By Dave ShieldsHello friends! I am nearing the end of a long journey! As of October 2024, I have moved from being a ‘doctoral student’ to a ‘doctoral candidate’ at Liberty University. I have only three more courses to complete before I am officially “Doctor David C. Shields.” I cannot believe the wild trajectory of this journey!
For anyone curious, this is the culmination of years of experiences that started in 2008 (or thereabouts). About the time I began this blog. I completed my Bachelor of Science in MIS in 2006 and kept feeling like I wanted to pursue higher education, but I wasn’t sure what to pick. Also, my experience at Mid-America Christian University (MACU) with mandatory theology courses was a fantastic eye-opener. This was also when I felt the call to ministry in my heart. I started MACU’s Master of Science in Leadership. Still, I quickly realized that the theological aspects were not designed to help one get a ministry degree other than one in the Church of God denomination (and I was a Southern Baptist).
I briefly changed my major to an MS in Psychology, a field I enjoyed but not one I could expect to make a living in. At this time, I found Liberty University online. LU was a Southern Baptist curriculum and offered 100% online courses (a rarity in 2009). I enrolled in the Master of Divinity program and pursued my degree with a gusto unlike anything else I had pursued. So hard that I completed 30 of the requisite 42 credits in under two years. But then, life happened.
My wife and I had recently adopted my first daughter and were adjusting to life as parents. We were both working full-time outside of the house, and our daughter was in daycare. I had also decided to become a bi-vocational youth pastor in a small, rural community. The combined weight of being a new parent, buying a new house, being a youth pastor, pursuing my Master’s, and still working full time was too much, and I cracked under pressure. I learned later that I was in the midst of a spiritual war but was unprepared for it.
After a weekend of prayerful consideration, I decided to resign as a youth pastor. The senior pastor was very insecure, and I made him nervous. Because of this, he always seemed to find something wrong with me every time we met.
I also spent so much time doing other things outside my home that my wife had to pull too much weight. I couldn’t step down from my IT job as that was what “paid the bills.” My wife didn’t want to step down from her job, and it also helped with bills. I also realized that repaying my student loans for an M. Div degree would be challenging for my family to overcome since I didn’t feel like the meager salary of most pastors would be enough for us to pay our bills and still pay off my student loans. I finally decided not to enroll in my next round of classes in the M.Div program.
Instead, I pursued an M.S. in Cybersecurity for a few reasons. First, I was already very familiar with IT Security and did not have the credentials to prove it. Second, my employer then offered reimbursement for up to 50% of my costs if my degree was in a field related to my role at the company. Third, the IT Security world was exploding as so many companies were investing in their programs, so anyone with skills in the field could demand a hefty salary and would get it pretty quickly. Lastly, I thought it would be cool to have the skills of a “hacker” that would allow me to be the equivalent of a computer vigilante fighting off digital bad guys. I have no regrets about this decision; my degree has done much for me.
Fast forward to a few years after I completed my MS degree. A friend told me that Liberty University had a unique opportunity for IT Security instructors. They desperately needed instructors for their growing Cybersecurity Master’s program, but there were not enough Doctorate instructors. So, if you had a Master’s in a security-related field, you could teach MS courses because a PhD would review the course material and approve it to be taught. I saw my student loan balances not getting any lower and having moved to a point in my career where I had enough free time to prepare courses while still doing my day job.
So here I was, back in the fold at Liberty, about six years after my first failed attempt to get my degree. I loved teaching and threw myself into it with great joy. It did not take long for me to rise in notoriety within the program to the point where I was declared the Subject Matter Expert (SME) for the course I had been teaching. I branched out, taught a few other classes, and later became the SME of another course. The money from my two positions was enough to provide exceptionally well for my family, but I could still look at my LU student profile and see those 30 credits that I was STILL paying for sitting unused. This persisted for the almost ten years I had been teaching online for LU and working in other professional careers.
Then, my LU faculty news board announced that LU would start offering reduced tuition rates for adjunct faculty—something I had long hoped for. After more prayer and seeking, I decided to reach out to my LU registrar and find out if I could get a degree with those unused credits. Unfortunately, the curriculum changed so much that I needed several courses to convert my M.Div credits into an M.Div degree in the new curriculum. I could, if I wanted, take two or three classes and get a “Master of Religious Studies,” but that seemed to be a bland and vague option. However, if I was willing to do it, I could take the credits I had in my M. Div and apply it towards the prerequisites for any number of Doctoral programs.
You are now with me in 2023 when I choose to pursue my Doctor of Ministry in Theology and Apologetics. This degree program was enjoyable! I was getting to study God’s word, ministry, and faith deeply. Plus, I was now on the way to being the only child in my family ever to achieve a terminal degree. In fact, not even my brilliant brother, with his crazy high IQ and a similar love of learning that I have, has achieved this. Of course, he has completed a Master’s in French and an M.B.A. among his credits, but no Doctorate.
I now stand at the precipice. I have already asked Liberty to permit me to attend the commencement in May 2025 despite not completing my courses until August. I still have no confirmation about whether or not this will be allowed. I don’t want to skip this one and attend the commencement in May of 2026 because that will be almost a year after I completed my degree, and the sense of accomplishment will likely have waned by then. Even if I don’t get to walk across the stage this May, there is no doubt that I will feel a massive sense of accomplishment when I complete my degree.
I still don’t know exactly what God wants me to do with this degree. There are several options, but I have no idea if any of them will come to pass. Since my cognate is in apologetics, many churches, parachurch organizations, and theological libraries could ask me to write articles about thornier topics. I can teach doctoral classes at Liberty if needed, but I would be changing to the School of Divinity instead of the School of Business. I could be asked to serve in a pastoral role if the economy supports the pay I would need to support my family on a pastor’s salary instead of an IT Security veteran (or even bi-vocational if I felt I had the desire). Honestly, there is no telling. My wife and I have even talked about becoming world travelers after our children graduate high school so I can become a missionary in many different ways.
The future is still unclear, but God has led me through this crazy pattern I just spent pages of text describing to you. He has never let me down, and I know He never will. I pray for guidance daily about the next steps, but God is not ready to show me that just yet.