Note:  Chuck, please use the contact form so I can get you your prize.   

Congrats go out to Chuck (aka, Chuckles, Chucklebunny, Chork, Chubbs, Charlie Bucket, Bucket, Bucket-Boy) who was the winner of our April Seminary Meme Competition. For answering 6 simple questions, tagging 5 other people, and being the name Just a Gal drew out of my Windies hat, Chuck gets to go on a $100 spending frenzy at Eisenbrauns.

For the inquiring minds in the group… here are Chuck’s answers (oh, and if you wanted to know, he attends Asbury Seminary):

What class do you think has most impacted your spiritual life?

Wow…so far, probably OT720 Biblical Archaeology. Getting to dive into the physical remains of the Old Testament world has been amazing for helping me digest the biblical text.

What seminary professor has been the most influential while in seminary?

Gah…I think this is really a tie between Dr. Richter and Dr. Dongell, though I’m tempted to lean toward Dongell.

What is the greatest challenge you’ve faced in seminary?

Adjusting to being back in school full-time while my wife works full-time to support us. There have definitely been moments of tension there.

What has been the greatest reward you’ve experienced in seminary?

Primarily, being connected with an amazing local congregation in which to worship. This has been a huge time of refreshment and spiritual renewal for me.

What are your plans after seminary?

I’m hoping to go on to PhD studies somewhere (right now looking at Notre Dame) for Early Church studies/Patristics.

How many times have you been asked question #6?

5,636,220,184 times. Exactly.

Again, congrats to Chuck and, of course, MANY thanks to our generous sponsor Eisenbrauns!

I did my taxes online last night using TurboTax. Honestly, it wasn’t too bad. In the past I’ve always gone to a CPA since I had my own business, was a minister, and other crazy tax issues… however, this year with the move I decided to just do it myself since I didn’t have a CPA in our new town. The decision worked out quite well. TurboTax had a great interface and guided me step by step… best news of all… REFUND!!! I really didn’t see that one coming.

If you haven’t filed yet, remember you only have 4 more days!!!

So, one thing that all seminarians should know is that you have some GREAT tax breaks available to you. Here is the IRS publication (always fun to read) on how you can get a deduction from your education expenses. Essentially, you can deduct up to $4000 of “Tuition and fees required for enrollment or attendance at an eligible postsecondary educational institution, but not including personal, living, or family expenses, such as room and board.”

Besides that deduction there is also a Lifetime Learning Credit available. Now, I’m not a CPA so I don’t really understand the relationship between the two options you have, however, I know that you can’t take both of them… That is why it is really great to use a CPA or a program like TurboTax. You simply plug in the information and it determines what is best for your situation.

So, if you haven’t done your taxes, get on it! And remember to take advantage of the tax breaks your education provides you.

Today was a bad day for Julius Caesar… however, for 3 (actually 4) goingtoseminary.com readers, it is a very good day.

Before I announce the winners, I wanted to say thanks to every who played. The competition got pretty fierce towards the end as MANY people began to fight it out for the 25 points for “most creative.” Since there were so many good ones, I wanted to share some of them with you:

Bradley (who doesn’t have a blog) runs a used/new online bookstore has decided to drop some goingtoseminary.com business cards in every order for Christian titles he ships:

Christopher from Rendezvous With God started a Facebook Group, 1000 people for GoingToSeminary.com

Jeff over at deTheos went for the cute factor by getting Dutch in on the act.

Andy, from Life at Patience Corners got an entry in at the 9th hour as he sported Going to Seminary on his motorcycle. I even got a chuckle out of the file name, “going-to-seminary-real-fast”

Now all these are great and I appreciate the time and energy you put into it. It was really fun to see what all you came up with. However, I’d have to say that the winner for most creative was actually a tie. These two guys took creativity and ingenuity to the next level. 25 points are awarded to Jake from cafe de soiree who actually made a commercial for the blog:

And 25 points to Paul Fuller from Approaching North who actually created a facebook application for goingtoseminary.com.

Also, you’ll notice that I’m now on facebook (thanks to Paul) so, feel free to friend me.

Creative honorable mention goes to Christopher from Rendezvous With God for his going to seminary commercial. However, I suspect that he got his idea after seeing Jakes when I posted it on Facebook and thus I couldn’t award him the creativity points even though I really dug the commercial.

Now, the question on everyone’s mind… who WON?!?!?

The results are as follows:

1. Bradley (no blog) - 60 points - Winner of an iPod Nano
- Made an announcement to 6 of his classes at Liberty
2. Paul (Approaching North) - 33 points - Winner of an iPod shuffle
- Made the Facebook Application, added a banner, and 5 links over 5 days
3. Jake (cafe de soiree) - 32 points - Winner of $25 iTunes card
- Made the commercial, added a banner in his sidebar, added a banner on his links page, wrote a post about the site

Honorable Mention:

4. Jon (Live. Work. Play.) - 29 points - Winner of $25 iTunes card
- One link, one banner, 10 fliers hung on the campus of Fuller, sent me pics of the fliers, announced it his Homiletics class, and passed out fliers to students. For all his hard work and for being so close in points I’ve decided to give Jon a $25 iTunes card as well.

Well, there you have it. The iPods of March competition has come to an end and I’m already plotting for next months competition… what prizes await us in April? I don’t know… However, if your holding your breath for iPods again then get ready to pass out

Oh Happy Day!

Good news bloggers, someone FINALLY wants to pay you. The folks over at college scholarship are hosting scholarship competition for BLOGGERS!

Everyone rush over and drop in your application. Now, the scholarship isn’t awarded until October but, hey, go ahead and get your entry in… then you’ll forget about it… until you get the $10,000 email!

Sorry to post another dismal post about debt, but it is a harsh reality we need to wrestle with.

As stated before, this information comes from a survey conducted by The Association of Theological Schools (ATS). The survey questioned 5,113 graduates from the 2006-2007 school year, covering 130 seminaries.

Today, we look at what the Educational Debt Incurred at Seminary translates to on a monthly basis. Of the 5,113 seminary graduates, here is how much their monthly educational debt payment will be:

MONTHLY EDUCATIONAL DEBT PAYMENT
42.4% - None
15.9% - Less than $200
21.1% - $200 to $349
11.7% - $350 to $499
7.9% - $500 to $1,000
1.1% - More than $1,000

Now, something I failed to mention the other day was that this is STRICTLY educational debt. Who knows how much those payments will be if it were to include credit cards or car payments.

This is a big burden that you must truly weigh when you think about seminary.

I was reading the results from survey conducted by The Association of Theological Schools (ATS) this evening and was fascinated by some of the findings. The survey was conducted on graduating students from member schools of the ATS and included 5,113 graduates representing 130 member schools (so, yeah, a good sampling).

Over the next week I hope to post some of the stats that came out of the study. Don’t worry, I know we’re all busy seminarians, so I’ll break it down into bite sized nuggets.

Also, I’d like to say that this information I’ll post from this survey is pretty important to think through, especially if you are considering or just starting seminary. We have a chance to see and hear what people who are finishing this journey have to say… we’d be wise to listen.

Tonight’s post is on the stats concerning Educational Debt Incurred at Seminary. Out of the 5,113 graduating respondents, these are the percentages for the amount of educational debt they incurred while in seminary.

EDUCATIONAL DEBT INCURRED AT SEMINARY
46.4% - None
11.1 % - Less than $10,000
13.2% - $10,000 to $19,999
9.9% - $20,000 to $29,999
7.6% - $30,000 to $39,999
11.7% - More than $40,000

Two observations:

1. WOW! Almost 50% graduated with NO debt. THAT is great.
2. WOW! Almost 20% graduated with $30,000 + in debt. THAT is not great.

With the average Senior Pastor salary paying about $37,000 for pastors fresh out of seminary… $30K in debt is a BIG deal. Now, I’m not throwing stones at anyone who has a loan or debt (I have some). But you must be aware that vocational ministry is not a lavish position. Incurring large amounts of debt in seminary will add a huge amount of stress to a very stressful job… and if you don’t think being a pastor is stressful… then go talk to one.

Strange how stressed we get about money… or maybe that is just me… right?

As Christians aren’t we supposed to look at the flowers of the field and see that God clothes them is splendor and be reminded that he will also take care of us who are of far more worth than a flower (Matthew 6)…

I think I need to plant some flowers outside my office window because I forget that fact all too often.

I’ve spent years trying to find the best way for Just a Gal and I to manage our money. While I’d like to think that I had the noble motives of being the best steward of the gifts God gave us, the reality was that most of the time I was just trying to figure out how we could pay the bills every month and have money left for food.

When I first began I simply had some paper and a pen. I’d record expenses (which were very few early on) and kept tabs on where money was going and upcoming bills. As expenses grew this method became too time consuming and I transfered to an excel spreadsheet. I would manually enter our expenses and could easily generate some graphs, charts, and reports to help us see where money was going.

After about a year of using excel I realized that I wasn’t a very good programmer and that my formulas were typically wrong. I tried out Microsoft Money and a couple other computer programs. At the end of it all the one things I noticed is that none of them really helped us to create a budget and stick to it. Instead of helping me budget, all these programs helped me to simply see, after the fact, where all our money went.

It was around this time that I discovered Mvelopes Personal. What set Mvelopes Personalapart from every other piece of financial software that I tried was that it actually took your budget and helped you stick with it.

Here’s how it works:

First, you determine how much income you bring in each month. Next, you create a REALISTIC budget that keeps you under the amount of money you make (spend less than you make… what a novel idea). Each budget item gets its own electronic envelope. Now, whenever you get paid you take the paycheck and divide it up amongst your envelopes, funding them until they each get the amount you have budgeted for the month. Now, as you spend money throughout the month you simply mark the expense in the appropriate envelope… once the money is gone from the envelope, stop spending… it is that simple.

The approach seems so simple to me, yet I have never seen a program close to Mvelopes Personal on the market.

Mvelopes Personal will login into your bank and credit card accounts and automatically download your transactions… so, keeping up with your expenses is as easy as drag and drop. Also, it is all online, so you can access it from anywhere.

Now, yes, Mvelopes Personal does cost you money… but for me, I finally realized that I needed something more to help me make and keep my budget. Since we started using Mvelopes Personal 2 years ago we’ve been able to truly manage and steward our money.

If you’re interested, give it a shot… it is a free 30 day trial, so what do you have to loose?

1. Take it down a notch - Americans love their space. However, have you notice that the rest of the world is not so space obsessed. I am always humbled when I see images of other countries where entire families live in 1 and 2 bedroom houses. I am also reminded of how our grandparents and great grandparents used to live… 10-15 kids in a 2 or 3 bedroom house. However, many of us are now accustomed to having our own rooms… Well… maybe that needs to change. In fact, Just a Gal and I are pretty sure that in our new house Littleman and Sweetpea will be sharing a room. It feels odd since they have had their own rooms for a while now… but the rest of the world does it… so, lets save some money and downsize our space requirements.
2. Live near school - Gas is EXPENSIVE. If you’re going to be traveling back and forth every day, it only makes sense to cut down on the commute. Living near the school could save up as much as $200 a month!
3. Two words “Brown Bag” - That’s right. PB&J for lunch again. I know the chinese place across the street from campus has the best sesame chicken… but fight the urge. Packing a lunch could save you $300 or more a month! Read more
   
   Enjoy this post? Here are some more posts we think you might like:
   4 Steps to saving money while buying books for seminary
   Rent your books for seminary?
   Money and Flowers
   Date Night
   6 Great things about online seminary distance education
   
   

Ok, here is another list that might help. Here are some sites that might help you find a job while you’re in seminary (no particular order other than this is how they came to my mind):

• First, check with your seminary. Lots of them have job resources for you (often in local churches). Some also offer work study… which has ups and downs… but it is an options none the less.
• Snag a Job (Good for hourly / part time gigs)
  
• Craig’s List (be sure to change to view jobs in your area)
• Monster
• Indeed
• Career Builder
• Church Jobs
• Church Staffing
• Guru (Good site if you want to be a freelancer… I use this as a web development freelancer, but they have lots of other niche freelance categories. Oh, and you’ll need to drop cash to get an account, but I made about $2k this year through guru gigs.)
• Hot Jobs

Any other suggestions for good job sites?