theo|digital

Listened this morning to two guest lectures by Dr. David L. Tiede, NT scholar and president emeritus of Luther Seminary. He spent a great part of the time answering audience questions(all from North Park faculty – I was too cowed to ask a question), like when I snapped this shot on my Treo. I particularly liked his thoughts on seminaries originally coming from “the abbey” moving to “the academy” but now needing to be “apostolates.”

I’ve had to answer this question an I’ve-lost-count number of times – from old friends, GCM partners, new friends, professors – those know much about me and those who are meeting me for the first time. I’ve found it tough to answer, because there are so MANY answers. So I think I’ll start slipping them in here, one at a time. Could be ten or more.

Why am I in [seminary/theology grad school/divinity school]?

1. Not to “become a pastor.”
Maybe it’s weird to start with a negative, but this an important first thought. For my GCM friends, we know that we don’t tend to think of pastors as professionals like doctors or lawyers, each with their professional degrees. And we don’t believe a degree can make a pastor.

I still agree with this. I still think that in Paul’s 15 descriptions (in 1 Tim 3) on what an elder should be like, only one involves learning of the book-type: “able to teach.” Others (self-controlled, hospitable, more…) are descriptions of character, and this is grown through spiritual formation: being quick to listen, gaining experience in failure, and cultivating humility.

This is part of the reason why it feels weird to use the word “seminary” as opposed to “study theology” or “grad school” – the first reminds me of that professional model that in some contexts worries me.

ps – Most of my fellows students do see this as pastor training – and I recognize this is the majority view of the current American church – and it’d be foolish for me to say that God hasn’t blessed that. I take my perspective humbly and cautiously. Still can’t shake the feeling that people need more experience than this to be a pastor, but kudos to North Park for heavy emphasis on spiritual formation and internship experiences.

Happy Friday. Here’s something special for my friend JP (you can see it too, if you want):

I just started weekly quotes last week, but I’m already off the Monday schedule. Oh well. Quotables from my classes in lecture or reading:

If we are really In Christ – we even stand in his place in the Trinitarian relationship. It doesn’t look like us standing to the side of the Trinity, or below it, but drawn into it inside Christ. The Trinity is not a checklist doctrine for good Christians as much as the grammar for what salvation actually is.”

~ Prof. Brent Laytham, THEO 6330 (Christian Theology) lecture

(read as if 70 year old professor is talking (cause he is)):
My dad used to give me lectures about how to walk in a cattle yard.

Have you been around cattle? If they taught you anything in school about Physics, you learn about something called momentum. Cows, they weigh a whole lot. And if you spook them, they start, rather quickly, to move away from you. Not just one, all of them. 1000 pounds each moving away from you – that’s a lot of momentum. You know what happens the fence? There is no more fence.

When I was a kid, my dad didn’t let me go in the cow pen, because he didn’t want to rebuild the fence every year.

Eventually he taught me how to do it. You go quietly, slowly… you open the gate, walk in, and just stand there. If you’re lucky, one or two will slowly approach you. Check you out. See what you are. Smell. Their noses are always wet. If you’re really lucky, you’ll get the tongue. Taste you. But you’re not one of them. And if you aren’t careful, you’ll spook them.

The ministry is always carried out on somebody else’s turf. Meaning this: People are always in various stages of suspicion of who you are. I mean, you really aren’t one of them. You must approach carefully.

~ Professor C. John Weborg on growing up in central Illinois in the 1940s. SPFM 5201 (Spiritual Formation)

LOLcat.

~ Dr. Kevin Vanhoozer on his smiling definition of a cultural meme, CC 5610 (Cultural Hermeneutics) lecture (google it if you’re not sure).

I already posted about my new roommate Mark, but haven’t yet mentioned Luke T. Johnson. He’s the other roommate. We’re currently studying in the library after we both stumbled away from our morning classes still sorta dreary. Luke likes ultimate frisbee like I like coffee, so he was out late (read: 1am) playing.

Luke just returned from four years as a youth pastor in Oregon. But he knows campus really well: he did his undergrad degree in youth ministry here. Oh, right, and started the men’s ultimate frisbee team.

And I think he’s currently posting (via his iPhone) on his blog about the Trinity. Mostly because I was reading about it in my textbook then of course had to complain about what was reading (is the Arian heresy REALLY that heretical?).

Anyway, meet Luke.

I got up this morning at 9:13am. After waking up twice at 7:30am and 8:35am. No alarm set. The plan was to sleep in, and it felt like I slept ’till like noon. But, yeah, I didn’t. It’s so funny being an “early” person for the first time in a long time…

My roommate Luke passed this to me. Released this summer by a Japanese tech company. In the techy-nerd world, I fit best into information architecture category, so this is worth hours of silly-grin enjoyment.

This picture is courtesy of my brother-in-law’s camera phone. If you mentally zoom in near the bottom of the middle window, you can see a famous head of hair from yesterday: General Petreus giving his report to Congress on the war in Iraq.

I haven’t had time yet to read the transcript of the General’s remarks. But if I were to just check the headlines via Google News, I’d wonder what actually happened. As a quick sample of headline spin in the press (from every side, mind you) – here’s a bunch of examples from yesterday:

US is winning the war in Iraq, General tells Congress
Petraeus Pleads for Six More Months
What Bush and Petraeus Won’t Admit
US surge plan in Iraq ‘working’
US Iraq Commander: Early Withdrawal Would Help al-Qaida in Iraq
Surprise – Not! Petraeus Claims Major Progress Following ‘Surge’
Day of Reckoning for Bush’s Iraq Strategy
Petraeus sees partial US pullout by next summer

and the one that probably got it right:
Political Jockeying Begins on Capitol Hill Ahead of Petraeus Testimony

So I’ve decided on Mondays I’ll start popping in quotes that I heard in the last week in lectures from professors or from my reading. Three simple (and rather unrelated) ones:

Nobody wants to be average or to have mass appeal. To call someone vanilla is an insult. Today, no company in its right mind would name itself General Motors or General Electric or General Foods.

~ Leonard Sweet, The Gospel According to Starbucks p40

God reveals, not interesting info about the universe, not answers for the ACT, and not even instructions on how to get to heaven. God reveals God. God reveals himself.

~ Prof. Brent Laytham, THEO 6330 (Christian Theology) lecture

I can’t get that drunk so quickly.

~ Prof. Klyne Snodgrass illustrates locution vs. elocution in BIBL 5150 (New Testament 1) lecture. Are we speaking about getting trashed in 5 minutes? Cops trying to arrest a drunken man in a short amount time? Or Klyne’s wife not having time to wait for her tea to cool before she heads for work?

Today in my Cultural Hermeneutics class, Professor Kevin Vanhoozer was introducing the idea of cultural “texts.” Not just novels or even the internet, but “texts” don’t even have to be in written language. For instance, a sculpture or event or song can communicate moods, ideas, worldview… you name it, they can be “read.”

Or, Dr. Vanhoozer pointed out, food.

Food as a cultural text?

Well, a text needs to be more discreet – have a beginning, middle, and end, for instance. Like a meal.

Can you read what a meal is telling you? Maybe. His case in point? A recent photo essay by TIME Magazine called What the World Eats. Amazing. Don’t forget to be embarrassed by the United States ones.