Among Us | Seminary Student Blogger

April 02, 2013

Kate Hightower 

We watched Thee here among us
Tender hands and thunderous eyes
Healed our every darkness
Which brought Thee to demise.

Thou spotless lamb among us
No wrong committed thus
We watched Thee hang and die there
So lost upon the cross.

The Father from above us
Was pleased to have Thee crushed
For me to breath eternal
And turn my accusers hushed.

Thou gracious Christ among us
Oh what joy when Thou rose
What glorious Death begotten
Defeat brought to Thy foes.

Hail Eternal King inside us
Breathing life into our bones
We’ll sing Thy song forever
No more our sorrow moans.

Tags: Author: Kate Hightower , biblically-grounded , spiritually vital , student blogger , thoughtfully evangelical

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Dentist Chair Confession | Seminary Student Blogger

February 14, 2013

Tim Norton

Here’s the deal. My brother is a physical therapist and my sister-in-law is a dentist. Yeah. Top that. Me? I’m a walking tax write-off. As a future pastor, I may not be rolling in the dough later in life but I’ll always be able to play the tax card. It’s my ace in the hole. *sigh* But I digress—having doctors for siblings isn’t so bad. It’s kind of fun to say “Oh, Dr. Norton? I’m his/her little brother…Why yes he/she is wonderful!...Yes, I’m terribly proud of them…What procedure are you seeing them for?...Oh wow!...Funny that you mention it, I think that’s the class he/she had to repeat a few times. Hopefully they get it right this time!...I’m sure it’ll be fine…Besides, that classroom case was bogus. There’s no way to prove that amputation was the his/her fault…Take care!”

Ah yes. The joys of being a little brother. So, this Christmas, my sister-in-law discovered it had been a little bit since I had been to a dentist. And by a little bit, I mean three years. It went down like this.

Me: I know, I know. It’s bad. But I didn’t have dental insurance for a while so I didn’t want to go.
Sister-in-law: Tim, you were only out of insurance for a year.
Me: Right.
Sister-in-law: What’d you do the two years after that?
Me: …um. Well… um… you see…

Family. They have an uncanny way of seeing right through you. Gotta love ‘em for it. Truth was that I didn’t go to the dentist for the first year because of insurance. I didn’t go the second year because I was lazy. I didn’t go the third year because I was too embarrassed. And now my whole family knew, which made me even more embarrassed! At this point I had no choice but to schedule an appointment with none other than Norton DMD herself. I tried to warn her that it was probably gonna be bad. She assured me everything was going to be fine…

I don’t want to talk about how many cavities I had. It was gross. Not only that, my top two wisdom teeth grew in and my bottom two decided they wanted to do a rendition cirque-de-inside-Tim’s-mouth by impacting, twisting inward, and bullying my molars. Poor molars. So, what started as a routine visit to the dentist became a 6-hour appointment across two visits. 6 hours in the same chair gives you a lot of time to think. And you know what I realized? My pride kept me from doing the very thing that I knew I needed to do. Exposing my teeth to my sister-in-law hurt my ego more than anything. It was ego that kept me from getting an appointment sooner.

I don’t wanna project on anyone (ok let’s be real, I really do love projecting) but I’m pretty sure we can all relate. Somewhere deep down there is a part of us that wants to manage our less favorable, even sinful parts of our life. We want to run a good PR campaign for ourselves. We don’t want to expose ourselves to the very people who can help us get better. I think that’s why confession is such a big deal. Confession is a pride killer. Confession is the opposite of sin management. Confession sucks. But confession is important. To be sure, I’m not saying you need to post a Facebook status about your every shortcoming. Please don’t be that person. (Seriously, don’t be that person.) But I challenge you to have someone in your life that really knows you, someone that you can expose some of the things lurking beneath the surface. From my experience, it’s much easier to experience God’s grace and forgiveness after confiding in someone and hearing their grace and truth-filled response.

This isn’t anything new. After committing the first sin ever, Adam and Eve were more interested in sin management than confession:

“Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. But the LORD God called to the man, “Where are you?”
He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.””
(Genesis 3:8–10 NIV emphasis mine)

Don’t miss this. Adam and Eve’s first reaction after sinning is to attempt to hide the nakedness. The shame of nakedness is overwhelming. They try and hide who they are in their fallen and broken state. They can’t undo what they’ve done and, rather than confess it, they attempt to “fix” themselves without letting anyone (in this case God) know about it. However many millions/billions of years later (or thousands depending on your point of view), I’m doing the same thing.

I have a wardrobe full of sewn-together leaves designed to hide my nakedness from God, myself and others. Though I cognitively know the Gospel of Jesus Christ, I still am inclined to hide my sin rather than confess it. I desperately try and manage a carefully crafted public image at the expensive of receiving the help I need.

After exposing the fullness of their sins, God explains to Adam and Eve the consequences of their actions. Notice, though, that God is also very gracious in the scenario. Yes, there are natural consequences, but God also makes clothes to cover their nakedness.

Now, you may say to yourself, “Psh! I privately confess my sins to God. I don’t need to tell anyone else about it.” Guess what? That’s pride. We are designed to function relationally. We experience the grace of God relationally. We experience the forgiveness of God relationally. Suck it up and try it. Try it in the next 2 weeks. Grab a trusted friend or mentor and have a difficult conversation. It may be about as fun as sitting in a dentist chair for 6 hours. Truth be told, it may be worse than that for a time. But there is nothing that compares to the freedom of being known fully and loved anyway.

Tags: Author: Tim Norton , biblically-grounded , spiritually vital , student blogger

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Familiar Names, a Prayer | Seminary Student Blogger

October 11, 2012

Amy Gilbaugh

God of the world of unknown mysteries…
God of the realm tucked deeply behind that horizon...
God of the land yet untread on this journey...
God of our home still seen,
We seem not to know you well.
We call you by familiar names,
names of dominance and triumph and victory,
but we know little of Your fighting Self.
We call you Creator, Potter, Molder,
but we can name little of Your fashioning way within the corridors of our beings.
We have called on Your name,
and the words have grown stale on our tongues.
Our lips used to quiver to approach You,
but we find You rather familiar,
customary
old, even.
And buried beneath our self-protective layers of isolation
we may name yet another.
Desire.
We remember desire. We recall the days marked by its presence.
We find it is not pressing, it is not growing. No, it is small and weak, withered from long misuse and neglect.
It’s small and unimpressive. It’s languid and just a bit ugly…
But it’s Yours if you’ll have it.
Please have it. Please.
till our lips quake again…

Tags: Author: Amy Gilbaugh , spiritually vital , student blogger

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If Richard Baxter Spoke at the Gordon-Conwell Convocation | Seminary Student Blogger

September 20, 2012

Dim Alldridge

I’m taking Educational Ministry of the Church as a Semlink class at the moment and, as part of that class, you need to read Richard Baxter’s, The Reformed Pastor. I think this is the third time I’ve read this book for my M.Div., but as far as I’m concerned it should be required reading for every class!

And as I read this great book at the start of this new academic year I began wonder…what would Richard Baxter say if he spoke at the Gordon-Conwell convocation…

“What is your goal for this coming semester? For this year? For your time here at GCTS?

If you are a student here today then let me ask you, what are you hoping to learn or discover? What truths are you hoping to test, or examine? What skills are you hoping to hone? What would success look like for you?

And if you are a member of the faculty then let me ask you, what are you hoping to teach, communicate, persuade, encourage or discourage? What are your goals for your students and for yourselves? What are you hoping to read or write, acquire or achieve? What would success look like for you?

As you have thought about this coming year, planned your schedule and chosen your classes, what is foremost in your heart and mind? Where would you like to be in a year or three years or ten years time?

My dear brothers and sisters at the start of this year, a year that I hope will bring you more in love with the Lord and closer to His word, I beg you to put all those other thoughts that you have in your hearts to one side until you have answered this one question…

Are you saved? Have you surrendered your life to Christ and declared him to be the Lord over your past, present and future? Have you died to yourself that you might live for him? Is he your all in all? Is he your everything, is he enough?...”

Of course Baxter would never say it like that. He would say it much better. That’s why students at seminary are required to read his book 355 years after he wrote it and why nobody should be required to read my blog…ever!

But amazes me every time I read the opening chapter of The Reformed Pastor is that he starts by challenging the ministers he is writing to examine themselves and the state of their souls and asking them if they are truly saved.

So should we not also start this year in the same way?

You are a student or a teacher of God’s word. You will learn to read the languages the Bible was written in or teach others to do the same. You will learn the history of the church, the application of the Truth, how to exegete, how to preach and how to counsel.

But do you really know Christ?

Baxter said this:

“Oh what aggravated misery is this, to perish in the midst of plenty! – to famish with the bread of life in our hands, while we offer it to others, and urge it on them!”

In the course of this year the word of truth will often be on our lips and the Word of God will be on our shelves in many different languages. We will quote it in our papers. We will preach it in our sermons. We will share it with others and learn to offer it in comfort. We will argue about it, examine it, study it, learn it by heart and recite it.

But as we start this year the first thing that you and I must do is to ask ourselves, do we really believe it? Live by it? Obey it and strive to keep it?

Whatever else we do this year, let’s start by asking ourselves, am I really a Christian?

Tags: Author: Dim Alldridge , current students , spiritually vital , student blogger , thoughtfully evangelical

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On Green Ribbons and Worship | Seminary Student Blogger

September 13, 2012

Tim Norton

I’m not sure if you’re aware, but I was an award-winning athlete as a child. I know this is shocking considering the present state of my athletic ability. Back then, my physical prowess gave me the necessary edge to dominate my competition. I’m serious. No ‘roids necessary; my body was a blue ribbon winning machine. My sport of choice? Barefoot Marble Relay. Psh! I just blew your mind didn’t I?! Fill a kiddie pool with marbles and water and I will remove those suckers faster than lightning using only my feet. They used to call me Tim “Monkey-toes” Norton. 1 point for the little marbles, 5 points for the giant marbles and I would dominate!

Put a basketball in my hands, though, and I was a hot mess of wannabe athleticism. So, while I was very familiar with the fame and glory associated with Barefoot Marble Relay, I was much more familiar with the lovely little you-did-a-good-job-but-you-lost-but-we-still-want-to-give-you-a-prize-cause-everyone’s-a-winner-in-elementary-school-so-don’t-think-about-losing-even-though-you-lost green ribbon for participation. Were any of us fooled by those as kids? I mean, come on. We knew what was up. It’s blue ribbon for first place, red for second, white for third, and green…green for the losers. The green ribbon was the consolation prize. It was a way of making up for the fact that our original plan of complete athletic domination failed miserably. And while the green ribbon was better than nothing, it didn’t fill the void of a blue ribbon. No consolation prize could satisfy the thirst for victory.

This summer, I spent a lot of time sitting with the phrase “functional savior.” You see, on paper and by confession, I know that Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior. On paper, I know that my identity is first and foremost a child of the Living God. On paper, I know that God’s merciful approval is far more important than what my friends think of me. The problem is that I don’t act like it. For far too long I have treated God like a consolation prize when my primary sources of identity, security, and worth failed me. Rejected by girls? Well, I guess God loves me. Didn’t get as many compliments on that sermon as I would’ve liked? Well, I guess God is in control. If I only had ________, I’d be happy…but since that’s not gonna happen anytime soon, maybe God could help in the meantime. My primary source of approval, security, and identity more often than I care to admit is not God. Deep down I look to peer-approval and personal performance to find security, only turning to God at the moments when those “functional saviors” (aka idols) fail me. I can’t tell you how many times I have cheered myself with up with a sheepish “I know *such and such* didn’t work out…but hey…at least God loves you.”

To be sure, God is most certainly the one to whom we should turn in moments of hurt and disappointment. But the subtle juxtaposition of turning to God as our primary source of comfort as opposed to turning to God when our primary source of comfort isn’t comforting should not be missed. I cannot shake this idea this tragically ironic image of idolatry and functional saviors relegating God, the Living God–maker of the Universe, to the role of consolation prize, or backup plan, or the safety net in our quest for fulfillment. Where do I find my identity? What occupies most of my thoughts? How do I find my significance in life? My prayer is that I may continue to learn how to truly live the reality of Jesus Christ as the answer to these questions. My prayer is that God will not be a green ribbon in my life anymore.

Tags: Author: Tim Norton , spiritually vital , student blogger

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To Escape this Fleshly Mortality: A Prayer | Seminary Student Blogger

September 05, 2012

Our holy God,
It is here we find ourselves yet again.

Here - where words have run dry, where speech is quenched, where silence is most becoming of our beings.

Yes, here we are.

There is shame in our countenance. Bitterness in our look. Because we seek to meet You in the grandness of Your Spirit, and we cannot seem to escape this fleshly mortality.

For this we weep.

Sitting as still as we can contrive and peering into the blackness of our clenched eye lids, each tear does no more than remind us that we are, indeed, flesh.

Flesh that strains, flesh that yearns, flesh that craves and needs and aches.

We are flesh constrained and contained
built and torn
growing but never out-grown.

Physicians, our experts in flesh, poke and prod our human mass without care for her form, and with questions devoid of awe.

They strip us down to examine and laugh dismissively at our inclination to the dignity of modesty.

And so we cover...
our flesh
our secret
our weakness
our shame.

For this, too, we weep.

And here we have come for respite.

Here, with You grand God of the heavens, we seek salvation from this body of death.

...

What is this, Your answer?

What bizarre Salvation - a Man? A Son?

Salvation of Flesh and Mortality?

Flesh that strains, flesh that yearns, flesh that craves and needs and aches?

Salvation looking so much like ourselves, like the host of our shame.

In the place we have chosen silence, You sent a Word.

In the place we seek escape from body, Your Word became Flesh.

Your grand way of holiness is this: Your flesh reconciles us to our own,

And in Your final phrase, "It is finished" we are restored to phrase of the dawn, "It is good."

...

So.

Here we are yet again.

We come with eyes peeking open, surveying the bodies You have crafted:

Flesh that strains, flesh that yearns, flesh that craves and needs and aches.

And we ask for the courage to believe You in Your incarnational way.

We ask to desire salvation through Your flesh rather than salvation from ours.

We ask for resurrection faith, that can see past the grave and decay and can see Your glorified flesh.

And we ask for hope to believe the like for ours.

Until all is redeemed...

even our dim thoughts of flesh,

we will pray in the name of the Holy Fleshy One,

Even Jesus.

Amen

Tags: Author: Amy Gilbaugh , spiritually vital , student blogger , thoughtfully evangelical

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The Lord's Prayer | Seminary Student Blogger

August 21, 2012

Amy Gilbaugh

Our Father who art in heaven,
Hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from the evil one. For Thine is the kingdom and the glory and the power forever and ever.

Yes, our Father who art in heaven. The familiar words come easily enough on Sabbath mornings. They roll off our tongues with tenacious ease and perhaps a touch of apathy. Many of us find these words, which were rich in our spiritual infancy, to fall stale with routine on our tongues. While others of us crave their familiarity, savoring the richness of their repetition.

Wherever we find ourselves Lord, would You teach us again how to pray?

We hallow Your name … as well as we know how and as far as our pride will allow. Indeed, we ask for Your kingdom to come. We acknowledge that we are a people preoccupied with many kingdoms, kingdoms built with borders and weapons and fear and an over-use of the word “mine”. We fixate ourselves on these kingdoms because You claim to build Your kingdom with us. And that is a frightening reality.

Indeed, hallowed Father, we ask for Your will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. I guess, perhaps we mean, do Your will so long as it is comfortable, uncomplicated, and resembles closely our own. Like your people in their wilderness wanderings, we cannot conceive that you would insist we press on, while the view of Egypt over our shoulder looks so much safer, so much greener, so much more familiar. But their witness from the other side of the desert journey tells us that hidden in Your will are Your persisting promises of a better land. They say that You are a God who wills to free, to reach, to inhabit, to heal. Your will is so unlike our own. It is holy. So reorient us to Your will. Free us from the bindings of religion, from stiff rituals we have stripped of significance. Reach into our families, those we hold are beyond Your arm’s length and those we hold at ours. Inhabit the occupied territories of our hearts, those altars to other gods mostly made of wood and stone and a few of flesh. And heal every wounded place we name, and especially those we cannot. Your holy heavenly will be done, here on this temporary turf.

Give us this day, our Daily Bread, O Lord, our Sustenance. We confess we are not among your people who have gone without bread this day. The concept is mostly foreign to us, as are those to whom it is not. And so when You said You are the bread of life, and we did not believe You. We are a content people. We are content to ask of You our daily bread without a crumb of reliance on Your giving. So, we ask for Your provision to crash against our contentment, to provoke the hungry spaces of our lives where we have traded You for turkey and Your presence for another helping of mashed potatoes. We ask for an awareness, at the end of each meal, that we remain hungry. Hungry for your touch, hungry for your presence, hungry for You. Because we have filled stomachs, Lord, and are empty still. So, create in us a craving, stir in us a starvation for You. Save us from our spiritually anemic selves. Yes, Lord, give us this day our Daily Bread. Give us Yourself.

And forgive us of our trespasses, O Lord, our Savior. We confess that we do not fully know the weight of our request because we do not know the weight of sin within our beings. We confess that when we ask You to forgive us we mostly think you should or that we only ask a small favor. Our theology knows better, but we are obstinate with self-righteousness. We think little of our sin and therefore little of your grace. We think little of your grace and therefore little of your cross. We think little of your cross and therefore little of You. We insist on bitterness towards our bothers, we hold our idols close to our chests, we convince ourselves of our own falsehoods, we do not care for Your conviction, we refuse to pardon and we notice not the ironic way we ask You for it. And for these we indeed require forgiveness.

Oh Lord. Only seconds of silent confession is all that we can bear of seeing our own sin. But out of that silence You speak Life and Hope and Freedom and we sense the great release of Your amen in our lives. And we are grateful.

Lead us not into temptation, and deliver us from the evil one. We ask You to lead and hidden in our request is a request that You would cause us to follow You out of temptation because we find that we do a fine job of leading ourselves in. More often than not, temptations hour seems to be every hour and though we know that in Your grace there is no temptation beyond our bearing, that knowledge does not prevent us from bending ourselves beneath it. And so we need You. In our temptation be in your delivering self. Deliver us from the evil one, O Lord, our Protector. Save us from the one who prowls for us like a devouring lion, and from our minds that simplify him to a safe circus attraction.

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Yes, Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth just as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from the evil one. For Thine is the kingdom and the glory and the power forever and ever.

Amen.

Tags: Author: Amy Gilbaugh , spiritually vital , student blogger , thoughtfully evangelical

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We Have Become Like Our Gods, A Prayer | Seminary Student Blogger

July 17, 2012

Amy Gilbaugh

We know you are right and we know we’ve been foolish.

Yes, they have eyes but do not see.
They have ears but do not hear.

Fashioned from wood and stone
and paper
and cotton
and sugar
and flesh
they cannot see or hear and yet we bow.

How slummy are our hearts and how anemic our affections.

We are quick to turn our faces from Your throne
to seek lesser, lower lovers.

And before Your good Self,
we notice ours
in new nakedness.

We have become like our gods.

It is us who have eyes but do not see
and ears but do not hear.

we are the fashioned ones, in self-perpetuated works of crafting our lives with materials of wood and stone
and paper
and cotton
and sugar
and flesh.

Our rightful place is among those thrown into the fire – not here in Your presence, with Your seeing, hearing Self who is grand in appearance and the only Speaking One we can name.

No, here we are out of place.

We cannot see or hear.

And yet we bow.

Because we know it is only here that we find our true selves. Here, Your Self gives name and, therefore, promise.

You give us eyes unscaled and ears unwaxed.

And so we ask You to be this God again with us today.

See us with pity and hear us with mercy.

Until our eyes are opened…

and we become like our God again.

Tags: Author: Amy Gilbaugh , spiritually vital , student blogger

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Finishing Well, Part 3: The Trailhead

May 10, 2012

Megan Hackman

You know you’re graduating seminary when:

1. Someone’s looking for a word to describe nasty tea they just spit out. Appropriate words would be lukewarm or tepid and all you can think is like Revelation.
2. A prospective student is looking for a specific kind of church—church plant, charismatic-friendly, and with opportunities for discipleship—and you not only know which church he’ll love, but you know who to connect him with. Low and behold, they’re old college buddies.
3. You’re supposed to be journaling reflections about a missions class, but the content quickly becomes the thesis for your exegesis paper in Isaiah 56.

All these things actually happened in one day. So I guess it is time to settle into the idea that my husband and I are graduating seminary in just a few days, which means we probably should already have applied to a ton of jobs and know what we are doing next. But we haven’t, and we don’t know. Well, we don’t know exactly.

See this journey that we are on originated for me in a rejection from a choice college that then became a pursuit of Spanish and a passion for Spain. Then we went on to pursue missions which led to seminary (see Part 1 and Part 2 if those appear as the tremendous jumps they are). We are fueled with a passionate desire to see people love Jesus and to live as followers of Jesus their whole life. We believe this means living as individual members of the body of Christ, the Church. We are passionate about serving the Body as a whole and its individual members. So really, that could lead us anywhere on this planet.

But that doesn’t necessarily make the job search any easier. So we are thankful for alumni who have gone before us and are married couples serving the church together. We have begun to meet with them in hopes of gaining a language and a vision for living out this passion in a way that can be articulated in job interviews. We plan to apply to EPC churches all over the United States to serve as pastors. We keep our hearts and ears open for unconventional opportunities to serve that might not yet be known to us.

We had an experience in April that led us to both this step-by-step pursuit as well as this open-handedness. We were in our favorite getaway of New England, the Adirondacks of New York. We had planned to climb a nice, short mountain. We knew how long it was (.5 miles), we knew what skill level was involved (a nice junior hike, said the book), and we knew it would have a “nice” view from the top (said a friend). And it was all those things, and it was nice. We prayed and read Scripture and enjoyed the view:

Then we ventured to the next trailhead. We knew the name. We didn’t bother to look at the trail guide, so we didn’t know how long it was (way more than .5) or the skill required (steep gradients, as it turns out). We didn’t even know if the summit would be worth it all. But oh my, was it ever:

It was a hard hike. I dealt with significant fear involving ice slides, encroaching darkness, and physical pain. But Jesus met me in the fear and taught me a lot about the fears I have about the next steps of life. I was overwhelmed with God’s abundant creation glory at the top of the mountain. This was no “sit and enjoy the view” kind of mountaintop. It was a “come-to-Jesus, awe-struck, laugh and cry at the same time” kind of view.

So should I anticipate Plan A, the Owls Head mountains of life with predictable, relative ease and nice views? Maybe. Those are really nice sometimes! But I long for the come-to-Jesus, awe-struck, laugh and cry, Cascade-style ventures.

So to find the “End of the Story” at this point, we are in the application process, preparing for ordination, and finishing our final 2 classes. We have our eyes peeled for those trailheads. We anticipate meeting God both in the struggle of climbing the mountain and in the glory to come on the top.

Megan Hackman and her husband, Larry, are M.Div. students at Gordon-Conwell's Hamilton campus.

Tags: Author: Megan Hackman , equipping leaders for the church and society , spiritually vital , student blogger , student life , thoughtfully evangelical

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The Seven-Year M.Div.: The E-Word

December 09, 2011

Brian

In life, anyone can sprint. Anyone can give it everything that they have for short periods of time. Anyone is able to make a good first impression. However, the longer that we are around, the more we realize that, in order to finish well in areas of life such as our jobs, our marriages, and our friendships, we must learn to develop something that we are born without: Endurance.

At this point I would like to make one thing clear: I hate enduring. I mean, really, really hate it. Growing up my favorite sport was football. I still love it (Go Broncos!). But football did not help me to develop a great amount of endurance. Rather, it trained me to sprint for eight seconds, then take a forty second break while huddling together with my teammates and hearing what the next play was going to be. Endurance running was not fun or in any way desirable. It was a punishment. Did you drop a pass that you should have caught? Take a lap. Did you miss a tackle? Take a lap. Did you mouth off to the substitute today in class? Take eight laps. For those of you who did not play football Denzel Washington’s portrayal of Coach Herman Boone in ‘Remember the Titans’ is an accurate portrayal of this (“How many feet are in a mile, Petey!?!?!?”).

Enduring is not fun. In fact, for the most part those of us who are not masochists only strive to endure when there is something worth waiting for. My freshman year of college I began dating a girl who was a cross-country runner. One day, as I arrived at her parents’ home, she was leaving to train. Her: “Do you want to come with me?” Me: “No thanks, I’ve already worked out today.” That’s when her Dad decided to have fun with me. “What’s wrong, can’t keep up with my daughter.” This changed the game completely. I liked that girl, but not enough to run seven-miles in order to spend time with her. But her father had directly challenged my pride. Now that was something I would run for, and I did (Stupid? Yes. Augustine has a good explanation for such action if you are looking for one). Note here that our willingness to endure seems tied to how much we value that which we are working towards.

So, Brian, why did you write all of this? Is this just a disjointed exploration of your life?

No.

(Haha! Take that again, Rob Bell. Random spacing to appear deep FTW!)

I write this to encourage you with three pieces of knowledge that I have gained from experience. First, going to seminary is hard. It takes every bit of endurance that you have – emotionally, physically, financially, spiritually, and intellectually. And you have to go through this for an extended period of time. You will want to quit, you will think you’re not good enough, your wife and/or kids will become tired, and your friends will convince you that there are better things to do with your life.

But after you realize that, I want to encourage you with a second piece of knowledge that I have gained from my extended time at seminary. It is worth it. Sweet mercy, is it ever worth it. You see, if God is our great reward, our prize, then there is no higher honor that we have than to study his revelation to us. What a privilege.

And third, because of the great prize, we can endure. Without the great prize, it would be a complete waste of time.

“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Matthew 6:21)

Brian has an M.Div. (2010) from Gordon-Conwell’s Charlotte campus, a Th.M. (2011) in Historical Theology from the South Hamilton campus, and is currently strengthening his language skills while in the MACH program. He hopes to matriculate into a doctoral program in August 2012 that will allow him to continue in his study of the thought of Augustine of Hippo. He has a wonderful wife, three great children, and spent ten years in ministry to teenagers, primarily with Young Life International.

Tags: Author: Brian , spiritually vital , student blogger

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Rule of Thirds

November 28, 2011

Megan Hackman

Photography loves the rule of thirds, which sets up shots like the picture on the right. 

You're encouraged to photograph the object of your focus either at an intersection point or along one of the lines (as illustrated with the skyline, above). The rest of the grid provides the space to help your eye focus on the object of interest, because the human eye naturally is drawn to focus along this one-thirds gridline.

A mentor suggested that we might live focusing unnecessarily on a narrow grid of thirds. We (and especially seminarians, I would argue) spend life focusing one-at-a-time on one of three activities: the first third of life studying for work; the second third working; and the third resting from all that time we spent working.

What if we lived life focusing less on the division of the thirds and more on the intersection points? That is, what if we did not spend 30 years in school, 30 years at work, and 30 years resting? What if we lived with work and study and rest all in one mixed life? What if we let the boundaries cross between work and play and rest? What if we lived life a bit more looking for these intersection points week-to-week and less on the anticipation of a major switch in activity every 30 years?

I’m getting a taste of this by using a similar grid to analyze my life for one of my classes. Every week, I look at a 7 (for the days) x 3 (morning, afternoon, night) grid. I’m looking to include periods of work, study, and rest, all side-by-side with plenty of times where they intersect in order to allow for analysis of study, creativity in work, and depth in rest. I allow a greater focus on rest than I have allowed myself formerly, as I’ve been introduced to Sabbath rest in seminary, which I will return to in the next post.

For now, I encourage you to consider… Are you living in an isolated stratum of study, work, or rest? Where might you find an intersection point? Can you offer any encouragement as to where you’ve found benefit in the times where rest, study, and work meet?

Megan Hackman and her husband, Larry, are M.Div. students at Gordon-Conwell's Hamilton campus.

Tags: Author: Megan Hackman , biblically-grounded , equipping leaders for the church and society , spiritually vital , student life , thoughtfully evangelical

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The Seven-Year M.Div.: First Impressions

November 21, 2011

Brian

My first year in the M.Div. program at Gordon-Conwell’s Charlotte campus was a bit of a shock to my recovering fundamentalist sensibilities. I was working 50-60 hours per week for Young Life in Pinehurst, NC, and took a week of vacation in order to drive 2.5 hours every day for an entire week in July to take my first course: “Introduction to the Old Testament” with Dr. Tim Laniak. Sounds simple enough, right? Here is the way the week was going to go in my mind: a nice man with a goatee was going to sit down and introduce me to….well…the Old Testament. I was excited for this. However, I should have read the syllabus [Note to all prospective students – always read the syllabus. I should have picked up this trick in college, but was too busy chasing my cute wife. Something’s name and what it actually is can often be quite different. For example, I went to college at TCU, and we are the Horned Frogs. Frogs with horns, right? Wrong – they have little horns, but aren’t frogs at all. If the NHFAA, the National Horned Frog Association of America, had a syllabus for you to read, and you would have read it, you would know that. And you would know that their natural defense mechanism is to spit blood out of their eyes. Well, you get the idea. Read the syllabus. OK, back to the story].

The first day of class, my professor explained that our course should have been titled “Old Testament Criticism”. Dr. Laniak, who is an excellent professor, earned his ThD at Harvard Divinity School and was about to introduce us to the field of biblical scholarship and what it had to say concerning the Old Testament. The course was fascinating: over the week we learned about issues concerning authorship, archaeology, linguistics (there is an actual language called Akkadian, The Rock didn’t just make it up for the movie “The Scorpion King”), inspiration, historicity, and more. And we didn’t just read evangelical protestant authors – we read authors writing from all different types of backgrounds. The environment was scholarly and faithful, challenging and safe. Throughout his lectures, Dr. Laniak handled everything with the quiet confidence of a man who has studied at the highest level and also maintains a very active Christian faith of his own.

Such an engagement of the heart, soul, mind, and strength was a new experience for me. In fundamentalism, I had learned that conflicting information is a threat and that the two responses to such information are either fear or anger. Dr. Laniak taught me that there is no reason to fear scholarship, nor do I need to worship it, but it is unacceptable to ignore it. Thus began my theological education. Lesson one: evangelicals can engage in scholarship at the highest level and still maintain a vibrant faith. Seminary is not a cemetery.

Brian has an M.Div. (2010) from Gordon-Conwell’s Charlotte campus, a Th.M. (2011) in Historical Theology from the South Hamilton campus, and is currently strengthening his language skills while in the MACH program. He hopes to matriculate into a doctoral program in August 2012 that will allow him to continue in his study of the thought of Augustine of Hippo. He has a wonderful wife, three great children, and spent ten years in ministry to teenagers, primarily with Young Life International.

Tags: Author: Brian , biblically-grounded , future students , spiritually vital , student blogger , thoughtfully evangelical

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