Seminary scholarships

I got the news this morning that North Park Theological Seminary has become an approved participant in the the Kern Family Foundation scholarship program. These scholarships provide for full tuition and other benefits for up to five students a year. Even though the school is the denominational seminary of the Evangelical Covenant Church students don't have to be "Covenant."

This is really exciting and will open more doors for potential students. North Park already has a really generous presidential scholarship program (full tuition). Then there are the diversity scholarships, which I think are full tuition, too. These are incredible gifts to the church.

A few years ago we were struggling because so many people were coming out of seminary with so much debt (seminary is really expensive -- $425/unit, full load is about 15 units a semester = $12,750 year x 3 years for an MDiv = $38,250 for seminary tuition -- and there are other expenses, too). But so many people have stepped up to the plate that it has become very realistic to finish school with no debt whatsoever. This allows more graduates to serve in places where there just isn't a lot of money available. The church is the real beneficiary of these scholarships.

North Park is on my short list of great places to go to seminary, even for non-Covenant students, and not just because of the scholarship opportunities. They've got a solid faculty, they're academically rigorous but ministry oriented, and Chicago is a world class city where you rub shoulders with people from hundreds of cultures on a daily basis. This new scholarship just makes the school all the more inviting.

They have about 160 students -- the largest the school has ever been.

In the interest of full disclosure, I am a Fuller Seminary graduate -- but I did the final year of my MDiv studies at North Park -- back in the Middle Ages. It was a good school back then. It's a really good school now.