Spiritual formation class

This semester, fall 2011, I'm teaching my spiritual formation class online to nine Pacific Islands University students. All but one are Micronesians (and the one American in the class was actually born in Palau). Three of the students are in Yap and the other six are on Guam.

It's a good group and I am definitely enjoying them.

We not only work on the disciplines that help us train for spiritual development, but we also work on writing skills in this freshman-level class. Since all of the interaction in this class is by email it is a great opportunity to coach students in English writing.

I'm also working on putting my World Religions class online. That is coming slowly but it will eventually be available as a self-paced senior-level class.

Because of the way that PIU is structured and the way that students move through the curriculum we're probably going to need more of these flexible, available-every-semester classes. I taught the spiritual formation class to one student during the summer. And in the spring there were six students in my PIU church planting class. In the fall of 2010 I taught Spiritual Formation, an independent study in World Religions, and did internship supervision -- all from my computer in Arizona.

We have smaller classes with a lot of one-on-one interaction. And it sure doesn't hurt that the students are becoming internet savvy in the process.