Assessment

Okay, so now that grad school's over, I'm kind of in the process of really assessing where I'm at vocationally, and trying to get a bigger picture of what's going on in our church.  It looks like there are some areas that have been outside of my youth ministry domain that I'm going to be more involved with in a leadership sense.  One of those areas is the big tent we call "Adult Education".

Adult Ed really includes all the stuff we do to help people grow and mature.  Sometimes it's a gloss for the official, set times of bible study that we've committed to as a community, and you can see how "education" is our choice term as opposed to "discipleship".  That language actually says something about our approach, and that drives me a little nuts, but for now it's the terminology we've got.  I'll have to save my beef with the terminology, and the priorities it betrays, for another day.  

Tonight what I want to write about is our need to develop clear, attainable, measurable goals for our discipleship process, even if we leave it in educational terms for the moment.  Right now what we have by design is a perpetual curriculum, one that rotates through the canon on a set time frame (six years), and then begins the rotation again.  Other items are thrown in as needed in between the canonical series, and there are occasional elective classes as well, but the rotating curriculum is the heart of the program.  

It seems that there are some assumptions that go along with this.  First of all, it seems to assume that you never really master the subject.  Now I think there may be a place for balance here, because I know that there is some truth to the thought that there's always something else to lear, other levels of meaning to grasp.  However, I think that as it stands, part of what we communicate realistically is that we don't really expect learners to, well, learn.  We rather expect that six years from now they will likely need just what they are studying now, and again six years after that.  Now that's not completely true...in reality each section of the canon isn't necessarily touched, so there would be some variety next time around.  

However, I still think there is an important issue with the church where we become so fixated on our imperfections that we forget to make room for the possibility that God can actually do something with us, so that over time we do actually become different.  So we do become more virtuous, we do become more wise and understanding, our knowledge of the scriptures does grow.  When we insist on remaining self-effacing and allow our pessimistic anthropology dominate our theology of sanctification, then we become content with the status quo.  "We're not perfect" becomes an acceptance of the status quo rather than a statement of intent.  

Our failure to assess movement and growth is somewhat rooted in this issue.  We don't really expect there to be much growth.  We almost assume growth to be impossible.  

More later.  

Brian King, and the Price of Friendship

My brother called  told me that an old friend, Brian King had died yesterday (Saturday).  He was an amateur pilot and had crashed, I think while traveling from Georgia back to his home in Birmingham.  Besides all the others who will mourn him, his wife is left with the care of their kids...I think they had four, but I'm not sure. 

Brian lived in birmingham and went to Church with Hovie.  He's worked with teenagers for as long as I've known him, at first professionally and then as a long term volunteer, and he was a pretty hilarious person for the role.  He would say and do some of the craziest stuff.  Not much of a filter, and he had no problem putting something awkwardly bluntly.  I think maybe a fifth of the time I was ever around him I was embarrassed, but somehow it was okay, because he really made me laugh.  

When I was ( I think) a freshman in high school, some of my friends in florence went to church where Brian was the youth minister, and so I got to hang out with him from time to time.  Once we went on this ski trip to North Carolina, probably one of my first really long church youth group trips.  I think if I looked back on it now, from my professional lenses, the trip might have driven me a little crazy, but at the time it was just one of those things I kind of needed.  He really did a pretty awesome job of making me feel really welcome, like I belonged, and for an awkward fourteen year old kid, that was a pretty significant thing.  Even this past year when I saw him we still laughed about some of the things on that trip, including...

On the way back, we stopped at a McDonalds outside Chattanooga.  I don't know why I was held up...maybe just last in line or something.  Anyways, the bus left and I got left behind.  Keep in mind this was 1992 or so.  Which means that even though (amazingly) I think he had a cell phone, none of us kids had them, and I definitely didn't have his number.  Which meant that I was kind of screwed, but no sweat, I was a pretty composed kid.  I got some change and called home, and my folks stated digging up his cell number, and I gave them time to find it, and called them back from the payphone to get it.  It was  a pretty shady area, and I remember this guy came up to me at the payphone and asked me if I was wearing any gold.  that was weird, particularly if you knew me as a high school freshman.  Gold?  Really?  

Anyways, by the time I got the number and called Brian, they were just a minute or so from being back to the McDonalds...maybe even pulling up.  I guess I was there 25-30 minutes.  

We laughed about that for a long time then, and the memory of it for an even longer time.  It makes me sad that I won't be able to laugh with him about it again for a while.  But I'm glad that I experienced Brian.  

That's the real kicker of life:  we are allowed to love, to share friendship, to laugh, but always it is only for a little while.  Brian's "little while" was shorter than it should have been, but even if he had lived a nice long life, it would only have been a little while, "a breath" as scripture says it.  So we live and love always knowing that the price for friendship, the price of love, will always be the same.  We cannot help but pay it: we will part company and bid each other farewell.  even those of us who believe that the parting is for a different sort of "little while" must acknowledge the grief that comes with the parting.  

I think it requires some faith to believe in the promise of reunion.  But that measure of faith is a subject for a different day  what I'm thinking about tonight is the faith that says that even though we must part company, even though we pay the price of farewells, love and friendship are worth the price.  

I believe that they are worth the price.  

The world will miss you, Brian King.

Movies my Wife Will Not See This Summer

Okay, so this weekend marks not only graduation weekend for myself and my fellow HUGSR students, but it also is the opening weekend for Iron Man, which in my view marks the beginning of this year's summer movies.  Now, as a fan of both comic books and their typically cheesy movie adaptations, I'm pretty psyched about going to see this.  Who knows if it'll be great or not.  I think the most likely bet is that I'll feel similarly, though perhaps on a more muted level, as I did with Transformers.  Beyond that though, it just kind of makes me excited for all of the fun movies coming out this summer.  

The catch is that my beautiful wife has made a vow to herself that she isn't going to watch movies in the theater anymore.  This isn't for ethical reasons, just her own viewing displeasure.  So, since I have not made any such rash vow, it seems as though there are a limited number of options:

1.  I will go to the movies this summer primarily with other people.

2.  She will break her promise to herself.  

3.  She will try to coerce me to not watch movies.  (and fail at this attempt.)

I'm not sure which pony I'm betting on here, but the summer is a long enough stretch to test her endurance on the matter.  

Here are some things I'm looking forward to watching, in no particular order.  Perhaps I should make a priority list.  I know others will pop up.  

Iron Man

Hellboy 2

Indiana Jones

Incredible Hulk

The Happening 

Prince Caspian

I'd also like to see Red Belt, but I don't think I'd call it a summer movie.  It's on the edge.  Looks good though.  

*Update*

Add to the List:

The Dark Knight  (an obvious omission.)    

Redeeming Ecclesiastes

While I was grousing about the chains grad school put on my reading life in the last post, I should have mentioned that every once in a while, a book would come along in my required reading that would truly influence my thinking.  This actually happened fairly often, and I have to admit that while there was probably some chaff, the crew at HUGSR really exposed me to some pretty  provoking material.  

One of these books was a neat little tome on the book of Ecclesiastes that I was assigned this last semester.  For a long time I think all I'd ever gotten out of Ecclesiastes was a pretty pessimistic take on life, something like "Life is short, and while I tried to make it worthwhile, it's all meaningless anyways, so obey God."

Now there may be some truth to that, but this sweet little book by James Limburg really provoked me to a different understanding of the book.

Basically, my new lens for Ecclesiastes is:  "Life is short, and sometimes doesn't make sense.  But, it's all a gift from God, and God expects you to receive the joy within it and live it as well as you can.  So understand your own mortality, and make the most of your life while you can."

Now that may have some elements in common with the other lens, but its enough of a different spin to really make for a different experience with the book altogether.  It's really interesting how the book has been left to die by the modern church.  I think that may be because it , in this reading reuses to give up on the present for a pie in the sky view of the future.  I think this book challenges us not to just become more "spiritual", but to truly embrace physical, bodily life.  

So, I feel like Ecclesiastes used to be a dead book to me, but now it's one of my favorites.  The book's been redeemed for me, brought back into the canon.  It's amazing the difference a new interpretive lens can make for a book.  I wonder what else in the canon I need to start looking at with a set of interpretive lenses.  What am I missing...what other lost books need to be redeemed?    

A Reader's Freedom

After a long seven years, I'm graduating this weekend with my MDiv.  It's been a good process for me.  the formal academic discipline imposed a clear set of expectations for learning, and that's good when I tend to be on the undisciplined side of the ball generally.  

however:

Grad school has a major paradox in the fact that it forbids success to anyone who does not genuinely love to read.  If you don't like to read, a Masters is simply not for you, my friend.  but the paradox comes in the fact that the demands of school impose very tight boundaries on your reading choices, so that pure pleasure reading can become a practical impossibility.

So, over the past seven years, I've been able to sneak a book here and there, over christmas break or occasionally in the summertime (my hardest time to read vocationally).  But I've generally felt like any time I was reading something that wasn't listed on a syllabus, I was committing literary adultery.  A furtive moment with a book before bed or while pooping simply was all I have really allowed myself.  

And thus my gratitude for my freedom renewed.  

Now I feel like I can regain the part of myself that absolutely loves to read.  I used to read voraciously:  at lunch, before bed, in the morning, in my office, pretty much anywhere and everywhere.  I have sincerely missed that part of myself.  But no longer!  I have jumped into Gabriel Garcia-Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera, and anticipate some morning time with Herodotus in the coming days.  

Coming days?  Nah.  Right now.  Enough blogging for this morning...I've got a book to read.  

I do solicit recommendations.