Chapter One Draft is Done!!!

Forgive my inattentiveness to the blog lately. This week has been about getting work done on my dissertation. As I looked ahead to the next three months of work, I realized I have to sit down and get this thing done. December is the best chance to have sustained work on the dissertation. January we are traveling for five days to Houston. In February I am going to Hickory NC to interview a United Methodist Church that has gone from 140 to 2000 in attendance in 8 years. Upon returning from that trip we are going to Frazier Memorial UMC in Birmingham Alabama for 5 days and the end of March we are traveling to Korea for a week. In addition we have a course on Biblical Interpretation for a week in January, another preaching class beginning in February, and a Leadership Class in February. Each one of these classes requires much reading and papers before hand. So as you can see, the time is short. Therefore I focused this week on completing chapter one of my dissertation and I did that today. It is a good day! Until we leave for florida next week, I will be focusing on chapter two (the major substance of the work).

Today in chapel Dr. Kalas (acting president of Asbury and our fall preaching professor) preached about wisdom. We should seek out wisdom all we can and gain as much knowledge as possible he said. But knowledge is fleeting because it can puff us up. THerefore we need to gain as much knowledge and eloquence of speech in order to explain and exalt a gospel and God who is beyond words and whose foolishness is greater than the wisdom of man. He showed that at Calvary. The foolishness of God is displayed by the love of his Son on the cross. May we take our knowledge, wisdom and eloquence, place them before him to be used to magnify our Great God.