mikao's world

April Fools

So, I didn't really realize it at first, my friend Joanne pointed it out, but my April Fools Day this year was packed.

My oral comprehensive exam was scheduled for 12noon, it is one of the requirements you must complete to graduate with your Master of Arts degree from my school. The oral comprehensive exam is given by two professors, the chair of your department (with whom you usually take the majority of your classes, in my case, Youth and Family Ministry), and another professor who you get to choose (well, you get to say who you want, you don't always get who you want). I left it up to the seminary office to pick my second professor, and I ended up with a good one, a professor with whom I took Screening Scripture: The Bible in Film & Video) last spring.

The oral comprehensive exam consists of 6 major sections: summarizing your learning goals, course of study, and outcome; identifying/comparing/contrasting five key thinkers in your field, identifying principles for ministry in your field and discipline of study; biblical and theological astuteness, analyzing a few of the 10 desired outcomes of seminary (they give you a list beforehand and you write a 5-page paper of where you're at with them); and also discussing a burning ministry issue in your field of study.

We talked about highlights/lowlights of my program (highlights included Essentials of Youth & Family Ministry and the film class I took, among others; my lowlight was taking Counselling Adolescents and Their Families and feeling left alone to swim, and my reason for coming to seminary (I was quite surprised to find myself in seminary in the first place but wanted more youth ministry classes and more time to learn before heading off into the working world).

My five key thinkers included Walt Mueller, some relational ministry thinkers, and a bit of Andrew Careaga. I was also asked a lot of questions about theorists like Piaget, Erikson, and Havighurst, all of whose names I recognized but didn't know whose theories were whose!

The section on biblical and theological astuteness I found quite unique, very different from the way we are asked to talk about it in college (you write a 10 page paper on your doctrinal position on 12 points like "Sin" and "Angels and Demons"). Students are allowed to have a sheet of notes with them for the oral comprehensive exam, so mine were mostly verses on my doctrinal position (I have a terrible memory and can't remember where verses are for the life of me). I was given a hypothetical situation in which an unchurched kid came to me to discuss the part of "The Passion" where "by his stripes we are healed" flashes across the screen and asked what that was all about. What would I do? Well, I said I would talk about how that verse was from a portion of Isaiah 53 (and may I make a note here of how especially proud of myself I was for knowing this?!?!?!?!?!?!?!), I would talk ever so briefly on how it was prophesying about Christ, and then went on to state verses, etc. that I would use to discuss how we are sinners and how we know this (i.e. what we need to be healed of), what Jesus did for us (i.e. his stripes, or wounds), and what this means to us (what our "healing" is). I was also asked a few additional questions, and some random stuff on justification, assurance (I did not know that Methodists think you can lose your salvation...).

The "desired outcomes of seminary" they discussed with me included my involvement in the church during my time here at school (I wrote in my 5-page outcomes paper that I had participated in the very large community church here where I felt uninvolved and lacking fellowship in the church setting, not getting to know anyone community-wise), and my "clear sense of vocation and call" (I talked about camp work and such, my giftings in administration and helping, and my future ministry plans).

And then at the end, my program chair asked me if I could discuss and share with them the concept of community found on the internet, and internet ministry, and into that I wove some of my MRRP research and findings. We discussed adolescent bloggers, Xanga, (the lack of) internet "pastors" and whether or not the concept was even possible, and a few other assorted things.

Then, I left the room and they discussed me... then I came back and they informed me (drum roll here) of my clear pass (hurrah). They suggested I continue to keep on learning, and perhaps should consider taking more theology courses (which I have actually been thinking about), and familiarize myself more with theorists, etc. because such things are important to understand when working with adolescents.

Their commendations included that I have a good understanding of my personal strengths, weaknesses, and gifts, I'm an articulate writer (they said I have good writing, that is pretty swell I think!), and I am doing "cutting edge research... very relevant." And my chair also said a bunch of stuff about how he though I had transformed my difficult internship (when I was a youth ministry church intern a few summers ago) into something good, discovering my gifts more fully and using them and moving on to fruitful ministry. That was very encouraging.

So, with that, my oral comprehensive exam was over. I was surprised it was so easy. Everyone always makes such a big deal about it. I always hear about people crying.

Later that afternoon I printed off my MRRP and handed it in, a glorious moment as I said yesterday. Eventually it'll be online, until then, keep checking out Dialog for pieces and tidbits. In case you were wondering, my purpose statement for the paper was this: "The purpose of this study is twofold, firstly to discover how Christian webloggers are interacting online with themselves and non-Christians webloggers, and secondly, to encourage and facilitate online relational and incarnational ministry via weblogging, especially pointed towards adolescents."

Some other stuff happened yesterday, of the kind that I won't post because it's my blog and I don't want to. You can't tell everybody everything after all.

Hope your April Fools 2004 was just as great.