The final exam

We have moved on again, and have been in Western Australia for about a week. This past week I spent most of my time studying, but thankfully, that's all done now. The studying was for my peremptory exam at classis, which I needed to pass in order to be ordained. Yesterday was the day of the big exam.

For those who may not be familiar with how that works, it goes like this: first, I present a sermon proposal. The classis delegates decide together if it meets their standards, and as it did, we could go on. After that there were exams on all kinds of topics, in which one minister gets a set amount of time (15-25 minutes) to ask me anything on that topic, and everyone else has a few minutes afterwards as well. I was examined on:

• Old Testament - focussing on Zephaniah 1-3
• New Testament - focussing on 1 Peter 3-4
• Doctrine - focussing on the Canons of Dort
• Church History - focussing on Reformed Church history from 1834 to 1944, as well as Lutheranism and Methodism
• Scripture knowledge - focussing on, well, anything in the Bible
• Ethics - focussing on the 1st and 7th commandments
• Diaconiology (ministry) - focussing on liturgy and catechism teaching
• Church polity - focussing on church discipline

After a few hours of questions the classis delegates decide together if my answers were sufficient. And thankfully, they were! We are very thankful to God for this favourable outcome. This clears the way for my ordination, which will take place, DV, on June 26 at the Free Reformed Church of Armadale.

It's really good to be done with this stage. Now we can really look forward more fully to going to PNG.