Entries Tagged 'Doctor of Ministry' ↓

We both received “provisional passes” on our proposal hearings.

As you may know, we were at Asbury in Kentucky this week for our long-anticipated proposal hearings. We both received provisional passes, which basically means that we’ve been given the green light to move forward on our dissertation work but that we both need to further develop our field research design (before moving ahead).

We will be using a fairly new research method called Appreciative Inquiry (AI). We need to develop a better understanding of AI and how we will use it in our upcoming field research, which we hope to begin soon after vacation.

On Monday morning, Randy met with his dissertation committee (mentor Russell West, second reader Chris Kiesling, and DMin team representative Milton Lowe). On Wednesday morning, Joleen met with her dissertation committee (mentor Russell West, second reader Stephen Martyn, and DMin team representative Tony Headley). Both sessions were very productive in helping us refine the focus and direction of our work.

Now our attention largely turns to the field research. Our goal is to submit defense-ready drafts to our mentor (Russell) by the end of December or mid-January so that we will have some time for pre-defense editing/polishing work. The exciting thing is that we’re entering the final months of this process; the scary thing is, we’re entering the final months of this process!

Reflections on our Asbury experience while we’re in Kentucky for proposal hearings.

We’re here at Asbury this week for our proposal hearings (more on those in a later post). Once we receive the green light from our dissertation committees, we will each begin our respective ministry projects. We hope to spend the next 2-3 months working on our projects and writing about what we’ve learned/discovered through them (more on our projects in a future post as well).

We always enjoy coming to the Asbury campus. While our time here is pretty intense, it’s also a retreat for us.

Pictured here are two statues on campus: Francis Asbury, one of the first two bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States, and John Wesley, the founder of Methodism. They’re great reminders of our heritage and that great leaders have gone before us.

We’re heading out after lunch today and will spend the next several days visiting Randy’s family in Tennessee. While we may do a little dissertation work we are hoping to get some much-needed rest and renewal. In terms of future trips to Asbury, we may be down to two for the remainder of our programs: 1) dissertation defenses sometime in the spring, and 2) graduation in May.

It’s winding down!

On Wednesday, we mailed corrected copies of our proposal drafts to the D.Min. office! Yesterday was our deadline to mail the drafts so that our dissertation committee members (3 each) will have around 10 days to prepare for our hearings (Randy’s on 9/24 and Joleen’s on 9/26).

We had our proposal drafts edited by the editor at Asbury a few weeks ago, which we wrote about here. We had a lot of corrections to make and some other work to do before sending our corrected proposal drafts. Now, they’re on their way to Asbury.

Soon, we’ll be heading down to Wilmore, KY, as well (then vacation, visiting Randy’s family in TN). We’re looking forward to some much-needed rest! Watch for a few posts (while we’re away), especially some photos from Asbury, the Lexington, KY area, and/or Tennessee.

We all tend to put off doing things we either don’t want to do or we know will take a lot of energy!

I began my message on Sunday by saying, “Hello. My name is Randy and I am a procrastinator!”

I was holding a copy of my edited proposal draft, which we wrote about recently. I have been putting off making all of the corrections because I know it’s going to require a lot of time and energy. It’s not so much that I didn’t want to do it as much as I wanted to have dedicated time for it.

In my message, I said that we usually get around to doing things when it becomes urgent. Well, this project has finally become urgent. We need to mail our corrected drafts by tomorrow so that our dissertation committee will have time to read them prior to our proposal hearings in two weeks.

I used part of my day off yesterday to complete the corrections. It took about 4 hours, I believe. I still have a little work to do before printing/mailing tomorrow afternoon, but the bulk of the work is now complete. I feel much better now!

(BTW, the point of my message was that evangelism is urgent for the church: “Operatives are needed for God’s search and rescue mission!”)

Well, what kinds of things do you tend to procrastinate and put off?

Got our proposal edits back; now we must make lots of corrections!

Last week we received our proposal drafts back from the editor at Asbury. Even though our mentor describes our work as “clean” (in terms of writing, grammar, etc.), there is still a lot of red! (Thanks, Judy! ).

The red marks mean we have a lot of corrections to make. We have about two weeks to make the corrections before mailing three copies to our committees (which includes a representative from the D.Min. office, our mentor, and our second readers) in preparation for our upcoming proposal hearings.

While making all the corrections will be a lot of work, we have been looking forward to the feedback. On the left, you can see the first page of Randy’s draft for an example of what our first edit looks like. Most every page looks similar to this one.

Technically, students receive four edits during the dissertation-writing process. We skipped our first edit because we already had a mentor and he requested that we send our initial drafts to him instead. Our next edits will be our defense-ready drafts toward the end of the journey which will leave one final edit at the end of the process, after we have made all of the revisions and corrections that have been recommended by our committees and the editor. Read more about our dissertation timeline here.

There is a light at the end of the tunnel!

Our proposal hearings have been scheduled for the last week of September in Wilmore, KY.

Finally, we have our proposal hearings scheduled at Asbury. Randy’s will be Monday, 24 September 2007 and Joleen’s will be Wednesday, 26 September 2007.

We’ll leave following a special, annual gathering of both of our charges (we get to do this service together every year), which means we’ll arrive late in Wilmore on Sunday evening after the 9-hour drive. We’ll also have a couple days (Monday and Tuesday) to do research in the library while we’re there.

Then, following Joleen’s hearing, we’ll head to Cleveland, TN to spend a few days with Randy’s family. Upon our return home, we’ll jump into our projects in October!

We keep moving forward!

A thumbnail sketch of the rest of the dissertation journey.

We just posted an Adoption Timeline so we thought now we’ll post what the timeline looks like for finishing our dissertations.

Our proposal hearings are currently being scheduled at the D.Min. office at Asbury. They’re expected to be in late September. Between now and then we’ll be making corrections to the edited copy which we expect to receive back from the editor at Asbury any day now. We will also be setting up our projects for October.

When we go to Asbury, we will tack on some much-needed vacation time, including a trip to visit Randy’s family in TN. When we return, we will work on completing our ministry projects (more on that in future posts) in October so that we can write the final two chapters (4 and 5) in November. That will give us a few weeks to submit drafts for our defense.

Defenses must be scheduled/completed between 01.02.2008 and 04.18.2008 for a 05.24.2008 graduation. We are hoping to be on the front end of that time period as much as possible because we expect our adoption process to be culminating at about the same time.

We are grateful to God for this journey we’re on and for his help throughout the process. We don’t just want this experience to be a “hoop” that we have to jump through for graduation (we’ve never approached it that way!). We really want it to be a learning, growing, and spiritually-challenging experience.

We’ve reached an important milestone in the dissertation-writing journey.

We finally talked with our faculty mentor, Dr. Russell West, earlier this week. Fortunately, we only had minor revisions to make before submitting our proposal drafts (chapters 1-3, out of 5), which went out in yesterday’s mail.

This submission sets a number of things in motion, so here’s a brief synopsis of what the rest of the process will look like …

1. Proposal hearings will be scheduled for both of us (probably during the week of 10 September). Our drafts will be edited (i.e. marked for corrections) by the D.Min. office’s editor and returned to us within two weeks. We will have two weeks to return three corrected copies (in three-ring binders) at least 10 days before our hearings.
2. At our proposal hearings (at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, KY), we will meet with the three people on our dissertation committee (Dean of the D.Min. program, our faculty mentor, Dr. Russell West, as well as our second readers, Dr. Stephen Martyn for Joleen, and Dr. Chris Kiesling for Randy).
3. Over the course of the next few weeks, we will begin making preparations for our projects, which is the next phase of the process. We will each conduct “an act of pastoral analysis on a practice of ministry” (more on our projects later). Afterward, we will write chapters 4 and 5.
4. Submit defense-ready drafts. The timing of this will depend, in part, on how the adoption process is going. We may need to either shoot for an early defense (drafts submitted around Thanksgiving for a January defense) or possibly a later one (defenses must be completed by 18 April), if we get the call to go to Korea sooner than expected. Either way, the last half of 2007 and the first half of 2008 looks to be very exciting and challenging!
5. We’ll have some corrections/revisions to make to those drafts, and then more corrections/revisions to the post-defense draft.
6. If all goes well, the process will culminate on Saturday, 24 May 2008, at graduation!

Thanks for your prayers throughout this part of our journey!

Great ideas we picked up from our courses at Asbury.

Now that we’ve completed our coursework phase in the doctor of ministry program at Asbury Theological Seminary, we’ve picked up some great teaching ideas along the way. Here are several things we’d consider doing (assuming one week on campus) …

Worship Emphasis
Many of our classes had meaningful worship times. One of the most memorable weeks was our class with Dr. Stephen Martyn. Each morning we gathered for worship in a small chapel on campus. Dr. Stephen Seamands also did a great job of integrating worship into the classroom experience. The most memorable part was watching a video about the Asbury Revival. After class that day, a few of us went to Hughes Auditorium, the site of the revival on the campus of Asbury College, for prayer and reflection. Worshiping together is an important part of the on campus experience, particularly when it comes to forming Christ-following leaders. We’d involve students in leading morning devotions. We might also spend the last hour together on Friday mornings praying and interceding for one another, as we did in class with Drs. Jim & Molly Scott.

Online Interaction
This is a standard part of the Beeson Institute for Advanced Christian Leadership courses (which can be incorporated into the D.Min. program). Joleen took two Beeson courses and Randy took one. We enjoyed them, including the pre- and post-class online interaction, and would want to incorporate that into our teaching experience. We’d ask each student to post 1) a brief bio at the beginning of the course, 2) reflection(s) to the pre-class reading material, 3) reactions to each others’ comments, and 4) a post-class reflection.

Team Play
In Dr. Russell West’s class, we played team-building games a couple times a day. We found them to be good group experiences and would consider incorporating them into our experience as well.

Student Presentations
Jim & Molly Scott had a different student read a different article and present them in class each day. This was a good way to hear about different articles.

Dinner and a Movie
During one class, we led a group of fellow students to the movie theater to watch the End of the Spear, a true inspirational movie about missionaries to Ecuador. We enjoyed that and think it would be a good idea to watch a movie that inspires leaders to change the world. At the moment, we might watch Freedom Writers, which we wrote about here.

Modify the Schedule
A normal schedule for a D.Min. course at Asbury is Monday through Thursday, 8:30—4:30 and Friday, 8:30—12:00. Taking a cue from Russell West, we might work through a shared lunch on Wednesday then call it a day at 2:00 pm (the afternoon/evening break was great). And taking another cue from Jim & Molly Scott, we might add sessions on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. Tuesday evening could be used for “dinner and a movie,” and Thursday evening could be an informal time of sharing and prayer.

Small Group Lunches
Jim & Molly Scott each scheduled lunch with small groups of four persons each, each day of the week. Everyone had the opportunity to have lunch with both of them one time during the week. Dr. George Hunter invited students (whom he called “colleagues”) to Subway in “beautiful downtown Wilmore” (you’d have to know Wilmore to know how funny that is). Those were good ways for interaction.

Appoint a Fellowship Coordinator
In all of our classes, students informally got together for lunch and/or dinner. During one course, one student took charge, saying at the end of each day, “Anyone who wants to go to dinner together, meet at the Beeson Manor at such-and-such a time.” That made it very easy for those who may have been less intentional/inclined to gather with the group. Having a point person for shared meals would be a good idea, we think.

Our time at Asbury has been a great experience. All of our professors, as well as the folks in the D.Min. office, are people we’re glad to have known, and have all been helpful to us in our journey (and some continue to be during the dissertation-writing phase). Our Asbury experience has been an important part of our ongoing spiritual and leadership formation. It has also given us some great ideas that we might be able to incorporate in various settings.

Submitted drafts to our mentor today; hoping to submit proposal drafts to D.Min. office next week!

Today, we finally emailed our second drafts to our mentor, Dr. Russell West. Whew!

This latest phase was very challenging. In the last few weeks, it has felt like the project that would never end! But we took a major step today by submitting drafts to our mentor. After getting feedback from Russell, we’re hoping to be ready to submit our “proposal drafts” (assuming only minor revisions!) by the end of next week.

If that’s the case, we’ll be on track to go to Kentucky in mid-to-late August for our proposal hearings. We also hope to schedule in some much needed vacation time then, possibly including a trip to Cleveland, Tennessee, to visit Randy’s family.

In the meantime, we’re moving forward with our proposed projects. Joleen will be contacting some churches to study their small group ministries and Randy will be contacting three leader/communicators who are shaping a missional culture in their ministry settings (see this post for more on Randy’s project).

After navigating the next few weeks of this proposal phase, our next major deadline will be around Thanksgiving. That’s a self-imposed deadline because we want to schedule our dissertation defense hearings on the front end (early January 2008) due to expecting to receive our child sometime around then. If all goes well, we expect to graduate on 05.242008, 324 days from today!
For now, we’re grateful to God for bringing us through to us to this point and for bringing us through these last few weeks!