1. One of my theology professors seems to be all riled up about anything that hints of theology that comes from any members of the emerging church. My theory behind his current passion is that Millard Erickson just did a class at Western and I believe got the professors all riled up to "stand firm in the truth" and that there are simply some things that should not be questioned (like whether God knows the future or not) as one example.
2. The old man who sits in my Advanced Hermeneutics class. Much like one of the gentlemen last semester he asks asinine questions that have little or nothing to do with the class but have everything to do with his need for self-validation.
3. Coffee is not having the same effect on me this semester. I drank a few cups during class yesterday but for some reason it did not make the class more interesting or help me think better. Am I aquiring a tolerance??? That would be trouble!
4. A student in one of the classes made an arrogant crack on Mclaren and snickered like he was SO much of a smarter theologian than Mclaren. I like Mclaren quite a bit as he has helped me think more than any other current author. I feel to admit that would lead to me being burned at the stake right now.
For all of these reasons, I'm not sure how Seminary is going to be this semester. I think two of the three classes I have to be very important and I'm excited to put in the time but I'm not sure there is going to be a very balanced perspective, nor balanced discussion leaving me frustrated. I hope I'm surprised.
3 comments:
man, i told you to do a masters of fine art in literature.
no pity for you!
I've had some questioning moments, too. Consider: if part of ministry is about being radically counter-cultural (in Dr. Johnson termed it subversive), then shouldn't ministry offer training toward that end? Other than merely giving it lipservice, that is. Yet it sometimes seems that we are being asked to simply parrot back to profs what they have taught; shouldn't seminary be encouraging more critical thinking? Shouldn't we be evaluated as much on the process of forming our theology as on the end product itself? Certainly we don't want a good process to result in bad theology, but we also don't want a bad process (such as rote memorization) to result in good theology that we'll never again be able to back up.
On a related note, I was listening to one of the books for a class this week (the book on CD helps me take advantage of my commute time), and something stuck out at me. The book is John Ortberg's The Life You've Always Wanted, and he's talking about a number of spiritual disciplines - the subject of the class for which I'm reading it. Ortberg shares this counsel from one of his spiritual advisors: "You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life." Good advice. After listening to that, I happened to be looking through the course syllabus, which says that the reading is to be done at a rate of 45 pages per hour (roughly 250-300 words per minute)...and should be done for comprehension and with an eye toward personal application. Hmmm.... I'm not a super-slow reader, but that seems to be reading at quite a clip, especially if our reading should be focused on comprehension and application. And doesn't that go against what Ortberg is saying?
Ah, well.... Guess I've comprehended that to death. Now on to another book!
Gentry - You gave fair warning, I understand your lack of sympathy.
Randy - I understand what you are saying with your thought on the subversive nature of ministry. We talk about that in class but then we still train people to go to attractional, big production churches so they can be a program director.
The other thing that bothers me is some of the classes such as "Growing Disciples Intentionally" or "Evangelism" classes where you are required to pick a person to be a project and "share the gospel" with them, etc. That's just wrong. I think Bob brought that up in his message yesterday and that is something that has really been bothering me. I guess I will simply have to get a zero on that part of the course. I do not believe in forcing the gospel down someone's throat for a grade or making a person a project. Anyway, just some more thoughts to chew on.
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