I pursue my role in ministry.

Every fourth-year teacher trainees will have to conduct practicum and will work under the guideline of their associate teachers and supervisors. The purpose of doing the practicum are to put training into practice, to become accustomed to teaching in the tertiary school settings, and to develop and expand each trainee’s teaching expertise and confidence. In the following paragraph, I will express what I have learnt from doing practicum to reflect on my past teaching strengths and weaknesses from the teaching practicum.

To understand where I am now in relation to Catholic theology I feel that it is appropriate to look back on the thoughts and ideas that I had when I first started this THEO 1001 class. Honestly coming into college I have thought about my faith very little and studied the bible and what it means even less. In my mind I have always thought that theology was primarily a group of people just sitting around reading the bible repeatedly and then coming up with ways on how to interpret certain beliefs and messages in it and what they mean to us as Christians. Now I understand that theology has many more aspects to it than just the one example I gave earlier. The fact that this class was just about Catholic theology doesn’t really have a meaning to me because I haven’t studied other religions or denominations theology. Diving deeper into what I thought about how Catholic theology impacted my life will be a very shallow dive, given that I am neither Catholic or a theologian I honestly thought that this class was going to be a history of how Catholics are the greatest Christians and their way of looking at the bible. Thankfully I was very wrong about both those things and have learned about some very interesting topics throughout the class, one being the fascinating section we did about anthropology and what role it plays into theology.

Christian Tradition course exposed me to the Christian Tradition based on Biblical and church history. The course taught me the differences and similarities of Christian Tradition from other major world religions. I learned about the significance of God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit and the Trinity based on the teachings of the Bible. The course also briefly covered 2,000 years of church history but with emphasis on the impact of the Council of Nicea, Council of Chalcedon, and John and Charles Wesley on Christianity. The professor emphasized the importance of the reformation that sparked a revolution in the church.