For the uninitiated, that is a Doctorate of Ministry, the same degree I am currently working toward.
A year from now I will have completed my classes and I will be starting work on my dissertation. It makes me nervous to think about it, but probably not for the reason you might expect.
Yes, it will be a lot of work and I will have to set and abide by self-imposed deadlines. That will take discipline, but I think I can handle it.
My biggest fear is that I will pursue a project that becomes merely an academic exercise, with no real world use.
So I asked this guy about the topic of his own dissertation.
(Probably a question he doesn't get asked a lot.)
He explained that he had studied three big mission agencies and their training processes for new missionaries. He was looking for connections between inadequate training and failure on the field.
He found all three trainings to be severely lacking in substance and believed that many missionaries left their fields for preventable causes.
I wanted to know so much more than our time together allowed him to explain.
I have seen firsthand the sort of major troubles that can erode the effectiveness of missions. And I have often suspected that inadequate training (and screening) plays a significant role in the sort of conflicts we and so many other missionaries have experienced on mission fields around the world.
Unfortunately, whatever this brother discovered in his research has gone no further than a database in his school's library.
What a shame.
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