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Finishing Well, Part 3: The Trailhead

Thu, 10 May 2012 11:35:55 GMT

Megan Hackman

Author's Note: My husband and I are in our final semester of seminary. In some ways it feels like a race to the finish; in others, we are slowly passing through in search of what might be next for us. With this “Finishing Well” series, I invite you to join us in the final months of seminary. I encourage you to consider your own calling and the place in your journey with the Lord where you find yourself. I look forward to hearing where our story might resonate with yours!

You know you’re graduating seminary when:

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.
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.
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.

Finishing Well Part 2: Discovering Myself

Thu, 03 May 2012 12:49:27 GMT

Megan Hackman

So I once felt like I had misheard God (for more on that, see Part 1). Seminary, then, has in large part been about learning to hear God correctly. One of my very favorite things that I have learned in seminary began in Old Testament Survey and then carried on through Exegesis of Exodus—our God hears, remembers, sees, knows, and acts by coming and speaking to his people (see Exodus 2:24- on). We serve a living God!

Being a part of the Pierce Center has helped me be aware of how God is speaking. I have learned how to sit with a group of people and listen and pray with the Holy Spirit through the Word. I have learned that I need Sabbath rest on a weekly basis in order to tune out the distractions of work, study, and relationships for a few hours so that I can enter with a greater awareness into God’s presence in order to hear from him (Hebrews 4:11-16). That discipline has helped me to be more alert throughout the week to the places where God is transforming me more into his likeness (2 Corinthians 3:16-18). It has helped me to consider it joy when I face trials, because I expect and anticipate God to be working in me through them (James 1:2-4).

As I have listened I have learned a lot about myself and a lot about God. I have learned that God has made me as a human being in his image (Genesis 1:27). Therefore, God values who I am and the way in which he has made me in particular (Psalm 139). Through the Dynamics of the Spiritual Life class, I began to discover who that woman is and begin to see how my design works out in what I do. My final paper worked out the memories, experiences, jobs, core lies, victories, and goals that lead me to say, I exist to glorify God by inviting discovery.

So even as I now work on digging deeply into Isaiah 56 for an exegesis course and talk with college students for an evangelism class, I continue to live out my calling to invite others into the discovery of Christ, of their own design, of how God speaks and remembers and acts in the world, of Scripture, of friendship. As we look to what is next for us, I carry with me this rich academic and spiritual exploration that the last three years have been. I anticipate that whether we go overseas or serve in a more local setting, regardless of task, that God has made me to be someone who looks to dig into the soil of this world, with the power of the Spirit to seek and to nurture the work that he is doing, and with the hope to see the harvest brought in for his glory.

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

XiYi Yao's Journey of Faith: New Gordon-Conwell Faculty Member

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 16:51:51 GMT

We are delighted to welcome Dr. XiYi "Kevin" Yao (pictured below with his wife) as our Associate Professor of World Christianity and Asian Studies. He recently shared how he came to faith from a completely atheistic context at his Installation. Click below to listen to his story.

Booknotes with David Wells: Turning Back to God

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 16:27:45 GMT

Dr. David Wells sat down with us and shared his thoughts on the reissuing of his seminal book Turning Back to God and how it continues to be relevant. He also shares his thoughts on the future of evangelical Christianity in the West.

Remembering Joshua "Jack" Hicks

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 09:14:53 GMT

It is with great sadness and grief that we remember the life of Joshua “Jack” Hicks, a beloved student and friend who passed away on Good Friday, April 6, 2012.

Through this devastating loss, we are mindful that man is but a breath, and are encouraged to place our hope in the life eternal that awaits us when the full glory of our Lord Jesus Christ is revealed.

Josh spent his last evening in this world worshiping and remembering the death of his Savior at a Good Friday service, and rejoiced on Easter morning in the arms of the risen Christ.

Our memories of Josh will forever be painted with his bright smile, joyful heart and warm music. Below, we invite you to share your stories of Josh’s life and light.

What if Christians were not afraid to look foolish from time to time?

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 08:33:36 GMT

The following is a guest post from one of our Semlink Program students, Paul Elgin. Paul is the worship leader for White Mountain United Methodist Church's contemporary service. You can contact him at elginpaul@gmail.com.

Something happened the other day that made me wonder if I take advantage of the opportunities God gives me to live a more expressive life for him.

The day did not begin well. The sun obviously was trying to make a point, because it must have risen half an hour too soon. Maybe it wanted to knock off early that evening. Whatever, I woke up with a sore throat and a generally bleak disposition. Life was definitely not the bed of roses it should be. The kids were feeling the effects, too, because getting them out of bed was no walk in the park. Someone had replaced my normally charming little girl with a creature that Tolkien would dream up when he was writing the particularly scary passages of The Two Towers. Only with more teeth.

I had about a chapter and a half of Theology to get through that morning. No quiet time with the Bible and me and God today! After shoving the kids out the car door at school, I headed to the study room at the library. When I no longer cared if it was “transcendence” or “immanence,” I closed the book, grabbed my gym bag and headed off for my favorite part of the day: the workout. I didn’t have to read, write, or do arithmetic, just pedal.

Learning from Our Church Fathers: Part 4

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 16:16:51 GMT

Dr. Donald Fairbairn

This is Part 4 in a series about why evangelicals should care about the early church. If you are just now joining us, you can read Part 1 here; Part 2 here; Part 3 here.

Why should evangelicals care about the early church, about the first several centuries after the end of the New Testament? Another reason why we should take that period seriously is that the church fathers had a very different way of reading the Bible from the way we are taught to read it, and we may have something to learn from their interpretation.

Modern Bible study methods focus on “reading out” the message of each passage by focusing on the context to that passage—the history, the culture, the language. Such study methods implore us to avoid “reading in” any pre-conceived ideas that might corrupt the message of that text. In contrast, the church fathers read every passage of Scripture in light of the major thrust of Scripture, the single story they believe the Bible is telling. And that story, according to the vast majority of the church fathers, is the story of Christ. So they see the whole Bible—down to every last passage of the Old Testament—as a story about Christ. To state the contrast simply, we read from the narrow to the broad—from the meaning of each individual passage to the whole message of the Bible. They read from the broad to the narrow—reading each passage in light of what they think the whole Bible is about.

In light of this difference, we might accuse the church fathers of reading their own ideas into the texts—and we would be right in this accusation (at least in some cases). But before we are too quick to criticize, we should recognize that our narrow-to-broad method of Bible study emerged among modern scholars who did not believe the Bible was a unified book. They saw—and still do see—the Bible as a series of rather disparate stories that are not necessarily consistent with each other. So those scholars do not consider the big story of the Bible to be relevant to the question of what each individual passage means. Only the historical, cultural, and literary context of that passage is relevant to that passage’s interpretation.

When we look at the matter this way, we recognize that we evangelicals share the early church’s assumption and disagree with the modern liberal assumption. Unlike our colleagues in the liberal academy, we believe that the Holy Spirit inspired the Bible, that it tells a single story, that it is a unity. It is thus ironic that we sometimes use a method of biblical interpretation unwittingly borrowed from scholars who do not believe the Bible is a unity, a method that focuses narrowly on the background to each passage, without as much attention to the broader context of the whole Bible.

If we do in fact share the church fathers’ assumption about the unity of Scripture, should we not take another look at the fathers’ interpretation of the Bible? When we read their interpretation, much of it seems very far-fetched, like finding Christ in minute details of the Old Testament, and I do not for a moment want to condone such exegetical excess. What I do want to commend, though, is the fathers’ attitude toward the Bible. It is a single book, given by God, telling a single story, and that story is ultimately about Christ. They believed that, and so do we. Because they believed that, they proceeded from the big picture to the details, from Christ to the individual passages, in their interpretation of Scripture. We usually do not do that. But should we?

Whether we adopt very many of the fathers’ specific interpretations of Old Testament passages or not, their focus on Christ can remind us that we too can and should make Christ the center of all our biblical interpretation. And the church fathers can also open our eyes to the possibility that there are more connections between the Old Testament and Christ than we typically see, even if there are not as many legitimate connections as they find. Thus, early church biblical interpretation has some important lessons to teach us about the Bible, lessons we might not learn without paying attention to the church fathers.

Dr. Donald Fairbairn is the Robert E. Cooley Professor of Early Christianity. His responsibilities include further developing the Robert C. Cooley Center for the Study of Early Christianity at the Charlotte campus, which explores the historical foundations of the Christian faith.

The Seminary Wife: Here I Am; Send Me

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 15:37:12 GMT

Jessica Haberkern

I never imagined that I’d call New England home, and yet this morning I am here. The sun greets me by melting the frost gathered like crystals in the corners of my windowpane and casts shadows from the birch trees onto my bed. A few weeks ago, the scene was different—I had a job and friends and a loft situated in the heart of a concrete jungle. Now I am living on the campus of a seminary, which is as foreign to me as taking up residence at a convent.

I remember the day my husband told me he wanted to quit his career as a motion graphic designer and go to seminary. We were on an afternoon stroll through the park behind our street. The heat lingering over the sidewalk rivaled the stagnancy of our marriage. Not seeing eye to eye was new to us, and the summer had felt like a disaster. Seminary, I said, us? I fumbled over the words strung together, but I sensed that my husband was right.

We were both frustrated with detaching our Sundays from the workweek—Christian one day and ordinary members of society another. Sure, we read our Bibles, a lot in fact. We engaged in ministry and attended small groups. We prayed together and occasionally brought food to the homeless and jobless on our street. Still, something was missing, and its gaping hole was growing wider.

We had assembled our lives like giant puzzle pieces, arranging the God-piece where we thought it fit. Our foundation was in Christ, yes, but the rest of our puzzle created a picture of us. How do I want to follow Jesus? What does God want me to do? These questions were legitimate, but through trying to serve God on our terms, we were only serving ourselves.

In his book Radical, writer David Platt says that if you ask the average American Christian to summarize the message of his or her faith, the response will go something like this: God loves me enough to send His Son Jesus to die for me. Sounds good, right? But that’s not all, Platt argues. “The message of biblical Christianity is not ‘God loves me, period,’ as if we were the object of our own faith,” he writes. That account of the Christian narrative stops short of the full story. Instead, the message of Christianity is “God loves me so that I might make Him—His ways, His salvation, His glory, and His greatness—known among all nations.”

God loves me so that I can make His name known. How simple of a truth. I am not the end of the gospel, God is. And yet how often do I need to be reminded that all of my puzzle pieces should reflect the glory of Christ Jesus.

My husband and I are not the first people to have uprooted our life to attend seminary. We are not special in that sense. Nearly every family in our new home has experienced some sort of reckoning, either by leaving a job or church or simply abandoning their plans at the feet of Jesus. I pray, though, that as my husband and I enter into community and classes and begin to reshape our life around God’s word, that we would do so in the crux of the gospel truth. Every circumstance in my life up until this very moment has occurred to make His name known. That is my story. It is my husband’s story, and it is yours.

Sometimes I’m prone to think that the writers of scripture wrestled with different questions than I. Surely the fathers of our faith weren’t surrounded with uncertainty about their direction or purpose! And then I page through their words and discover that they were often just as lost. Though there are many stories of encouragement in the scriptures, I find Isaiah’s particularly pertinent to my current season of life. In Isaiah 6, God is holding court with His angels. They are in intense discussion. “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Isaiah overhears God (6:8).

Notice that God did not single out Isaiah and beg—His will illuminated in flashing lights—or even charge Isaiah with the call to go. Isaiah is privy to God’s heavenly conversation because he is still and quiet and found in prayer. “Whether or not [we] hear God’s call depends on the state of [our] ears,” Oswald Chambers says.

Lend an attentive ear to the throne. What plans does God have in the works? Are you willing to say, here I am Lord, send me? The gospel, after all, does not end with you or me. It ends with Christ, His name glorified.

Are you listening?

—The Seminary Wife

Jessica Haberkern is a creative writer and violinist once local to Atlanta. She teaches writing for Ashford University’s online program and writes for The Oxford American, In Touch, and Scoutmob, among other publications. She chronicles her and [her uber cool] husband’s eats + beats on their blog, thehaberkerns.tumblr.com.

Our Seminary Experience: Virtual Tour of Hamilton Campus

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 16:03:21 GMT

Take a look at our beautiful Hamilton campus and learn a little about our rich history. If you're a prospective student, take advantage of our hospitality with a visit to campus which includes complimentary travel to and from the airport, meals, and housing for up to two days. Call an Admissions Representative at 1-800-428-7329 or click here to schedule a visit.

Learning from Our Church Fathers: Part 3

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 15:50:58 GMT

Dr. Donald Fairbairn

This is Part 3 in a series about why evangelicals should care about the early church. If you are just now joining us, you can read Part 1 here; Part 2 here.

Why should evangelicals care about the early church, about the first several centuries after the end of the New Testament? Another of the reasons why studying that time period could be valuable to us has to do with the striking similarities between the first several centuries of Christian history and the age in which we live today.

In the Roman world, and later in the European world that gave birth to America as we know it, Christianity was “enfranchised” from the fourth century to about the nineteenth or early twentieth. That is to say, Christianity was given favored status within society, and the legal and political structures reflected that favoritism. (By the way, I should add here that Europe has never been the only place where Christianity flourished. But that’s a story for another time!) But it is no secret that in the past hundred years, Christianity has increasingly become disenfranchised in the Western world. The major cultural influences on American society have become more secular (even though most Americans remain Christians of some sort), and in Europe most people have actively abandoned the Christian faith. Europe and America have become “post-Christian.”

The Church has often had trouble adapting to this post-Christian environment. Our ways of presenting the Gospel typically assume a great deal of familiarity with the Christian message, our ways of doing ministry often assume that people respect “church” and will come to church to hear the gospel if we are friendly and inviting enough. Even our traditional ways of defending the Christian faith assume that people believe there is such a thing as truth and that they care about finding that truth. In many places and situations, these traditional approaches to outreach and ministry don’t work anymore, and as we recognize their ineffectiveness, we are beginning to think deeply about how we can best do ministry in a post-Christian, post-modern environment.

What we often don’t realize is that a POST-Christian environment looks very much like a PRE-Christian environment. In the Roman world of late antiquity (roughly the first three centuries of the Christian era), there were many parallels to our situation today. Most stunningly, that society was as rampantly “experience” oriented and entertainment driven as ours is. Although the philosophers cared deeply about truth, most ordinary people were pragmatic, eclectic, and blissfully inconsistent about the principles by which they lived their lives. They sought religious experiences that met their felt needs, but their religion had little impact on their entertainment choices, their moral decisions, etc. Also striking is the fact that the Roman government, while priding itself on granting religious freedom, actually reacted rather harshly to any religion in its midst that objected to an easy religious relativism or called into question the supremacy of the State over religious expressions. Sound familiar? It should.

As a result, Christians in the Roman Empire (and again, there were MANY Christians outside the Roman Empire as well) faced the monumental task of defending a religion that insisted on absolute truth in a society of relativistic, eclectic, pragmatists. They had to foster a Christian morality in a society where the average level of morals—by virtually any measure—was much lower than it is in America today. And they had to convince the Roman government that even though they claimed Christ was greater than Caesar, Christians were still the Empire’s best citizens and thus did not need to be persecuted. The Christians’ relation to the society around them was very different in the first through third centuries from what it would be in the fourth through nineteenth, but very SIMILAR to the relation between our society and the Church today. As a result, the early Church has a lot of insights to offer us as we try to minister in an increasingly post-Christian world now.

Finishing Well, Part 1: Open Books

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 14:12:23 GMT

Megan Hackman

I love to finish things up. I receive such an overwhelming satisfaction from the last cup of flour used, the final paper turned in, and the final chapter of a book read. So great is my joy that a friend recently brought to me her mangled tube of toothpaste so that I could share in its completion. Part joke, part gift, I received it and took a photograph before throwing it away. Now I get to the share it with you! Aren’t you lucky. Ha!

I like to see everything come to an end. I like things tidy and filed. So when I see that something isn’t going any further, I write it off and file it away. I assume that’s the end, and I need it to be done so that I can open something new and see that thing all the way through to its end.

Last night, my husband called my attention to how that framework of open or shut, being used or finished, just does not work in life.

God opened the call to spread the Gospel to the world to me in March of 2006. Right before leaving on a short-term missions trip to Bolivia, I heard him speak to me from Isaiah 43. I promptly interpreted verse 5 very personally, Fear not, Megan, for I am with you… bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the end of the earth… Of course! God was sending me to Bolivia in just a few days! I should break up with my boyfriend, graduate college, and then go overseas for the rest of my life!

I’m not saying that God can’t call someone that definitively or that my experience hearing God’s voice was illegitimate. But what I’m beginning to discover is that March 2006 was an invitation to begin holding before the Lord the willingness to be his witness wherever he would send. His call on my life wasn’t something to “use up” or “complete.”

I didn’t break up with Larry then. He helped me to see that a calling to ministry didn’t necessitate the end of our relationship (Whew!). I went to Bolivia and spent the entire week sick. I did not open any blind eyes that week. After we married that fall, Larry and I pursued joining the staff of an international missions organization. We were all set to train and move overseas when as a team with the folks we were going to work with we all recognized that we did not share the same vision for the country. We had a vision more for church planting than hostel ministry, but we were completely unqualified to start a church. So I closed the “Spain story” in my mind and opened the “seminary story.”

The point is—I thought that coming to seminary meant that the story of overseas missions work was over. In my mind, I had interpreted Isaiah 43 wrong. I had misheard the voice of God. We had pursued going overseas, but when we squeezed out the last hope of moving, it was time to throw that vision away. But I was wrong. I’m beginning to see that God does not view our lives as books that are written one at a time, finishing one before beginning the other. Instead, he can handle a whole lot of pages and chapters in process at the same time. He sees the end result. He knows where the stories merge and flow, interweaving and bringing us to the place of ultimate completion in his story, his eternal story. I like neat and tidy endings, but I’m a work in process, and our lives are ministry in process. There’s more to come…

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

The Seven Year M.Div.: Two Reflections on the Seminary Experience

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 15:55:08 GMT

Brian

Author’s Note: Journeys are strange. You hardly ever end up where you thought you would, and you definitely never get there in the manner that you conceived. That has been as true for me as it was for Jonah the morning he woke up to take a leisurely cruise to Tarshish. Over the next few weeks I will be writing a series of blog posts exploring how I came to and through seminary. It’s a strange tale with no straight lines. But it’s my story, and it is the path that the Lord has led our family down. It’s not idyllic. I hope that encourages you. Also, in case you just joined the conversation, Part 1 can be found here; Part 2 can be found here; Part 3 can be found here; Part 4 can be found here; Part 5 can be found here; Part 6 can be found here. Part 7 can be found here; Part 8 can be found here; Part 9 can be found here.

Non intratur in veritatem, nisi per caritatem.
-Augustine of Hippo, Contra Faustum 41, 32, 18

In May 2010 I finally finished a seven-year journey towards a master’s degree. If you have been reading along, you know that the path was much different than I had expected. I learned a lot, but not everything. I read a lot, but not everything. And it drew me closer to God, but did not answer all of my questions.

[I want to confess something at this point. I re-wrote this post three different times. Why? Because it seems like it should be a significant piece since it is the terminus of the series. And such posts usually involve a reflection by the author about their experience. And such reflections, like a Twitter account, usually assume that people care to hear your thoughts. Then I realized that I already have a Twitter account, so here you go.]

If two imagined friends, one considering seminary and one already halfway through his/her degree, sat me down one day and asked for my perspective on the process after finishing, I would sum everything up in two thoughts.

First, do it.

If you have a desire to study God and his people – for that is pretty much what we do in seminary – indulge it. The process may become disconcerting or arduous at times, but it is worth it. If I had not gone, my curiosity would have continued to eat away at me. I suspect that there are others out there who are in similar situations. So, go. And when you’re in the middle of the process, if you can, stay and finish. The evangelical movement in the world needs many things today, and one of the most vital necessities is theological training. We are great at loving God with our hearts, but if our minds are not also engaged we are creating a false dichotomy within ourselves. So, if you can, go.

Second, however, realize that the seminary experience will be hard on your faith in at least two ways. First, your mind and heart are tied together. What affects one also affects the other. In the course of your studies you will be forced to ask questions that others have the luxury of avoiding. And, most of the answers to those questions will involve slight, if not major, shifts in your belief and practice. This can unsettling, but good guides who have been there before are helpful to lean on whenever you grow weary on such paths as textual criticism, Trinitarian doctrine, and diagramming the Greek text of Ephesians. Yet, the pressure on your faith is not only due to these profound shifts. It is also due to the fact that seminary is not the Church. To study and to submit to God are two entirely different things. One involves observation and analysis, and the other involves participation, service, and worship. Like quarreling siblings you will want to separate those two from each other, but do not do it. You need to fully engage both, to love God with your heart and mind, and to let the siblings influence one another.

There is a lot more to be said, but I think this is a good place to stop. Want to go to seminary? You should. Are you in seminary? Remember to fully engage your heart and mind, although the road may seem daunting. And, finally, don’t give up. By God’s grace I was able to hang on for seven years - through two presidents, the birth of two of our children, my wife’s return to school, my wife’s completion of her second degree, a job change, and a move across the country. You can do it, too. Just remember to engage your heart and your mind along the way.

Non intratur in veritatem, nisi per caritatem.
“One cannot enter into truth, unless through love.”
-Augustine of Hippo, Contra Faustum 41, 32, 18

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.

Jesus, I thank you!

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 08:41:14 GMT

Megan Hackman

This summer, I had the privilege of praying with the women of an urban ministry, Widows Harvest. The children at Vacation Bible School had crafted and purchased gifts for the women a few weeks prior. The children had been invited to come and sing, share the gifts, pray, and share a meal with Widows Harvest. Little did I know, I would be the one to walk away with arms and heart full of gifts continuing to bless me today.

These women are veterans of prayer. They passed around a microphone to lift up communal and individual prayers. While the microphone was being passed, they would sing a chorus to a hymn or spiritual song. They thanked Jesus more in that one hour than I have in my whole life.

Their faces and voices permeated my thoughts as my small group talked about our lack of expressing gratitude.

Listen in--
“Jesus, I thank you! I thank you that I woke up today with a sound mind! I thank you for these children blessing us, singing you praise with dance and with loud voices! I thank you for the gifts they brought. I thank you for my son and grandson. Would they know you!”
“Jesus, I thank you!”
“Jesus on the main line…. Tell him what you want. Call him up…”
“Jesus, I thank you!...”

When have I ever been so attentive that every good gift comes from the Father? I am not so willing to thank God for every hardship. I miss the daily blessings from God that made them pour out their hearts in gratitude. Thanking God for a mental capacity, for the presence of children, and for the voice to sing! Right now I am thankful for the memory of their witness! There is much to learn that can’t be learned from the books…

“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.” Colossians 3:16

Pay attention today to times in which you might give thanks to God for something small, something hard, and something completely unexpected. If you’d like, come on back and let us know what you’re thankful for today! May we admonish one another!

P.S. Look up Mavis Staples’ “Jesus Is on the Main Line” and be blessed.

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

MAR: Workplace Theology, Ethics and Leadership

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 16:02:33 GMT

Our Master of Arts - Workplace Theology, Ethics and Leadership is a cohort-based degree for those with workplace experience who desire to live out their Christian faith in the secular marketplace. This past week, they spent the week in New York City discussing money, finance, profit, debt, marketing, sales, and consumerism – in the perspective of biblical stewardship, honesty, truthfulness, and diligence. Below are a few pictures from their time in NYC.

Want to learn more? View MAR-WTEL details on our website or request information today and one of our Admissions Representatives will contact you!

Sabbath: Substance or Merely Shadows?

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 16:16:05 GMT

Megan Hackman

Studying Colossians this week has reawakened my thoughts on Sabbath, which we started discussing in December. Colossians 2:16-17 reads, “Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.” After studying this passage through the week, I spent Sabbath on Sunday considering whether or not the practice of Sabbath for me has become an embrace of shadow or substance.

The shadows Paul is discussing were all good, Old Testament instructions for the people of God. They involved dietary laws, festival guidelines, and Sabbath keeping. They cast an outline of beautiful promises given in the direct presence of God, including rest (Gen 2:3), provision (Ex 16:5), and remembrance (Ex 20:8; Deut 5:15). The unfolding of this promise of Sabbath rest continues straight through Jesus’ proclamation of healing (Lk 13:16) and provision on the Sabbath day (Lk 6:3-5). Finally, it will find its fulfillment in eternity when we enter the Sabbath rest that remains for the people of God (Heb 4:9-10).

So my struggle this weekend centered on recognizing how much of the past two years I have spent enveloped and actually pursuing the promises of the shadow of Sabbath. By practicing Sabbath on Sundays, I actively sought rest and rhythm. These shadows are certainly provided by merely ceasing to work for one day. The promises of Sabbath shadows are good things, but we are able to walk in fellowship with Christ himself (Heb 4:16)! We no longer settle for mere shadows.

So what of the substance of Sabbath? I think it’s possible that in my headlong pursuit of the shadows, I have at times missed the substance of Christ.

Sunday was a regeneration of the pursuit of Christ for me in the practice of Sabbath. I have been asked to expand upon what it means to “tune into the bass line,” as discussed weeks ago. For me, to look upon the substance of Christ and to enter his presence requires stillness, confession, and prayer. Often I will follow that by meditating upon a particular verse. Sometimes I find walking slowly through the woods helps me to converse more naturally with my Creator. I suggest Adele Calhoun’s Spiritual Disciplines Handbook if you are looking for some creative ways to hear God’s bass line call in your life.

My aim is to not just embrace the outline of God’s promises, but to embrace He who casts the shadows directly. I am inhibited from doing that the more I emphasize the pursuit of physical rest. Instead, when I envision the Lamb in the throne room or the man walking along the road of Emmaus, I can begin to dialogue with and expose myself to my God for transformation that satisfies the need for both physical and spiritual rest and that continues throughout the week.

That designated, full-day intimacy is worth the pursuit of Sabbath. It helps me embrace of the very substance of Christ in the rest of the week.

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

The Final Year: Trouble Focusing and the Need for a Jedi Master

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:55:34 GMT

Brian

Remember senioritis? It hits everyone at some point during your final year of high school. For some people, it even starts in your junior year. But then you go to college and you are mature. You live on your own, you do your own laundry, you go to bed when you like and you eat what you like. Yet, when your senior year of college arrives, there it is again – dwelling in your being like a severe case of cabin fever for six straight months. You can’t think, you can’t focus, and that final exam just doesn’t seem as important as it did the year before. At times like these you need a Jedi master to sit down with you and say: “Discipline, young padawan. Be mindful of the present.”

The final year of my Master of Divinity, I was in my early thirties and had been in the work force for nearly a decade. So, I was completely blind-sided when senioritis hit me during the Fall semester of my final year in seminary. Yep, I suppose you’re never too mature for this plague upon students. Every time I sat down to read, a flock of thought-mosquitos would begin to buzz around in my brain (yes, I just made that word up… ‘thought-mosquitos’). Where would our family be next year? What would we be doing? Where would we live? On top of that, to help save money since I was no longer working, I studied during the days while also watching our youngest child. So, the few times that I was able to swat all of the mosquitos away, I would just begin to focus when a small cry would rise up and a bottle would need to be made. It was crazy. Yet somehow I made it through. And you can, too. How?

I needed a Jedi, as well. Someone tall, yet calm, with a beard. And an Irish accent (Yes, I love Liam Neeson). I needed him to sit down with me and remind me to be mindful of the present. But, unfortunately for us all, Jedis and midichlorians don’t really exist in our world. So, I had to look elsewhere. And I found my counsel in Scripture:

“‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’” (Jeremiah 29:11)

Yes, I know that this is not spoken to each of us as individual Christians. This is something that God said to the surviving elders of the Israelite exiles. But it tells us of the type of God that we have. One that has a plan for us. One that has an eternal plan to prosper us and not to harm us. So I took that step – that hardest of steps for people like me – and I decided to stop worrying about my future. I set aside time to think about it, but then I entrusted it to God, knowing that he has a plan, and I was able to study. Indeed, it can be said that the Scriptures were my Jedi. And it can also be said that trusting God with my future was my mosquito spray.

Alumni Profile: Dr. Paul Borthwick

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:19:34 GMT

Ever wonder what people do after seminary? In the video below, we talk with Dr. Paul Borthwick (M.Div. '80, D.Min. '07), professor at Gordon College and on staff with Development Associates International about how his experience at Gordon-Conwell equipped him for a lifetime of missions work.

My Journey to Seminary: An Unexpected Gift

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 15:55:58 GMT

Brian

After realizing that I was being called to a vocation of scholarship (which I wrote about in my last post in this series), a lot of changes came quickly for my family. Having gone to class part-time while working for six straight years, I was finished with two-thirds of my M.Div. My wife had a wonderful job as a nurse, and we decided to cut back (significantly) on our expenses so that I could attend school full-time and finish my M.Div. within the next year. After ten years in youth work, I notified the organization that I worked for (Young Life) that I would not be returning the following year, and they began a very healthy and patient process to find someone incredible to replace me (he is). It was an exciting time, but it was also a bit scary as we stepped away from our previous life and towards school – not knowing exactly where all of the finances that were necessary would come from.

Not everything about the transition to that final year was smooth or exciting. Learning to study again at a full-time pace was difficult – it took nearly a year for me to fully shake off the rust and get into a good groove. Our three children had spent most of their conscious moments in our town, but with a 2 ½ hour commute to Charlotte it seemed like a foregone conclusion that we had to move (from a house to an apartment…not as fun when your family is now five instead of two). We had wonderful friends in the area as well, and leaving them was heartbreaking.

I could probably continue this post and give a gaggle of details that mean a lot to me but not as much to you. But, since I remember the days that my wife first took me to her hometown and I was caught in massive groups of people that I didn’t know without any possible way to remember all of their names or the stories surrounding them, I won’t. Instead, I want to encourage you with one story…

Although many things were hard and difficult, God gave our family an amazing year that final year of my M.Div. I had considered it a foregone conclusion that our family was moving to Charlotte, as difficult as that was. My wife, however, felt that God was going to open up a way for our family to stay in the area. We lived in a beautiful resort town, and the cost of living there combined with travel expenses made staying financially impossible. So my wife prayed while I chuckled and worked on logistical issues. And then, right when we were preparing a trip to look at apartments in Charlotte, God came through with a miracle (O, me of little faith). While volunteering at our Young Life fundraising golf tournament, my wife began telling our story to a donor who had come to the tournament to share her story about becoming a Christian through Young Life when she was in high school. She asked how much we could afford (it was miniscule), and then said that she had an idea. A few days later she called my wife and invited her to come take a look at a rental home that they had, one that they would rent to us within our tiny budget. The house was huge. And gorgeous. And in a great neighborhood. In fact, we had never lived in such a wonderful home. That was the beginning of a wonderful year for our family – one that allowed us to stay within our community in a beautiful home while I was in the midst of a vocational change.

I am not telling you my story so that you think “God will give me things if I go to seminary!” Those of us here know that is not the case. In fact, I have never had less financial margin in my life, and I am going into this final semester at GCTS hoping that I will be able to pull together all of the loose financial ends. I am writing to encourage you that, if God is calling you to seminary, you should go. If you’re already here, figure out a way to stay (if the calling is from God). It looks bleak, and it won’t turn out the way you envision, but he knows your future, and he knows exactly what you need, when you need it. For our family, it was a house for a year. For you, it is probably something quite different.

Oh, and don’t chuckle at your spouse when they are praying for something.

“Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.
In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.“ Proverbs 3:5-6

Quest for the Games or the Gospel?

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 15:12:57 GMT

Megan Hackman

(SPOILER ALERT! If you have not read the Hunger Games series, it won’t bother you to continue. But if you’re in the middle of book three, this may spoil the ending for you.)

The goal of the Hunger Games is survival. This is the quest. The only quest. The only conceivable quest for the districts, the tributes, and even the President is survival. As modern readers, we want more. And so we’re given a love triangle, science fiction creatures, futuristic fashion, weddings, funerals, Roman-like arenas, history lessons, herbalist and medicinal instruction… there really is something for everyone! I caught the craze, and with a list like that, I can see where others have as well.

And yet, the quest is not our quest. Is life just about survival? What about hope? Identity? A future? Redemption? Even for those not as consciously theological, I can imagine a dissatisfaction that the characters are unable to be successful on quests for revenge, success, or even legacy in light of their overwhelming need just to survive. These goals are all taken away from the people of Panem (the nation of the Hunger Games) by its totalitarian rulers who require a yearly child sacrifice as penalty for their rebellion.

So why are we so wrapped up in a story line that ends with the achievement of mere survival for barely more than one character? (sorry, warned you about the spoiler alert) I know I’m fascinated by its nature as a cautionary tale. What if this world were only about survival? Would you still value your life? What kind of reaction would I have to such authority over me? Could I survive?

What if we had a Creator God who stepped away and said, “May the odds be ever in your favor,” so to speak, and then sent us into an arena in which survival were only merely possible? There you have Panem. You have a de-humanized authority and a hero who does not have the power to save. Who is unable to redeem. Who is horrifically broken and unable to be healed, even after the quest for survival has met its end. And I hear in the speech and behavior of friends outside of the Church a similar expression of God—in which the Creator has left us to a life of luck and a quest for success against the odds. Yet, there is a belief and a drivenness today that one might actually by his own power save, redeem, and overcome.

I was struck by how unlike this quest is from the message of the Gospel. In our story, the ultimate authority has become the most intimate of creatures with a quest not for survival but for the healing and unity of the entire world. The shock of the Gospel message is, too, that the means for “life and life abundantly” (John 10:10), is through the sacrifice of our hero in death (1 Corinthians 5:21)!

While reading the series, I rode the wave of hope that this one young girl symbolically became hope for an entire nation, unifying people under the symbol of freedom. But the symbolic hope she represented was surpassed by her own quest for a survival. Finally, both quests lead not to the healing and unity of the entire world but a dark commentary on the individual’s and the world’s resonate brokenness.

I finished the first book months ago and the series over Christmas, and yet, I cannot get these themes nor the characters out of my head. I think the series’ magnetism for me has to do with the people I know in this world who are living under this false quest to survive with a false belief that they, themselves, have the power to overcome but without realizing that the work of healing and redemption is accomplished by Jesus. It’s like I want to sit down with Katniss and Peeta and talk about life as so much more than survival. I want to assure them that there is eternal and present justice for their brokenness. I feel like Suzanne Collins must know this because she gave us plenty of diversions so that we would maintain hope for the people of Panem. To me, though, the finishing tone was hopeless and broken.

What do you think has you enthralled with the series? Do you think survival is Katniss’ sole quest? Do you think a social and economic commentary is all that can be harvested from this series?

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

Full-Tuition Scholarship at Gordon-Conwell

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 16:27:34 GMT

Gordon-Conwell recently announced the new Partnership Program, which provides a full-tuition scholarship and biblical stewardship training. Take a moment to watch the video below to hear some of our Partnership students share their thoughts and experiences with this program.

Alumni Guest Post: A Glimpse into the Power of Presence

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 13:53:09 GMT

Joannah Cook

As pastoral caregivers, we are familiar with the importance of ministering to others through our presence, especially at key moments or rites of passage. Births, baptisms, graduations, weddings, visits to the sick and funerals represent events where the pastor’s presence is required or requested. At such events, the pastor is usually expected to pray, preach a sermon and pronounce a blessing. We have a clear role and function wherein we serve God’s people through spoken words, which lend meaning to such events. But what can be said about the meaning of presence when our words cannot be understood?

In my work as a chaplain, I stand at the bedside of infants whose parents are not present and I sit across the table from Alzheimer’s patients who could not verbally communicate with me. In these circumstances, I act as a witness to the patient’s story and God gives me the opportunity to behold His work in the present moment. Through bearing witness, we as pastoral caregivers affirm the truth that all humans are created by God with dignity and beauty and are worthy of respect and compassion. Further, being attuned to this truth reminds us of our own needs and flaws which draws us deeper into God’s compassionate, parental arms.

Similarly, in the chaos of a trauma room, my words can be heard, yet not absorbed by those who are shocked by trauma. And, in the midst of the darkest and most painful moments, there are no words, only a silence filled with a mystery known only to God. A pastoral caregiver comes alongside another at times like these and in so doing “enters with [him] into the experience of weakness and powerlessness, become[s] part of uncertainty, and give[s] up control and self-determination.” (Nouwen, Compassion: A Reflection on the Christian Life, p. 14) Our presence will communicate more than our limited vocabulary can express because it is through our presence, mediated by the Holy Spirit, that others can begin to realize that they are not alone in the world. They can begin to understand that they are worthy and loved not for what they can produce but for who they are as human beings.

When I visit Ms. Johnson*, an Alzheimer’s patient, who is verbal yet rarely able to speak in complete sentences, I sit next to her and listen. I listen for the pauses where she seems to look for affirmation. I nod my head in agreement and smile. And, though she may not understand, I tell her how beautiful she looks. “You think so?”, she asks in what seems to be a moment of lucidity. I smile at her and exclaim, “Yes!” She smiles back and continues to talk in scattered phrases and I continue to nod my head in agreement, knowing that God has spoken the truth about us: We are not alone. We are worthy. We are loved.

*This name is changed to protect the identity of the patient.

Joannah Cook (M.Div., 1998) lives in Atlanta, GA and after completing her Clinical Pastoral Education at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta in the summer of 2011, began her current position as chaplain and bereavement care coordinator for Journey Hospice. Joannah is seeking ordination in the Presbyterian Church, USA and desires to continue in her vocation as chaplain after ordination.

What I Wish I Could Have Avoided During my Time in Fundamentalism

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 15:56:33 GMT

Brian

Author’s Note: Journeys are strange. You hardly ever end up where you thought you would, and you definitely never get there in the manner that you conceived. That has been as true for me as it was for Jonah the morning he woke up to take a leisurely cruise to Tarshish. Over the next few weeks I will be writing a series of blog posts exploring how I came to and through seminary. It’s a strange tale with no straight lines. But it’s my story, and it is the path that the Lord has led our family down. It’s not idyllic. I hope that encourages you. Also, in case you just joined the conversation, Part 1 can be found here; Part 2 can be found here; Part 3 can be found here; Part 4 can be found here; Part 5 can be found here. Part 6 can be found here. Part 7 can be found here.

Recently, I wrote a post about why I am thankful for the time that I spent in Protestant fundamentalism. Too often, only the negatives about the time one spends in this movement are noted in face-to-face, online, and internal dialogues. I think that this is unhealthy for those of us who have traveled this path as it continues the fundamentalist thought pattern which tends to see everything as either altogether good or altogether bad. Rather, it is helpful for us to remember that “only God is good” (Mark 10:18). Everyone and everything else is something other than altogether good.

Yet, the reason for the preponderance of such negative dialogue about fundamentalism is the reality of the pains experienced by those who have walked through and emerged from it. Therefore, in light of my thankfulness for my time within the movement, I would also like to present why, at times, I wish that I did not spend those years in that “place.”

I wish that I could have avoided:

The juxtaposition of a verbal proclamation of God’s grace alongside a nonverbal proclamation of the necessity for humans to earn God’s favor. To this day, I have to be perpetually mindful that my faith is in the former and not the latter.
The suppression of natural, God-given gifts that did not fit within a fixed number of predetermined roles.
The continual cautions against the pride that comes from knowledge which was spoken with a similar pride in a lack of “worldly knowledge”; both paths can evince the same pride (this is a subset of #3).
The (usually) unspoken understanding that one must work in full-time ministry in order to be the highest form of a Christian (another subset of #3, and in no way unique to our time).
A few years of personal bitterness, difficulty in prayer, and serious consideration of leaving Christianity; this dark time directly followed my break with fundamentalism, and was probably the most difficult stretch of my internal life.
The years that it took me to overcome the anti-intellectual tendencies that were passed to me while within the movement.
All of the different times that I hurt others acting out of social rather than biblical codes.
The anxiety and disillusion I experienced when I realized that my theological construct was only 150 years old.

Before closing, I would like to stress two things. First, as mentioned in my previous post, there are many things for which I am thankful that came along during these years of my life. Second, I am directly responsible for many of the things that I wish I could have avoided. This is probably the most difficult part to face – my culpability in this pain. Although it is not my fault alone, I am as responsible as anyone else for these years.

In light of an appeal to keep things civil, since I know that this is such an emotionally charged topic, what are your thoughts?

[Disclaimer: This represents my personal experience with contemporary Protestant fundamentalism as defined by historian George M. Marsden and, as with my other list, is not intended as a comprehensive vision of the movement.]

Why I'm Thankful for My Time in Fundamentalism

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 15:57:28 GMT

Brian

Like Danny DeVito, this post is going to be really short. I would like to write about something in this post that presents a myriad of difficulties when trying to engage– today I am going to write about my time as a fundamentalist, especially what I value from that time.

As many of you may know, the strain of fundamentalism within Protestantism is a rather young, but extremely dangerous theological construct that has ruined or nearly ruined the lives of many people that I know and continue to meet. I am also a person whose life has been adversely affected. Because of the negative results in the lives of so many like me, there is a preponderance of dialogue within theological circles that continually raises awareness of problems with fundamentalism, often in a satirical manner. Having gone through the pain emerging from fundamentalism, I understand that much of this dialogue is warranted.

However, here I would like change the angle of the current dialogue about fundamentalism; to follow the spirit of Paul’s conviction that whether one preaches the gospel out of greed or out of sincerity, “whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice” (ESV). Paul appears to point out that there is value in the gospel being proclaimed, no matter what intention lies behind it. Ergo, I would like to put forth the reasons for which I am thankful for my time in fundamentalism when the gospel was preached to me (a list of my reasons for which I am thankful to be away from fundamentalism will be forthcoming in the near future).

I am thankful for:

The strong emphasis on my personal faith. I was taught well that faith is not only about what we believe, but also about what I believe.
The strong foundation that I was given in the Scriptures.
Wonderful times of prayer, worship, and engaging discussions about how my faith affects my life.
How active the unordained laity was in my fundamentalist community.
A strong emphasis upon commitment in marriage and choosing one’s spouse carefully.
The multiple times that I was taught to put my faith into action through serving the elderly, taking food to the hungry, and sharing about my faith with those around me.
Being steered away from many life choices that would have had long-lasting negative repercussions.
The many people who gave of their lives and time to invest in me.

This list is certainly not comprehensive, but it is a start. My hope is that this will help others think about aspects of their time in fundamentalism for which they are thankful. If you have any to share, I would love to hear them.

[NOTE: For those who would like to better understand where fundamentalism came from, historian George Marsden, recently retired from the faculty at Notre Dame, has written a fantastic work called Fundamentalism and American Culture. Marsden does a masterful job tracing the history of fundamentalism, and also helps to distinguish between fundamentalism and evangelicalism – a line that was severely blurred in the latter part of the 20th c. as fundamentalist leaders adopted the term evangelicalism for their own movement. I cannot recommend this work highly enough.]

On God and Tacos: Hearing God's Voice in Seminary

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 15:57:48 GMT

Brian

How do you know if that voice inside your head is God or the taco that you ate last night? I have to be honest – I have no idea. Maybe you are better at discerning this than me. Perhaps God has a distinguished British accent when he speaks to you. Or maybe he sounds like James Earl Jones or Meryl Streep. Or perhaps he opens by saying, “Willamina, this is God. The next two minutes of your life are going to be craaaaaaaazy!” But this isn’t me. Usually I walk around about as confused as can be as to the actual moment-to-moment plan that God has for my life. I have a friend named Valerie who hears God clearly and often. I’m jealous.

Normally, not having a high facility in discerning God’s voice wouldn’t be a big deal, but as a Christian I want to know him and honor him. And sometimes the Bible doesn’t give me a definitive answer about how I should do that (Think about some specific situations: Should I marry this beautiful blonde? How do I deal with my son’s anger issues? How do I find time to really connect with God in the midst of this 24/7 culture?). Prayer is wonderful and necessary, but sometimes it is difficult to hear what God is saying back to us. However, in spite of this difficulty, I do believe that he does speak to us. Not in a way that we can ever verify or prove, but real nonetheless.

So, with two years left in my M.Div. program, I was struggling to hear God’s voice once again amidst all of the tacos that I had eaten. I enjoyed ministry – really, really enjoyed my ministry with high school and middle school students through Young Life – but something seemed to be missing. I knew what it was. It had been with me for my entire life. But I dismissed it as a selfish fancy.

However, with the encouragement of my dear wife, I slowly began to realize that what I had interpreted as a selfish fancy might have actually been God’s voice encouraging me to change directions. What was this self-indulgent activity? (Confession time – this may be hard for me *deep breath*): My entire life I have had to fight the urge to run off and read. (“Hello, my name is Brian and I am a nerd.”) When I was young, I would sneak a flashlight into my room and read into the early morning hours. I always thought that I would grow out of this, but in my years in ministry I found myself sitting in the best reading room in the house, the bathroom, into the wee hours of the morning slowly working through a chronological list of classical literature. This is normal, right?

All along I had the thought in my head that I should go and get a Ph.D., and serve God by researching, writing, and teaching for a living. But then I would always put that idea away and decide that it was a taco speaking. I was a captain on my football team in high school, and guys like me don’t just run off to read. Or maybe they do.

After 20 years of this continual hounding from the Lord, I realized that I wasn’t hearing a taco. With my wife’s encouragement, and a very encouraging meeting in Charlotte with Dr. Rosell, our family began a new journey in our lives – one where I am beginning to find that I am right at home. Daily I feel like a kid at a Star Wars convention. When God speaks, it is wonderful. Now, if I could just figure out how to properly discern his voice more often…

You have searched me, LORD,
and you know me.
You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.
You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.
Before a word is on my tongue
you, LORD, know it completely.
You hem me in behind and before,
and you lay your hand upon me.

- Psalm 139:1-5

How Sabbath Changed My Seminary Experience

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 13:38:09 GMT

Megan Hackman

Sabbath changed my seminary experience. Our first year as full-time students and part-time workers completely drained both my husband and me of every bit of energy we had. So when we were first introduced to Sabbath, it was like introducing a desert wanderer to a natural spring. We dove right in.

Initially, Sabbath was about rest. Physical rest. Like all I could do was sleep from the moment we got home from church until the sun went down. That’s not metaphorical. I literally needed a three to four hour nap every Sunday. But it didn’t take me long to realize that Sabbath was about much more.

This summer, I had the opportunity to teach on Sabbath using Mark Buchanan’s book The Rest of God (I highly recommend it). Getting a group of women who are all moms, teachers, social workers, security guards, and caregivers to buy into an Old Testament law to rest for a day I assumed would take some explanation. So the first night, this was the illustration I used (I apologize for the lack of audio. Please queue your imagination).

I start playing a song. Think, perhaps, of the “Hallelujah Chorus.” Something with a complicated melody line and plenty of instruments. Maybe go ahead and turn up the volume on your Pandora station. What line of the music are you paying attention to? Do you hear the trumpet? Harmony? Melody? Drums? Keyboard?

Then I played a stripped down version of the song, leaving only the bass guitar. It was a simple strummed melody. Can you hear it? Bumm…bum bum… bummmmmm. After several measures, I slowly added in one line at a time. The acoustic guitar. The keyboard. There’s the drums. Ah, the voices. Alto. Soprano. The full choir swells into the chorus of the piece.

Now what do you hear?

If I ask you to, can you hear the bass line?

This, I suggest, is the clarity of voice that Sabbath provides. It’s the opportunity to listen directly to what God has for you in your life. It’s the opportunity to “tune into the bass line.” The rest of the week will certainly bring on a full symphony of interruptions and priority lines. But when you’ve spent time just listening to the bass line in isolation, you easily queue into the rhythm and the direction of the piece as a whole. You also can easily be called back to that simple bass line even in the midst of a full orchestra of sounds. In fact, the soprano’s line now sounds more full when heard in harmony with the bass line.

So, too, when you practice weekly Sabbath. You can more distinctly hear how God is calling you even when the doctor lands a tough diagnosis, the kids need to be bussed to an impromptu make-up game, your parents suddenly need assistance, work and school are battling for your attention, and oh yeah, the laundry needs to be done. You can still tune into the places where God is calling you. You can hear the themes he is calling your attention to. For me, I have found that hearing once a week from God about where he’s asking for my surrender or is calling for my transformation suddenly turns every paper, reading assignment, house chore, and coffee date into an encounter with the living God.

What practices have you used to focus to and listen for God’s voice in your life?

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

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

Fri, 09 Dec 2011 15:58:11 GMT

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)

Learning from Our Church Fathers: Part 2

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 14:47:45 GMT

Dr. Donald Fairbairn

This is Part 2 in a series about why evangelicals should care about the early church. If you are just now joining us, you can read Part 1 here.

Why should evangelicals care about the early church, about the first several centuries after the end of the New Testament? Of the many answers one could give to this question, perhaps the most important answer is that we should care about the early church precisely because we are committed to the authority of Scripture alone. Since we have that commitment, we want to know as precisely and comprehensively as we can what Scripture actually means. And this brings us to a fundamental claim that I often make: What we think the Bible means is influenced by what we think the church has said the Bible means.

Consider this claim for a moment. As faithfully and carefully as we may read the Bible, we never come to Scripture as a blank slate. There is a long history of biblical interpretation that influences what we are looking for as we read Scripture—whether we know that history or not, whether we realize its influence on us or not. In particular, the great issues of the Protestant Reformation (16th and 17th centuries) and the subsequent issues of Pietism and revivalism 18th-20th centuries) have set up the categories with which you and I approach the Bible.

For example, one of the legacies of the Reformation (a legacy that the Reformation itself owes to High Medieval Roman Catholicism) is the tendency to think about the meaning of biblical passages in terms of clear-cut, either/or alternatives. “It has to be either x or y, so let’s go to the Bible to decide which it is.” Salvation has to be by faith (the right answer) or by works (the wrong answer). Sanctification is either distinct from justification (the right answer) or the same as justification (the wrong answer). The atonement has to be either limited or unlimited. (On this one we disagree about which is the right answer.) A true believer either can or cannot lose his/her salvation. (Here again we disagree about which is the right answer.) On these points and countless others, we usually accept the questions the way they are presented to us, and we inquire of the Scriptures to see which of the options is right.

When we read the great thinkers of the early church, however, we find that they often had a different way of posing the issues than we do. Rather than arguing over whether salvation was by faith or by works, they demonstrated their complete reliance on Christ by talking about him, rather than about their own faith or their own works. They regarded both justification andsanctification as things that God gives us at the beginning of salvation, and they defined both as the righteousness that we receive when we are united to Christ, who is the righteous one. And their whole conception of the atonement was one in which the question of limited vs. unlimited could not even arise.

My point here is not that we should necessarily follow the way the early church described Christianity. Rather, it is that by reading the church fathers, we gain another vantage point from which to look at Scripture. By seeing the Bible through their eyes, we can also see the way our own history has shaped the way we inquire of Scripture, the kinds of questions we ask of the Bible. What we think the Bible means is shaped by what the church has said the Bible means. Thus, understanding the history that has led our branch of the church to ask the questions we ask, and also gaining potential insights from Christians who had a different set of questions, can help us move closer to understanding the Bible fully, comprehensively, and accurately.

A Day in the Life of a Master of Divinity Student

Mon, 05 Dec 2011 09:47:35 GMT

What does a typical day look like for a seminary student? Follow a day in the life of M.Div. student, Daniel Triller, as he lives life at Gordon-Conwell.

Greek and Hebrew at a Theological Seminary

Fri, 02 Dec 2011 15:58:33 GMT

Brian

If you are going to receive an M.Div. at Gordon-Conwell, you have to take at least two semesters each of both Greek and Hebrew. This sounds daunting, but it shouldn't. The professors are fantastic and, if you are willing to put in the work, they will do everything that they can to meet you halfway.

But you must put in the work. That’s the key to languages. Unlike any other type of course that you may ever take in your life, there is no shortcut – it’s just time and effort. Like Alanis Morissette once asserted at the peak of her wisdom: “The only way out is through” (Cue a whiney and angry singing voice that we all somehow feel understands us. Go ahead, sing your favorite pre-“I’m-trying-to-be-cute-now” Alanis song. It will make your Monday morning better. And while we’re at it – shouldn’t Alanis sue Avril Lavigne for stealing her career path? Really, Avril? From dating a Sk8er Boi to the cover of Cosmo? Really?).

So, if you ever decide to go to seminary, Alanis and I should have now properly prepared you for the fact that your language courses are going to take a long time. But you know what? It’s worth it. It’s worth every last minute. Why? Three reasons.

First, if you don’t know any other foreign languages it is a great help to learn that ideas and objects are not fettered to one mode of expression. I think that C.S. Lewis said this well when he stated in Surprised by Joy: “The very formula, ‘Naus [Greek] means a ship,’ is wrong. Naus and ship both mean a thing, they do not mean one another. Behind naus, as behind navis or naca, we want to have a picture of a dark, slender mass with sail or oars, climbing the ridges, with no officious English word intruding.” It is an exceptional help to your study and your life to understand that concepts can be expressed in different ways (perhaps this variety of expression is one reason that we were given four Gospels).

Second, learning a language will teach you that your brain is smarter than you think (Unless you are the type of person who would have fit in well at Lewis’ fictitious Experiment House. Then, your brain is probably not quite as smart as you think). In Augustine’s Confessions, the great Patristic thinker writes with amazement at how, as a child, he learned something as complex as the Latin language by simply observing those around him and slowly putting everything together. Studying Greek and Hebrew will teach you that you’re brain is capable of the very same.

Third, and finally, learning Greek and Hebrew is worth it because there is truly nothing like reading the Scriptures in their original language. A few weeks ago I was at a men’s retreat with a bunch of great guys from our church. Dr. Gordon Isaac was leading the retreat, and we were sent off into small groups to discuss The Lord’s Prayer. In the midst of a good discussion we quickly realized that we did not know what the phrase “hallowed be your name” meant. I thought it was a passive adjective – Jesus simply stating that God’s name is holy. Others thought it was a passive verb. So, we pulled out the Greek and found out that it was an imperative passive verb, ἁγιασθήτω (Yes, I was wrong. I suppose it happens to everyone at least once).

What did I learn? Jesus is not stating here that God’s name is holy. Rather, he is stating that his name is to be praised (there’s a creature/Creator relationship required in his statement).

There are many great experiences that I have had at seminary, but one of the most challenging and rewarding has been the privilege of learning Greek and Hebrew. I hope that, if you haven’t already, you are also able to do the same in the near future. It is a wonderful blessing in our walk with God.

Miroslav Volf at Gordon-Conwell

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 16:32:16 GMT

Miroslav Volf recently spoke at Gordon-Conwell on his most recent book, Allah: A Christian Response. Below is his talk in its entirety.

Rule of Thirds

Mon, 28 Nov 2011 14:04:58 GMT

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.

Thank You: A Repeat of Last Year's Advent Devotional

Thu, 24 Nov 2011 14:22:10 GMT

In an effort to wisely use our limited resources, we decided not to print a new Advent Devotional this year. However, with the Advent season approaching, we wanted to make last year's devotional available to you for download. We hope this helps to prepare your heart, again, for the coming of our Lord.

Download our 2010 Advent Devotional.

The Seven-Year M.Div.: First Impressions

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 15:58:59 GMT

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.

Learning from Our Church Fathers

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 16:21:03 GMT

Dr. Donald Fairbairn

We live in a society infatuated with novelty. From clothes to cars to computers to TVs to hand-held electronic devices, we are told we should want the latest, the newest, the hottest, the best. Given our love affair with the new and supposedly improved, it is a bit surprising that people of all stripes today are growing increasingly interested in a period of history we call “the early church” (from about AD 100-600), also known as the “patristic period” or the period of the “church fathers.” Of course, Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox have long been interested in the centuries just after the close of the New Testament. But today, Protestants and even scholars with no particular religious affiliation are giving the early church a lot of attention. Why?

To explain this phenomenon, I like to use the phrase “historical authority,” by which I mean people’s desire to legitimize their own beliefs (whatever they are) by showing that those beliefs have a long-standing pedigree, that such beliefs were around as far back as the ancient world. Catholics and Orthodox insist that their current practice is directly continuous with the practice of the early church. Liberal Protestants and non-religious people—both deeply imbued with a relativistic spirit—insist that there was no consensus about either doctrine or practice in the early church, but instead there was a vast array of differing “Christianities,” none of which was any better or more “right” than any others. In all of these cases, people find in the early church what they want to find; they discover a consensus or lack of consensus that provides warrant—“authority,” if you will—for their own convictions about the contemporary world.

Where do evangelicals stand in the midst of these forays into the early church? Well, for the most part, we stand on the sidelines. Priding ourselves on our commitment to Scripture alone, we have often demonstrated that commitment by paying little attention to the centuries after the end of the New Testament. After all, something isn’t true just because a church father says it, and for that matter, even the Nicene Creed doesn’t carry the same weight of authority as the Bible. Why, then, should we pay attention to the non-inspired writers of a period in the distant past, when we could be focusing on the Bible itself and on the immediacy of our current situation?

Over the next several weeks, I would like to suggest various different answers to this question—different reasons that combine to show us why it can be valuable for us to attend to the Christians of the first few centuries after the New Testament.

Meet Gordon-Conwell Alum, Dr. Ben Witherington!

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 14:17:57 GMT

Ever wonder what people do after they graduate seminary? The first in a series of videos, we're profiling alumni and asking them about life after Gordon-Conwell. Dr. Ben Witherington is Amos Professor of New Testament for Doctoral Studies at Asbury Theological Seminary and graduated from Gordon-Conwell in 1977.

Why I Chose Gordon-Conwell

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 15:59:27 GMT

Brian

God works in mysterious ways. In the case of how I ended up at Gordon-Conwell, he worked for my good in a way that I could not see in spite of my focus in a different direction. So how did I end up at Gordon-Conwell? To quote Prince Herbert from Monty Python and the Holy Grail: “Well, I’ll tell you.” (cue music)

After taking my first seven courses through Fuller, my job in Colorado transferred me to a small golf community in North Carolina. It was a long move for our family, but one that we were excited to make. In the midst of having three children, sometimes it is difficult to keep all of the details of life at the forefront of one’s mind. Thus, it was a short while after arriving in North Carolina that I realized that the nearest Fuller campus was in Colorado Springs – a mere 1700 miles away. My pay level was prohibitive to flights back and forth, so I began searching for a new school.

Now, at this point in the story I have to explain that those of us from Colorado are a bit different. We like to wear sandals and shorts. A lot. We also don’t dress up much. However, people in North Carolina do.

Thus, as I started searching for seminaries within 150 miles of my home I became a bit disconcerted that everyone – everyone! – on the website of each school that I looked at was wearing a suit. I didn’t have anything against suits, it was just that, as someone who worked with high school kids at the time, I preferred casual clothing in the groups with which I spent my time.

And then I found it shining in the night – more beautiful than William Shatner’s spoken version of “Rocket Man”: the Gordon-Conwell Charlotte Campus website. There were lots of smiling faces and no three-piece suits. I was intrigued. So, I called down, scheduled a campus visit and the rest, as they say, is history.

I wish that I could write that I chose Gordon-Conwell because of its wonderful and inquisitive student body (which it has), its academically challenging atmosphere (it is), and its excellent faculty members (they are), but I did not. I chose Gordon-Conwell because of the fashion choices of those on their website.

Addendum: The irony in this story is that the Lord used such a frivolous way to make a decision in order to show me my love for the academic world. Within a few years I would discover my love for studying and begin to pursue a career in academia, all of which required that I be at such an academically rigorous school. However, that story is for a later post. Next time I will talk a bit about my time with the wonderful people at GCTS-Charlotte.

My Seminary Experience Part 2: How I Began Studying at a Seminary

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 15:59:58 GMT

Brian

So there I was. I had a wife and a baby and I had just quit the only job that I had ever known. What now? Although I had attended college at a major Division I university (TCU), I was from a very small town in the mountains and wasn’t sure how to get where I wanted to go. In some ways I was not even sure where to go. Beyond that, there were not many people with the right knowledge and experience to help me. My tradition did not encourage graduate-level education and no one in my family had ever attended either a graduate school of religion or a seminary. So, I spent a few months working on a construction job for a friend of mine and tried to clear my head…and my soul.

And then God decided that it was time.

An acquaintance from Young Life offered me a job. It was a full-time position, but if I would put in the work, they would pay for my first seven seminary courses. Because of the status of our growing family I was looking for way to go to school while still working to support our family. Since I already had training in youth work, and at the time that is what I felt called to spend my life doing, this was an ideal situation for me. After praying about it, my wife and I agreed that this was the opportunity for which our family had been looking. So we sold our home, packed up what little we had, and moved across Wolf Creek Pass to Alamosa, CO, where our second daughter would soon be born.

And that’s how I ended up studying at Fuller Theological Seminary’s Colorado Springs Campus (yes, I know, I’m now at Gordon-Conwell. That stage is coming soon).

Ten years ago, through a muddy mess – particularly in my soul – I took my first course through Young Life’s agreement with Fuller Theological Seminary: The Life of Jesus, with Prof. Dale Bruner. Those hours sitting in class with Prof. Bruner were like turtle cheesecake for my soul. Seriously. It’s a great thing when God meets a desire in our souls in a way that is more abundant than we had previously hoped. Every day as Dr. Bruner would skillfully walk us through each chapter of the Book of John it felt as if the Mississippi River was being released onto the Sahara Desert of my soul.
Over the next two years I was able to take some incredible courses – Theology and Film, Adolescent Psychology, Mentored Ministry, and more. The time spent studying and thinking in those courses confirmed that I was exactly where I should be – engaging God in a way that included my mind.

There was a certain ineffable joy in the entire experience.

This was the first step in a long series of events that have brought me to where I am now. But it was not the only step. In my next post, I will explain how I ended up at Gordon-Conwell’s Charlotte, NC campus, and eventually at the campus here in Hamilton, MA.

Can You Study Abroad in Seminary?

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 11:09:57 GMT

Hear the stories and thoughts of students and a professor who went to Greece and Turkey this past summer to study the life of Paul.

Learn more about the Global Education program at Gordon-Conwell by visiting www.gordonconwell.edu/Global-Education.

Happy Endings

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 11:10:30 GMT

Megan Hackman

A culture’s ultimate desire can often be observed at the end of a movie. Watching the Chinese film, Hero, displays ultimate honor. Perhaps the Persian film The Color of Paradise could be articulated as a desire for belonging. But I’m relating with the new TV show “Once Upon a Time” (written by the writers of “Lost”), which clearly articulates a desire for a happy ending. That is, of course, the ending of every fairy tale. But this particular show has drawn more out than a simple “happily ever after.”

What draws us to happy endings? Dr. Gwenfair Adams teaches my class called Dynamics of the Spiritual Life. The first day of class we set the context for studying the dynamics in our own individual spiritual lives within a story arch she calls our mallon or more and more story line. It is our individual expression of the hapax or once-and-for-all story line that Scripture depicts. Allow me to explain…

The desire of the hapax story of Scripture is for the Creator God to be in perfect relationship with his creation. It is a story of conflict against the enemy of sin and death overcome by the protagonist, Christ. In light of the hapax, then, we delve into our own mallon stories, seeing how our own life aims toward the ultimate desire of being re-united with Christ and re-created into the perfect image of our Creator. Our testimonies serve as witnesses of the ultimate Author and the consummation of the world to come. This is the story that the history of the world is telling.

So, then, it is no surprise that I have noticed a trend in media lately articulating a craving for a happy ending complete with evil vanquished and perfect love restored. I am seeing that the characters in this TV show are articulating the once-and-for-all desires of our world. The writers have actually written, “believing in the possibility of a happy ending is a very powerful thing” and “good will always win.” I am drawn to watch and re-watch the episodes, looking for glimpses of the finale in which evil will be vanquished and life brought back at the instigation of true love. So when I see a simple, silver cross hanging from the neck of Snow White (she really is wearing a cross in the show), I can’t help but think, Do the writers know the hapax story?

Where do you see the desire for a happy ending being articulated in our culture?

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

My Seminary Experience, Part 1: Struggling with the Idea of Going Back to School

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 16:00:31 GMT

Brian

Ten years ago, I was a youth pastor at a small youth center in my hometown – Pagosa Springs, CO. Life was great. I had a degree from a good university. My wife and I had just brought home our first baby girl to a house that we had built down the street from my parents. We lived in one of the most beautiful locations in the United States, and I had what I thought was my dream job.

Things were great, except for the fact that things were not really that great. Living near my family was wonderful, but my job situation had slowly deteriorated as I had continued to chafe at some of the doctrines and practices within our ministry. To put it succinctly, there were many moments where form was valued over function. While struggling with this, I also concurrently suppressed questions that I had about my own faith.

I was lost in fundamentalist limbo, and I needed help.

I began groping for relief from this suspended state. When I mentioned to my closest mentor that I had a desire to return to school and learn for the sake of both my own soul and those to whom I was ministering, I was consistently met with a response betraying a chary feeling towards education: I could go to school but…you know…1 Corinthians says that knowledge “puffs up”. The nonverbal exhortation I received was clear, and it never fluctuated: “Well, you can go to seminary and be a Christian, but you won’t be a very good one.”

Again, fundamentalist limbo.

It was nearly a decade ago that I finally reached my breaking point. I began to spiral into a deep depression as I perceived that I had to choose between my inner conflict and my faith. My desire to learn felt like a worm that was eating me from the inside out. Prayer was too silent. Reading the Bible felt flat. I had reached a state where I had not properly nourished my mind and my lopsided fulfillment of the Great Commission was having noxious effects on my soul. I had focused on loving the Lord with all of my heart, soul, and strength. Yet, the neglect of my mind caused an atrophy that was spreading like a cancer over my entire being.

In the fall of October 2002, I knew that something had to be done for the sake of my soul, my family, and my ministry. I did not know where things would go from there. I did not know if Jesus was on the other side. I just knew that I could not continue in my current state. So one night I turned in my letter of resignation and decided that I would find a job that would allow me to study as well.

And then I moved on.

Alumni Impact

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 11:12:49 GMT

Gordon-Conwell alumni are one of the biggest reasons why students attend Gordon-Conwell. Enjoy this glimpse of student life on campus. Thank you, alumni, for helping students find their way here.

Music courtesy of Matt Scott (M.Div. '11) @ http://musicmattscott.com/

Why Reformation Day?

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 11:13:55 GMT

Peter D. Anders

Reformation Day is an occasion for reflecting on the importance of the historical event of the Protestant Reformation. Although the actual observance is typically transferred to the Sunday (called Reformation Sunday) on or before October 31, its focus is on this date as the anniversary of Martin Luther’s posting of the Ninety-Five Theses in 1517. This dispute over the church’s practice of selling indulgences launched what became the call for broad reforms of Christian faith and practice that have defined Protestantism ever since.

There are certainly many distinctives of our Protestant Christian faith that are worthy of renewed appreciation on this special day. The reaffirmation and recentering of the authority of the Word of God over the Church is probably the most basic. This was the basis for the fundamental shift to how we now understand Christianity in connection with the Word of God as a personal encounter with God through union with Jesus Christ our risen Lord in the power of the Spirit who quickens and heals us by making Christ’s benefits our own. This reform turned the focus from what occurs within us in a sacramental view of salvation, to that which takes place outside of us in God’s own work of forensic justification. Here our reflection on Scripture alone leads us to the other liberating insights we inherited from the Reformation: grace alone; faith alone; by Christ’s work alone; and to the glory of God alone.

Our Christian practice also has many distinctives that follow from the Reformation. The recovery of an affirmative attitude toward the world is probably the most basic. This resulted from the Reformation’s renewed emphasis on the distinction between justification and sanctification. The reform shifted focus from meritorious works seen as essential to being in the state of grace, to a new understanding that embraces God’s promise in the gospel as giving us what his commands in the law require. This has made us perfectly free to turn our full attention to dutiful service where our works of love overflow to needy neighbors, whom we are enabled to serve as a church that is a priesthood of believers. Here our reflection on the value of the God-given vocations of everyday life leads us to a renewed appreciation of the Reformation’s high regard for the idea of just government and human rights; for the rights of women; for the value of the family and of marriage; of Christian activism in politics, involvement in the marketplace and in music and art; and for the study of science.

Why Reformation Day? Because we Protestants have inherited a great tradition that should not be taken for granted. We should pause to reflect on it, to appreciate it, and to become reacquainted with it. This is the tradition that has formed us as Christians. It is the tradition we confess, the tradition we live, and the tradition we will advance and ultimately bequeath to those who come after us.

Professor Peter D. Anders is an Instructor in Theology at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Hamilton, MA. His academic work includes research in political science and international relations regarding the state of Christianity and the Christian church under the Marxist-Leninist governments of Eastern Europe and the USSR. He is also a contributing scholar to Modern Reformation.

Truth and Truthfulness

Fri, 28 Oct 2011 11:14:26 GMT

Dr. Dennis Hollinger

Evangelical Christians are rightly committed to truth. We have not always managed to affirm the corollary—truthfulness in every-day life. The reality is we cannot consistently affirm the truth of the gospel, Holy Scripture and essential Christian doctrines, and then overlook our commitment to truthfulness in the way we live and the way we articulate our faith. Truth and truthfulness are both affirmations of what is real and authentic.

Our need to affirm truthfulness in the realities of ministry and every-day life was brought home to me recently by reading Bradley Wright’s award-winning book, Christians are Hate-Filled Hypocrites…and Other Lies You’ve Been Told. Wright, a sociologist at the University of Connecticut, is well versed in statistical analysis, and in this book tackles some of the statistical portrayals of evangelical Christianity, by evangelicals themselves. His conclusion? They have distorted reality by misusing statistics.

As Wright notes, we are inundated with bad news about Christianity: “The Church is shrinking; Christians get divorced more than anyone else; non-Christians have a very low opinion of Christians; and on and on it goes.” There is just one small problem in all this. “Many of the statistics currently bandied about regarding the Christian faith in the United States are incomplete, inaccurate, and otherwise prone to emphasize the negative. Bad news has pushed aside the good news about the Good News.”

According to Wright one of the most blatant distortions of truthfulness occurs in a book entitled, The Fall of the Evangelical Nation. The author claims, “When asked to rate eleven groups in terms of respect, non-Christians rated Evangelicals tenth. Only prostitutes rated lower.” This got picked up by a number of bloggers with a prophetic edge and one proclaimed, “Only prostitutes rank lower than Evangelicals.” But as Wright so clearly and patiently shows, the wording of the questionnaire and the statistical analysis itself were fraught with major problems. They thus failed to capture reality.

If we believe in truth and proclaim the truth, we must be committed to its corollary: truthfulness in what we say and how we live. Authenticity of words and life go hand in hand with the truth of the Gospel and God’s Word.

To explore this topic further, consider attending the Pastors’ Forum with Bradley Wright Wednesday, November 9. Click here for details and registration.

Dr. Dennis Hollinger is President and the Colman M. Mockler Distinguished Professor of Christian Ethics at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, MA.

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Learning from Our Church Fathers: Part 3

Finishing Well, Part 1: Open Books

The Seven Year M.Div.: Two Reflections on the Seminary Experience

Jesus, I thank you!

MAR: Workplace Theology, Ethics and Leadership

Sabbath: Substance or Merely Shadows?

The Final Year: Trouble Focusing and the Need for a Jedi Master

Alumni Profile: Dr. Paul Borthwick

My Journey to Seminary: An Unexpected Gift

Quest for the Games or the Gospel?

Full-Tuition Scholarship at Gordon-Conwell

Alumni Guest Post: A Glimpse into the Power of Presence

What I Wish I Could Have Avoided During my Time in Fundamentalism

Why I'm Thankful for My Time in Fundamentalism

On God and Tacos: Hearing God's Voice in Seminary

How Sabbath Changed My Seminary Experience

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

Learning from Our Church Fathers: Part 2

A Day in the Life of a Master of Divinity Student

Greek and Hebrew at a Theological Seminary

Miroslav Volf at Gordon-Conwell

Rule of Thirds

Thank You: A Repeat of Last Year's Advent Devotional

The Seven-Year M.Div.: First Impressions

Learning from Our Church Fathers

Meet Gordon-Conwell Alum, Dr. Ben Witherington!

Why I Chose Gordon-Conwell

My Seminary Experience Part 2: How I Began Studying at a Seminary

Can You Study Abroad in Seminary?

Happy Endings

My Seminary Experience, Part 1: Struggling with the Idea of Going Back to School

Alumni Impact

Why Reformation Day?

Truth and Truthfulness