Originally Posted by Barnpreacher

Conrad,

I am taking courses through Whitefield College. I am trying to finish up my bachelor’s degree. (I quit college in my freshman year after I graduated high school to work full-time and then I began to preach. So, I never had the opportunity to finish.)

Anyway, Dr. Johnston told me that as I was completing my bachelor degree some of the classes I am taking will also count toward my MDiv. That is my long term goal.

Now, enough about me. Let me try to answer your questions. I am three classes in and thus far it has been pretty challenging. The hardest part for me is the time constraints I have. I have a wife and daughter, a church to pastor and another part time job. So, the courses for me have not necessarily been easy.

Basically you order your first two courses and then you'll receive them in the mail about 3-4 weeks later. When you contact the school they will send you an order form that will tell you what the required texts are for your classes. If you don't have the texts then you can order them from the school and they will send them to you along with a CD that has lectures on it.

My first two courses had about 16-17 lectures for each course. I also had to read about 2-3 books for each course. You are required to take notes on each lecture and write a lecture summary for each lecture as well. Then you write chapter summaries for the books that you read for each course. At the end of the course I had to write a paper of at least 1300 words on a topic covered in the course.

There's quite a bit of work involved, and like I said if you have time constraints it won't be easy. My first two classes weren't too bad, but my third class (Old Testament Survey) has 56 lectures that have to be listened to. Each lecture is anywhere from 40 minutes to about 55 minutes long. (There is a trick to listening to the lectures though. Listen to them on fast speed in Windows media. As long as you can keep up and take notes then you can cut some time out that way.)

I haven't had to take any tests as of yet. I am assuming that most of the courses will require a final paper which will consist of the greatest portion of the grade for that class. The rest of the grade consists of lecture summaries, chapter summaries etc.

I'm thankful for Whitefield. It meets my needs in that it is:

a. Inexpensive (Each course is about 300 dollars)
b. Allows me to work pretty much at my own pace (I could never do all I do and go to a B&M seminary)
c. Gives me the reformed education I have been looking for (I already have a degree from a fundamental, dispensational seminary, but since God opened my eyes to the Reformed faith about five years ago I have been looking for the right school. Whitefield is the right one for me.)

I have 21 more classes to complete for my bachelor and then I start on my MDiv program. So, it's a lot of work but in the end it will be worth it for me.

Hope this helps.