Mail Call - 9

18 Sept., 2018

Adam Baumann
Concordia Theological Seminary
Fort Wayne, Indiana
Fall Quarter, 2018-2019


8-15 Sept. 2018

First paper done.  Things are going well.  Nothing has gotten too overwhelming yet.  There is a lot of reading, but the required portion of it isn't unmanageable.

I had signed up for leading the discussions for the second week of Gospels, realizing then that this meant the first exegetical paper was due the same time.  Which was good, since it forced me to dive head first into "real" work.  It was an interesting nut to crack, and the mental block of "writing a paper" was the harder part.  Not that the deciphering of the Greek or hunting and comprehending the resources wasn't difficult, because they were.  But getting the ball rolling was the first hurdle.  Once it got going, things went pretty fast.  Translating the Greek took a while, and was probably the longest portion of the paper, both in time working and number of pages when done.

The portion of Matthew I had was on the Baptism of Christ.  The paper was to be 7-10 pages long, and I ended with 6 pages just on Greek, both translation and discussion on the text.  The end result was an 11 page paper.  Not quite as daunting as the 25-page exegetical expected in the "Interpretation of Pauline Epistles" class at CUNE, but it has been a long time since that paper, so it was a challenge to shift my mindset back into academic writing.

The big news is that on Monday, 24 Sept., we will be assigned to our field work church.  The whole class, all 43 of us, will be in Sihler auditorium for this assigning.  From what we were told, it sounds like a theological version of draft-day.  After being assigned, we'll have lunch with our supervisors, so that we can get to know the church we'll be working at and what our supervisor will be expecting of us.

Things are moving fast, and its going to be a blast.