In light of the impact of the COVID-19 crisis, we at Midwestern Seminary and Spurgeon College have now doubled the number of summer intensive courses available for our students and have sought to provide new online avenues for students to continue with their studies even during uncertain times.
As our President, Jason K. Allen, said well, “With these new offerings, students can still continue to access learning from our incredible faculty even in these most difficult times. We can think of no better way to be ‘for the church’ than by working to help students complete their degrees in new and innovative ways.”
To that end, I have joined with several of our faculty to offer a newly added class this summer. During June 1-4, 2020, I will teach a class that meets the requirements for “Baptist History” at the graduate level and “The Church” at the undergraduate level.
This is a special joy and providence for me as this is my favorite class to teach, and one I have taught regularly since 2005. However, due my need to teach other courses next year, I was not scheduled to teach it this coming fall–but now I get to offer it!
This course is our required historical theology course that gives me the opportunity to appeal to students that ecclesial tradition matters and that, in most cases, it is not what they think it is.
In fact, the history of the Baptist tradition is far more doctrinal, relevant to day to day church life, and helpful for the task of world evangelization than they’ve ever imagined. I have one course to convince them of this and I love that challenge.
Why is this the case?
For my expanded answer, you should enroll in the course!
But as a preview, you can read this short article I wrote, “For Other Churches, Baptists Assert a High View of a Low and Free Church.”
With that, here are a few final notes about this special Summer opportunity:
- The class will meet during June 1-4, 2020.
- The class will meet over live, interactive (synchronous) video for 2 or 3hr blocks of time, which will consist of my lectures and class discussion.
- Students can enroll up until the day the class starts.
- Students are encouraged to get the textbooks and start on the reading and writing assignments, but all assignments are not due until 3 weeks after the course meets.
- Given that this is a Summer Intensive (or compressed/hybrid) course, there is no exam, but reading requirements, book review(s), a descriptive paper, and a final quiz (based on the in-class time).
- If you’ve already taken this course for credit, we are offering this course also as a special elective HT 3140 Baptist Theology. The syllabus below has that information as well.
Are you interested in taking this class with me this Summer? You can learn more and enroll at mbts.edu/summer20 today!