"Discover Dallas" part II

Looks like it rained during the night, however when the waking hours began there was no hint of rain with the temp at about 67 (my estimate).

The program for the day began at 8:00 with breakfast and a presentation on the importance of "Spiritual Formation" groups. Basically this would be four or five couples or maybe six or seven single people (mens and womens groups separate) coming together for small group Bible study & fellowship time. This would be a required activity.

Next thing I had another option of attending three more classes or attending a Professor Chatroom. I chose option number two which was a very good time.

The profs I happened to meet with were Michael Burer, who teaches New Testament and is heavily involved in the development of the website www.bible.org and Dr. Timothy Warren who teaches in the Pastoral Ministries department. He told my group that his area was the best (what else was he going to say??) at DTS because he gets to tie up all of the areas the students study and helps students to sermonize them. Both professors were really engaging. Later we were joined by Dr. Charles "Chip" Dickens, who Chairs the Biblical Counseling department. The other prospective students in my group (besides me, of course) were three guys from San Francisco - two of which were brothers.

Our conversation went from the personal (What do you do for a living now?) stuff to our areas of interest to a question and answer session based on the prof's areas of expertise and other topics that came up during the course of the discussion.

From here we were let go a few minutes early to get a good seat in the chapel for the day's speaker who is a past President and current Chancellor of DTS, Dr. Charles Swindoll. You may know him from his teaching ministry and national radio programs, called Insight for Living. See his web-site here.

So I got there early enough to find a great seat and happened to see Cerissa on my way in, which was great. So we sat together. Not only that but I was bold enough to give her my telephone number and email address and she gave me hers too(!!) See, I'm normally really shy around women I find attractive so that was really an accomplishment for me. The other reason why I had to do it was because she's a local resident so while I'd be waiting for my hotel shuttle she'd just hop in her car and drive home. Should the possibility arise that I don't get accepted here I'd have no way of contacting her. That, my friends, would have been bad.

Okay, back to the program!

Dr. Swindoll's message was about his friendship with John Wooden of UCLA coaching fame and how Dr. Wooden is such a humble, great man. He then contrasted this with Mark 9:33-37 and 10:35-45. The point of his message was that in order to be truly great you must be humble and have a servant's heart. Wow!!

What a speaker!!! I can see why his radio programs are as popular as they are. After the chapel was over I had an opportunity to introduce myself and shake his hand. I had bought one of his books the day before hoping to have him autograph it for me, but somehow it just didn't seem appropriate. Though I'll bet he would have if I'd asked him.

The final planned activity of the day was lunch. After the meal, another distinguished professor spoke, this time it was Dr. Howard Hendricks, who is the Chair of the Center for Christian Leadership. He's taught at DTS since 1951. His topic was, "Why Seminary?". His presentation was good and I wish I'd taken some notes.

At 13:00 the program was done and shuttles began taking people to DFW. For some of us staying later there were some extra activities. We took a tour of one of the men's dorms, which is a really old, creaky building. This one and the other which I didn't see are being replaced by a new men's dorm building, scheduled to open in 2008.

The last thing we did was tour the Baylor Health Center, which is part of Baylor University but has granted access for use by DTS students as part of the tuition. It is a full service gym with weight machines, indoor and outdoor tracks and both a heated and non heated pool plus a sauna/steam room/whirlpool in the men's locker room (I'm assuming the ladies have similar in their locker room plus a co-ed whirlpool near the main pool. DTS has use of this facility because Dr. Hendricks used to Chaplain for the Dallas Cowboys and because Tom Landry was on the DTS board of directors for many years.

Finally, after this my DTS shuttle drove me to my hotel for the night, which was near the airport. This would have been the time to have a rental car at my disposal, as I would have had an opportunity to go out with Cerissa and meet some of her friends. Instead, I wandered across the highway (over a nearby bridge, silly) to get dinner at Denny's, since my side of the highway was hotel central and I hadn't eaten since lunch.

When I got back from that adventure, I organized my suitcase, laid out my clothes and spent some time on line before going to bed.