HOW TO SUBMIT YOUR WORK – Submission Requirements:

Textbook Summary submissions must be 10-20 pages in length.  The narrative paper should begin with an introductory paragraph.   The majority of the paper should be a summary of the content of the text written in the Student's own words.  Plagiarism in any form will not be tolerated.   In addition, a statement or paragraph concerning what was learned and how it is applicable to the Student’s life and/or ministry should be included.  The Student should briefly summarize each chapter of the text as it is reviewed.  Once the paper is completed, the Student should then review and make any revisions necessary to present a good summary for submission.  Once the first summary paper receives a passing grade, additional summary papers may be submitted.

Seminar Summary submissions must be between 4-6 pages in length.  The narrative paper should begin with an introductory paragraph.  The majority of the paper should be a summary of the content of the seminar written in the Student's own words.  Plagiarism in any form will not be tolerated.  In addition, a statement or paragraph concerning what was learned and how it is applicable to the Student’s life and/or ministry should be included.  Once the first summary paper receives a passing grade, additional summary papers may be submitted.

Christian Counseling (CC) Verbatim reports must be between 1-3 pages in length.  CC verbatims are approximate word-for-word reports of actual counseling or ministry care dialogue sessions. The CC verbatim reports may cover formal counseling sessions as well as time spent with someone in a helpful situation such as a hospital visit, nursing home visit or a conversation with someone at church.  Each CC verbatim report should begin with a paragraph describing the setting in which the counseling or dialogue session took place.  Each CC verbatim report should conclude with a paragraph summarizing the Student’s perception of the result of the counseling or ministry care dialogue sessions.  Once the first verbatim receives a passing grade, additional verbatims may be submitted.

Missions, Evangelism and Church Growth (MECG) Verbatim reports must be between 1-3 pages in length.    MECG verbatims are approximate word-for-word reports or summaries of actual missions, evangelism or church growth experiences.  MECG verbatim reports may cover experiences that include, but are not limited to, the following: personal witnessing/evangelism encounters (these are encounters where you have in some way shared the gospel with a person who is not a Christian); any effort to build up your church, small group, Sunday school class; or any mission effort such as Bible school or handing out gospel tracts.  Each MECG verbatim report should begin with a paragraph describing the setting in which the mission, evangelism or church growth experience took place.  Each MECG verbatim report should conclude with a paragraph summarizing the Student’s perception of the result of the mission, evangelism or church growth experience. Once the first verbatim receives a passing grade, additional verbatims may be submitted.

Dissertations must be between 60-150 pages in length and must include a table of contents and a bibliography with at least 20 references.

The dissertation should introduce the theme and then in detail research the theme and provide in lay language the exposition or details of the theme.  Footnotes and research notes should be included numerically after each quote with the source listed at the end of the section, end of the chapter, or end of the paper. Footnotes and research notes may also be listed immediately after the quote or the material cited. The Bibliography is placed at the end of the paper. You may have a concluding page or two after the bibliography if you think it is necessary.  Please do not make this complicated. There should be a title page, introduction page or pages, the body of the dissertation or exposition of your theme, your concluding page or pages, the footnote pages if you choose to put them at the end, and your bibliography. The total of all this should be 60 to 150 pages. 

All coursework including verbatims (if required) must be submitted prior to submitting your dissertation. Your theme idea may be submitted for approval as soon as you have signed your student agreement. Thus, you may begin working on your dissertation very early. This will give you ample time to enjoy your study and research. 

The following are resources for dissertations: However, please don't confuse yourself by trying to read these books. The above statement is adequate for your research paper. You may want to refer to one of these books or do an online google search for how to do a standard Bibliography and footnotes for research papers. 

 A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, Seventh Edition: Chicago Style for Students and Researchers (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing) by Kate L. Turabian, Wayne C. Booth, Gregory G. Colomb and Joseph M. Williams (Apr 15, 2007).  The dissertation may only be submitted after all coursework and verbatims (if required) have received passing grades.

Ministry Projects should be between 30-50 pages in length. First submit your theme or ministry project idea. When you have the approval of your theme or idea then you may immediately begin. Most ideas are approved but we simply want to know what you are going to do before you start. A Ministry Project is more practical than research oriented. The concept behind the ministry project paper is that you do a ministry project and then tell us about your project in your paper. The paper may include research references. These should be noted in footnotes and a Bibliography. In the DMIN project you tell us about your theme. You describe to us your reason for the theme. You explain what you hoped to accomplish by pursuing this idea or theme. You then describe how you plan to carry out your project or theme. Then you do the project.

After you complete the project you describe how your ministry project went. You will also describe what was accomplished or what was not accomplished. You describe the results of the project as carried out. Tell us about what you learned. Provide any numbers or statistics if applicable to your project.  For example, a DMIN project might be about starting a small group program in your church. Other ideas include starting a counseling ministry. Beginning a daycare center. Starting a senior adult program. Beginning an outreach program. It may be revamping a ministry in the church. Your project might be about doing a series of sermons about a certain Biblical theme, a book in the Bible, a series of sermons pertaining to Christ's birth, resurrection, etc. There is almost an unlimited list of ministry ideas you might consider for a ministry project. All this information should be contained in a 30 to 50 page paper. Use reading and references as necessary to strengthen your paper and your studies.  The project may only be submitted after all coursework have received passing grades.    

Incomplete Grade Report:  If an "Incomplete" is issued on an assignment, the assignment must be corrected, resubmitted and a passing result issued before further work of any kind may be submitted.  

Requirements for all types of submissions:

1. Each submission must be received in Microsoft Word or compatible software. PDF/Protected View/Read Only files are not acceptable.
2. Each submission must be typewritten.
3. Each submission must be double-spaced.
4. Each submission should be typed using the Times New Roman or similar font style in a font size no smaller than 11 and no larger than 12 with 1 inch margins.
5. Each submission must include page numbers.
6. Each submission must include a completed Assignment Data Form. Copy and paste this form into the body of your email. Complete the required information and attach the summary paper/verbatim/ministry project/dissertation to your email as a single Word document file. Do not send in multiple documents for a single assignment. Do not send documents as PDF/Protected View/Read Only files.
7. Email all assignments to schoolassignment@aol.com.
8. Each submission must include a title page. A good title page contains:

• The course number of the text (you can find this on your degree program page)
• The full title of the text
• The name of the text's author(s)
• The name of the text's publisher and the year the book was published (found within the first few pages)
• Your name
• The name of the degree you are seeking at Newburgh Theological Seminary and College of the Bible
• The fact that the paper is prepared for Newburgh Theological Seminary and Newburgh College of the Bible
• The date you are submitting the paper for grading
• Most title pages have each item on an individual line, with spaces between lines, and all lines set alignment-centered on the page. Title pages do not count as part of a paper's minimum length requirements.

Seminar Resources Available:  Also available are seminars entitled How to Write a Dissertation and How to Write a Good Paper   Click on the Seminar tab found on the homepage for purchasing information.

An Assignment Data Form must accompany each submission.  This form is copy and pasted into the body of your email when submitting your assignment. Complete the required information. Attach your assignment to the email. This form is found behind the tab labeled Assignment Data Form on the homepage.  Carefully review the instructions provided on the Assignment Data Form for electronic mailing of assignments to ensure timely processing of submissions.  ASSIGNMENT DATA FORM - CLICK HERE

Contact an Academic Advisor or schoolassignment@aol.com directly with any questions concerning submissions. 

Student Responsibility:  Please note that the Student is responsible for keeping track of core courses, electives, alternates and seminars.  Should a student purchase a seminar that is not applicable to the degree program, no refunds or transfers will be granted.  Should a student submit more than the allowable number of electives or alternates, the Student will be responsible for the tuition/costs associated with additional coursework.

Writing Tips:  

Common Quotation Marks Usage:  In American English, when ending a quotation you commonly first place the period which ends the sentence, then the closing quotation mark. See William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White's The Elements of Style or www.grammarbook.com for more details. The same order holds true for partial sentences being quoted and ending with commas, colons, semicolons, etc. Most often, you will first place the punctuation mark, then place the closing quotation mark. There are some minor exceptions.

Proofreading and Self-Correcting:  Students should perform good proofreading and self-correcting before sending in a paper for a grade. Some of our students are better at this than others - but proofreading is a very important step. It's better to delay a paper for one or two days for good proofreading than to rush it in with careless errors! This is true with academic papers, and with normal ministry items like church bulletins and published orders of Sunday morning service.

If writing and grammar are not your best subjects, you may wish to ask a trusted friend with a strong academic background to help you with your proofreading. Do not look at asking for help as a sign of weakness - rather, look at it as allowing the Lord to use others to help you in your ministry progress.

Grammar Helps at No Cost:  From time to time, even the best writer and/or grammar student needs a resource guide for help with things like using apostrophes or quotation marks properly. www.grammarbook.com is a free online resource to help answer challenging grammar questions. There are many free grammar guides available online, feel free to use them when writing a paper.

Bad Habits to Avoid:  When writing academic papers, do not refer to the author by his first name only. Use his first and last name when you refer to him for the first time in your paper, and then his last name only throughout the rest of the paper.

Do not copy directly from the textbook without making it clear you are quoting from the text. This is a very serious issue.

Do not share your personal thoughts, experiences or additional insights instead of reviewing the chapter for your report. First show you have read and understood the material, then share your thoughts, experiences and additional insights to what you have read and understood. This can be a struggle for students who are also preaching weekly: The skillful retelling of personal experiences and stories from history, so extremely useful in the pulpit, can actually become a distraction when writing summary papers for seminary.

Quoting the Author in Your Paper:  Students should consider providing some quotes from the author in each paper. While not essential to paper writing or your grade, it is helpful because authors often best summarize their own thoughts on a given subject, especially near the end of chapters. When you do choose to quote from the author, be sure you are using quotation marks correctly and please provide the page number from which the quote is taken.

Quoting can be accomplished by simply following this format:  Billings, in his book The Deliberate Church, summarizes his feelings on the matter when he reports that "knowing Christ as Lord and Savior should change the way we look at people around us" (p. 25).

Clearly distinguish the author’s thoughts from your thoughts and/or thoughts from other sources:  When writing academic papers, it is important to distinguish which thoughts belong to the text’s author, which thoughts belong to you, the student, and which thoughts come from other sources. This is easily accomplished by using the style below:

In this chapter, the author states we must always love our local church despite its flaws and imperfections. I agree, but would like to add that times can come when such flaws and imperfections grow so deep that false doctrines about Christ exist. This leaves no recourse other than separation, as seen during the Reformation. This exception is clarified in the pamphlet "Ichabod's Legacy" by Rev. Bill Jonesboro of Augusta GA, who also preached in April of 2007 that "the only way to help a church where the Spirit is no longer present because of years of false teaching is to leave it."

Provide book, chapter and verse references, and note which Bible translation is quoted: Nearly every paper written for Newburgh Theological Seminary and Newburgh College of the Bible will contain references to Scripture. When quoting from the Bible, please provide book, chapter and verse references. Also, with the wide array of translations and paraphrases in today’s marketplace, it is important to let your grader/professor know which version of the Bible you are using. This is accomplished early in your paper simply by inserting a line which states, as an example: “All Bible references in this paper come from the King James Version of the Bible, except where clearly noted by the student.”

We suggest our students use translations rather than paraphrases for their primary Bible, and for the purposes of writing papers. Usually, one can discover if their Bible is a translation or paraphrase by looking over its first few pages. Paraphrase versions of the Bible (such as The Message) have their useful place as sources of additional comment, but please use actual translations for your primary Scripture references.

Using B.C. and A.D. correctly (and understanding B.C.E. and C.E.):  UAlways use capital letters when writing B.C. and A.D.  The correct way of writing years with B.C. and A.D. is to put A.D. in front of the date and B.C. after it.

Examples:
    The eruption of Mount Vesuvius took place in A.D. 79.
    The murder of Julius Caesar took place in 44 B.C.

Now that communication between the various cultures of the world is becoming more commonplace, some writers think a dating system based on one particular religious view is no longer appropriate. They have adopted the notations B.C.E. and C.E., which stand for "before common era" and "common era."  However, in seminary we are very comfortable using B.C. and A.D., as these notations honor the history-changing existence of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Some students have shown offense to the notations B.C.E. and C.E. when they encounter them in textbooks. They are not obliged to use them (outside of quoting directly from the text material).