Wrapping Things Up

Cookbooks & Commentaries has been silent for awhile, we realize. We've been busy wrapping up our time at Southern Seminary. That's right, folks, we've reached the end. Today is Ken's last day of class and he will graduate on December 12!

And speaking of wrapping up, I have also reached the end of my classes with the Seminary Wives Institute. When I saw in my inbox yesterday that spring registration will soon be open, I had a twinge of sadness, because tonight will be my final class.

I have a number of thoughts to share about SWI, so here comes one of my favorite things--a bulleted list!

• The SWI Family Life Conference last weekend was excellent. Dr. and Mrs. York led the conference, sharing personally from their own marriage, giving us all a window into their godly, dynamic, fun and passionate marriage.

• Tonight I will be finishing the Old Testament/New Testament Survey course.

• Dr. Betts, teaching the Old Testament part of the course, really made me think about how God's heart for the nations shows so clearly in the Old Testament.

• Dr. Doug Walker taught New Testament survey, and I particularly enjoyed his lecture on canonicity.

• Early this fall, I took a class on the Southern Baptist Convention. Mrs. Mohler taught us about the agencies and institutions of the Cooperative Program. I learned that the scope of SBC-funded ministries is vast, and I have a lot more to learn about them!

• In our nearly 18 months in Louisville, I have completed 12 units of SWI courses. I also attended one Seminar Saturday. (I didn't do the coursework for the Seminar Saturday, however, so no credit on that one!)

• My courses were Discipleship I & II, Essentials for Ministry Wives I & II, Conflict Management, Public Speaking for Ministry Wives, Redeeming the Time, Ministry of Hospitality, Lessons in Prayer, SBC I & II, Old Testament/New Testament Survey, and Family Life Conference.

• Southern Seminary wives reading this (I know you're out there!), don't miss this unique opportunity. SWI will equip you to serve better alongside your husband. Make the sacrifice and go for it!

• SWI has blessed me immeasurably.

~~~

Baptist Faith and Practice

I just finished the assigned reading for my class this Thursday night, a Seminary Wives Institute class on the Southern Baptist Convention. I'm looking over my notes from last week (we have quizzes!), and thinking about Baptist faith and practice.

Faith and practice were the central themes of last week's lecture by Dr. Gregory Wills. He stressed to us that, around the time of the founding of the SBC (1845), Baptist culture had settled into uniformity of both faith and practice.

As concerns faith, Baptists were generally united by Calvinistic doctrine. This uniformity in Calvinistic doctrine is interesting because, until the 19th century, this was precisely what divided Baptists. They were divided for centuries into general baptists, who were Arminian, and particular baptists, who were Calvinist.

All right, that's what I learned last week (in a nutshell) about Baptist faith. And what about practice?

This part was fascinating to me. Dr. Wills described in detail how churches proceeded (still talking 1845 here) to receive new members, baptize believers, and carry out church discipline. I could go on about this, but, in general, I found their procedures to be much more stringent, though much more biblical, than most modern churches.

I can hardly wait to learn more this Thursday night!

Back to School

Ken is back to school now; he's oh-so-happy! The evidence is all around me. Greek vocab cards in little piles around the house, chapel programs on the counter, books and highlighters on the mantle. Can you picture it?

And that also means that I am back to Seminary Wives Institute! Yea!

This term, I am in a class on the Southern Baptist Convention. The first three weeks will be about the history of the baptists. The second three weeks, I believe, will be about the institutions and resources of the SBC.

Last night was my first session and I was delighted to learn from Dr. Thomas Nettles, one of the foremost baptist historians in America. He took us, at breakneck speed, from the English Reformation of the 1500's to the first baptist missionaries in 1810.

Ken had a church history class with Dr. Nettles last spring, and he also took a seminary-level SBC class this past summer. It is fun to get a taste of what Ken learned over the past year.

~~~

Responsibility Training

"For each one should carry his own load."

Galatians 6:5

I recently listened to a recorded seminar called, "Raising Large Families," from the 2008 Seminary Wives Institute Seminar Saturday. One main point of the speaker's message was "don't do anything that someone else in your household can do."

This got me thinking: am I doing things for my children that they really should be doing themselves? I realized I was tidying Calvin's room every day, sometimes more than once. If he makes the mess, can't he clean it up?

So I've added to Calvin's list of responsibilities, which I wrote about back in October. He now is responsible for tidying up his room every morning.

I've walked through this process daily with Calvin over the past few weeks:

• Books don't belong on the floor. Put your books in your book box or on the shelf.
• Neither do clothes belong on the floor. Are they clean or dirty?
• Dirty clothes go in the laundry hamper.
• Hang clean shirts in the closet.
• Put clean pants, shorts, underwear, pajamas, and socks in the correct drawers.
• Close the dresser drawers.
• Close the closet door.
• Put your pillow and blankets on your bed (he's not to the point of actually making the bed, but this is a good first step).
• Look around. Did you do everything? Doesn't your room look good now?

I see some progress. Cleaning his room is now an expected part of our "morning jobs," and, for the most part, he has been doing it without grumbling.

Of course, I like his room to be clean. But I hope that I am instilling in him a sense of satisfaction from orderliness and a job well done.

I'm finding out that, yes, a three-year-old can clean his room, though teaching him how is tedious.

Public Speaking

"May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart

be pleasing in your sight,

O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer."

I'm currently taking a Seminary Wives Institute course called Public Speaking for Ministry Wives. We've given four speeches so far, including our personal faith story, an introduction to a keynote speaker, and a devotional message. Yesterday's assignment was a topical speech. Since I was addressing other ministry wives, people who may move many times in their lives, I presented Map Book 101: finding your way around a new city. You can see that my own trusty map book was my visual aide (A thank you to our friend Richard F. for getting me hooked on map books in the first place!) ~

Our class meets in one of the seminary's preaching practicum classrooms...so that we can be videotaped. Ugh! Watching myself on video is painful.

I've learned some valuable lessons from this class. Most notably, when preparing to speak at an event, START EARLY! Granted, we were only given one week to prepare each speech. But , for the past two weeks, Tuesday nights have been miserable for me (and probably my whole family), as I've tried to "cram" my preparation in at the last minute.

I've also learned some things that sound obvious, but are helpful to remember:

1. Use descriptive language. Word pictures are powerful.

2. Good illustrations are all around me if I'm looking for them.

3. Reading and personal Bible study are the best sources of speaking material.

4. Choose a theme for the speech and stick with it to the very last statement.

5. Know your audience.

6. It's okay to intensify a story, but not to exaggerate. There is a difference.

7. End with a challenge.

8. Pause.

The assigned reading is a book by Carol Kent called Speak up With Confidence. It's filled with concrete examples and step by step instructions for public speaking in Christian ministry.

I have one more week of speech class. The last class will be an extemporaneous speaking exercise where we will each be interviewed by an SWI faculty panel.

Fun, challenging, intimidating, and great experience.

The Peace Maker

I mentioned in a previous post that I took a Seminary Wives Institute course this month called Conflict Management. The course content included leadership styles, high-maintenance personalities, common church conflicts, biblical confrontation, forgiveness, marriage and family conflict, grief and loss. The class textbook was The Peace Maker: A Biblical Guide to Resolving Personal Conflict, by Ken Sande. The book is practical and inspiring, and yet more information than I could assimilate in one read; it will be one of those really good reference books that I look back at from time to time.

What are we doing these days?

We haven't disappeared...we've just started school again. And "we" is very accurate. Last week, I took a J-Term Seminary Wives Institute course called Conflict Management. I am still working on my assignments, which are all due at the end of January. Ken is in a J-Term class this week called The Worshipping Church. He has really enjoyed it. He finishes up today, maybe even as I am writing this post. So we have been trading off on caring for the boys, and trying to get them to bed early each night so we can both do our class reading.

Spiritual Disciplines

Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life by Don Whitney was assigned reading for my Seminary Wives Institute course called Discipleship I and II. I first read this book in 1999 and it transformed my devotional time. It was a pleasure reading this book again, and I learned even more this time. The disciplines explained in this book are Bible intake (including hearing, reading, studying, and memorizing God's word; meditating on and applying God's word), prayer, worship, evangelism, serving, stewardship, fasting, silence and solitude, journaling, and learning.

My favorite part of the book is Whitney's chapter on prayer, and how we can learn to pray by meditating on Scripture. He says, "Meditation is the missing link between Bible intake and prayer. The two are often disjointed when they should be united. We read the Bible, close it, and then try to shift gears into prayer...meditation allows us to take what God has said to us and think deeply on it, digest it, and then speak to God about it in meaningful prayer. As a result, we pray about what we've encountered in the Bible, now personalized through meditation. And not only do we have something substantial to say in prayer, and the confidence that we are praying God's thoughts to Him, but we transition smoothly into prayer with a passion for what we're praying about." Especially if you are ever bored with prayer or feel it is a chore, consider exploring this "missing link." This is also a great principle to use when leading prayer groups or meetings.

A little nugget in the end of the book was particularly meaningful to me this time through. In the chapter on perseverance in the disciplines it says this: "If you are simply waiting until you have more time for the Spiritual Disciplines, you never will...Because life never really settles down, because we will always have plenty of things to do, if we are ever going to make progress in Godliness through the Spiritual Disciplines it must be done when life is like it is now."

Whitney emphasizes throughout the book that the disciplines are for the purpose of godliness. Not to show off or be puffed up or legalistic, but to pursue godliness. I have enjoyed the past twelve weeks of Discipleship class, meeting with this group of ministry wives, and pursuing godliness together.

What Should A Pastor's Wife Be?

In my Seminary Wives Institute class called Essentials, we learned about our role as a committed Christian and a ministry wife. We did a fun exercise in class. Together, we listed all the stereotypes we have ever heard or held of what the pastor's wife should be. Here is what the class came up with:

The pastor's wife has a spotless home, is a gifted teacher, and cooks everything
from scratch. She is an extrovert, always dressed-up and fashionable.
She is even-tempered, wears long skirts and a bun, and never spends money on
herself. She knows all the verses to every hymn, cuts hair, is poor and gets
everything for free. Her children are perfect. She is a willing worker in the
children's ministry and especially the nursery. Her children are monsters. She
visits everyone in the church, is quiet and demure, never says no. And, of
course, she plays piano, because the last pastor's wife did.

This list is ridiculous for many reasons, one being that some of her characteristics are contradictory. She's an extrovert and she's quiet and demure? She's dressed-up and fashionable but plainly dressed and never spends money on herself? No woman can be all these things, the perfect pastor's wife in everyone's eyes. And, praise the Lord, God does not ask any of us to be all these things.

Our instructor, Mrs. Mary Mohler, reminded us that there is no job description for a minister's wife. God does not want us to try to be someone we are not. We do, however, need to desire to serve, we need to be teachable, and we need to be willing to be all God wants us to be.

We ended the class with this encouraging quote from Pam Farrel, in Woman of Influence:

A call from God to be a pastor's wife is simply saying yes to being the person
God has already designed you to be. God knows what tools to use to make each of
us diamonds and for some of us, being married to a man in the ministry is just
the tool God will use to make us each the priceless gem He sees in us already.

Wonderfully busy

Sorry for the delay in posting. Kimberly and I are adjusting to the new schedule. A typical day begins around 6:00 am and ends around midnight. The exciting news in the Schmidt house is how well Teddy Dean is crawling. He loves the action so he scoots after Calvin from room to room giggling all the time. Calvin was just gifted with a blue life jacket for swimming. He loves it and so do mom and dad. Calvin has absolutely no fear of the water. Combine that with the fact that he cannot swim and you can see why we really love the life jacket. Kimberly began her two classes in the Seminary Wives Institute this week. The courses are Discipleship I and Essentials I. I will let her write about the courses. I am so excited for her, she has been dreaming of taking these classes from the time we were engaged. I still love my classes. The amazing thing is that Hebrew Syntax & Exegesis is my favorite course! It does require a lot of work; probably 1-2 hours of study each morning, but it is worth it. The reading load for this semester's classes is about 50-75 pages a day.

We are going to the seminary's Annual Fall Kickoff Festival tomorrow evening. The big draw is hot air balloon rides for everyone. Check back this weekend for pictures...