Finished up the Whitworth Institute of Ministry today. First, I am extremely grateful to Whitworth for giving me the chance to go for free, so that’s big. So, here are a few of my high/low-points of the week.
Highpoints
- Seeing friends and a few professors who I enjoyed sharing a few years of my life with at Whitworth, and other pastor friends and new friends. It was great to see Jen, Jaime, Kari, Keith, Jerry, Jim, Janise & Derek, Janie, Matt & Heather (& Evan) and Paul, Nancy and Josh and many more people.
- Getting to stay with Cory and Marlene. I got to spend some time getting to know them better. Cory also taught me a bit about open theism – and…I *think* I’m better because of it…not sure yet.
- Rich Mouw’s morning Bible studies were really great. He talked about some of his thoughts on common grace, how we should be looking for God in the world…one thing I’ll definitely take away from his talks was how we apply (for example, in the time of the Iraq war) the hermeneutic of suspicion to others (our enemies) and we apply the hermeneutic of charity to ourselves…that’s backwards. We need to switch those around – and realize this is not to just be used while we are doing about ‘war-issues’ – but ANYTHING and everything. We should always apply the hermeneutic of suspicion to ourselves (is there anything wrong/evil about my motives…looking deeply, is there really anything ‘wrong’ with this….) and the hermeneutic of charity to our opponent/enemy (always giving them the benefit of the doubt).
- Meeting Jack Fortin, who does work with Missional church stuff along with Guder from Princeton. Getting a chance to talk about rethinking the role of both the congregation and the pastor with Jack.
- Singing “You Are Holy” with all those who came together for this conference.
Lowpoints
- Talking with Jack about all of this Missional church stuff and hearing him say that Princeton is probably one of the seminaries that has been the slowest to come around to some of this stuff. I’m afraid Princeton is equipping pastors for a church that doesn’t exist anymore (in some places) and to fill a pastoral role that might have worked in the modern ’50s, but won’t necessarily fly in today’s postmodern culture. And I ask myself…”Why am I going to Princeton, again?”
- Being around – pretty much exclusively – conservative Evangelical Christians all week and hearing a lot of us/them talk about “those others in the denomination.” And that label is not one that only “I” am applying. Our evening preacher, Vic Pentz (Senior Pastor at Peachtree Presbyterian Church) prayed that “we conservative Evangelicals…are dealing with a lot of stuff with the liberal mainliners within our denomination and…” etc., etc.
- Talking to other Princeton grads and hearing things like: “Hey, you have no need to worry – Princeton is WAY MORE conservative than it was in the past – so it’s much *better* now…” That’s annoying – I chose Princeton (w/o doing my homework I guess) because I thought it was going to have some more theological diversity – which, I think it will, so…I just need to get over it.