In a recent article in Slate.com Paul Krugman “Progressives, To Arm!” argued that this is not the time to for progressives to “be nice” but rather to be clear and forceful. I wonder aloud what this ongoing unsettledness in the American mind means for the church in the United States for the next decade.

As I think of what I want for Christmas I am reminded that Christmas is about giving not about stuff. It might be appropriate to give a gift to Heifer Project in my name. You can also give a gift to Bethany Theological Seminary to the Bible Resources fund to help a poor seminarian. This should be the time that philanthropy should be more in the forefront of our hearts and mind than getting neat stuff.

In June I posted a gift registry but I thought I might try for a revision. Christmas or any gift giving process is supposed to be an exercise in intimacy. That is to as, to what degree does the gift giver know the gift recipient well enough to give an appropriate gift.

Well while that is true sometime it helps to be clear about one’s passions and aspirations. So here goes.

One of my hobbies is cooking. Some cooking gifts might include a:

fish spatula

enamel cast iron dutch oven

a large pepper grinder, (like G. Garvin has on his show Turn Up the Heat)

pizza stone

pizza paddle

I also enjoy vintage science fiction television shows such as 7 Days and Alien Nation. The television show Alien Nation has the whole series as well as the television movies on DVD now. Who wouldn’t love that?

There are magazines the I enjoy but seem more decadent than I am willing to subscribe to such as Jazz Times and Southwest Art magazine.

I just got back from a wonderful time at the concluding meeting of the Lexington Seminar. Here are just some of the pithy learnings I came away with.

The dysfunctional/old model of church was the church of cousins and practices more than the church held together by common theology. Mac Warford

It is a major challenge to build a hospitable space fore the other when you have a strongly sectarian ethos. Anonymous

A faculty in a school that is committed to public theology should be thoughtfully outspoken. Craig Nessan

The faculty handbook is largely about faculty dynamics. It can be a vehicle to reclaim faculty vocation.

A task for a seminary is learning how to use time effectively enough that the faculty and board have time to look ahead.

There is nothing in our training that makes us gifted in running good meetings.

Sometimes the issue of time, especially time in meetings is a coefficient of trust. When trust is low then everyone wants to be in on very decision.

One seminary looked at the question of who should be around the table, that is questions of teaching faculty, administrative faculty, staff etc. ? They came up with the idea of a senior distinguished who can teach as much as he/she wants with a reduced compensation package that will allow them to draw their social security benefits. This is an interesting idea.

Barbara Brown Taylor has written a powerful book, Leaving Church. A Memoir of Faith. She has appeared on the Religion and Ethics Weekly several years ago. They returned for another profile in July 2006. Her interview with National Public Radio uncovers other dimensions of her book. She describes in the last chapter a church meeting where the host asked her to share with the group “What is saving your life now?” Her answer to this is the conclusion of the book. She does not share a long list. There are for her at the time of the writing of this book five items on the salvation list. What is your list?

1. Teaching school is saving my life now.
2. Living in relationship with creation is saving my life now.
3. Observing the sabbath is saving my life now.
4. Encountering God in other people is saving my life now.
5. Committing myself to the task of becoming fully human is saving my life now.

My list is something like this:

1. Teaching is saving my life now.
2. Writing is saving my life now.
3. Reading is saving my life now.
4. Collaborating for the church that is coming into being is saving my life now.

Check out other blogs and what they have to say about this book. Such as PreacherMike. I would recommend that you read Rev. Rachel.

Frank Luntz a thoughtful pollster interviewed for the PBS program Frontline. is the author of this book. Terry Gross interviewed Frank Luntz for NPR’s program Fresh Air. The interview has more heat than light and would lead a potential reader to avoid this book. Luntz cannot eschew his partisan edge in this interview as well as he does in the book itself. The writer time and again brings the reader back to the observation “its not what you say but what they hear.” What biblical scholar has not seen this at work. What you say does not belong to you. “Once the words leave your lips they no longer belong to you.” (xiv) In fact today often authorial intent is hardly the criteria for a superior reading of a text. Frank Luntz begins with George Orwell’s observations about language in his preface.

Ten rules

1. Simplicity – use small words

2. Brevity – use short sentences

3. Credibility

4. Consistency

5. Novelty

6. Sound and texture

7. Speak aspirationally

8. Visualize

9. Ask a question

10. Provide context and relevance

Common mistakes

assuming knowledge or awareness, namely the use of abbreviations and jargon

getting the order right prevents misunderstanding

knowing the audience prevents mistakes the effective language with men and the effective language with women is different.

frame things toward the key values of your audience for instance its about the children

Kathy has said that I am hard to shop for. I have said the same thing about her. As we talked about this in the proximity of the upcoming wedding of our only daughter we realized that we could take a cue from her. Mary often has a list and always has a plan. She has a bridal registry for her wedding not unusual in fact quite in keeping with her personality so it has occurred to us, Kathy and I that we should have a similar registry.

Now during this same time Kathy and I have been learning more and more about fundraising. One of the ideas we heard was that you should approach a donor with a wishlist of various prices so that the donor can find something that fits what they want to give. So in that way we are merely doing in our family what we hope to be doing in our various jobs.

So here is the list. Maestro please.

First are the cooking gifts. A you know I enjoy cooking.

Fish spatula

cast iron dutch oven

enamel cast iron dutch oven

pizza stone

pizza paddle

large pepper grinder (like G. Garvin has)

But life is more than just food.

Derek has my DVD want list already. It includes only the old titles of mostly Westerns.

subscriptions

Jazz Times

Cooking Illustrated

Real Simple

Once again there is a fascinating post on the Society of Biblical Literature site. This time the author is William P.  Griffin. He ask the question about the role of vowel pointing in teaching biblical Hebrew in his article Killing a Dead Language: A Case against Emphasizing Vowel Pointing when Teaching Biblical Hebrew. Dr. Griffin has provided a stimulating essay. On the whole I agree that
the emphasis on vowel pointing  provides a drag on the beginning Hebrew
class. There are, however, some students  who want to have every element
of a verse or word explained. These students are quite persistent and
often find it unsatisfactory to hear that the rules that govern the
changes they observe are more arcane than they need to know. So when I
teach introduction to Biblical Hebrew I have to make a strategic choice
about which segment of the class will be the most uncomfortable. I would
appreciate hearing what others are doing in similar situations.

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Danny Zacharias has given a stimulating piece on the Wired Scholar: Five Free Tools You May Not Know About. This is part of the Society of Biblical Literature site. He guides the reader to four Google resources that include Google Books a collection of published full-text searchable books; Google Scholar provides an online bibliographical database; one can also use Google Docs as an online office suite that includes a word processor and spreadsheet; Google Notebook provides a way to clip online content and place in in a convenient notebook. The final resource is not part of the Google tools suite. Library Thing approximates tools like Endnote that function as a bibliographical database for a scholar to organize her or his library.

We owe Danny Zacharias a debt for pulling this easy to read article together and introducing many biblical scholars to vat resources outside out immediate context of Richmond Indiana.

This week persons from around the Church of the Brethren gathered together for a Consultation on Ministerial Leadership in Elgin, Illinois. The Office of Ministry of the Church of the Brethren General Board and the Ministry Advisory Committee sponsored the event. One should note the Mary Jo Flory Steury and Margie Paris and other General Board staff made this a successful event.

The participants were carefully selected to represent as far as possible the variety of ministry formats alive and well in the Church of the Brethren from free ministry, team ministry as well as solo and multi staffed compensated ministerial leadership patterns. The careful observed would have picked up three innovations:

• emphasis on group process instead of expert testimony
• artist in residence
• an outside observer, in this case Keith Harder form the Mennonite Church USA

The even began with a reception with good food and fellowship. Peg Lehman sang beautifully in the background as the participants had an opportunity to connect and re-connect. After the evening meal we began with worship that challenged us to dive deep, deep into conversation and theological reflection for our time together. We also broke into small groups to share our fears, that formed the waves of our dive. This was a long day but a good beginning.

After a good night sleep Dan Ulrich lead the group through reflection on Matthew 28:16-20; John 15:1-17; 1 Peter 2:1-10; and 1 Timothy 4:1-16. Dan has done extensive work on ministry and early Christianity. Nonetheless, he lead the group through a process that honored the wisdom of the participants. After the small group process reported out Dan observed five consistent themes:

• centrality of Scripture
• centrality of Christ
• following the model of Christ in humility and authority
• ministry as a community of practice that models behavior for participants
• a missional perspective
• forward looking and flexible

After lunch Jonathan Shively lead the group through a series of theological reflections on our experience of ministry. Jonathan has done excellent work in the area of evangelism from an Anabaptist perspective but this was the weak to listen so he ably facilitated the process of allowing the participants to speak. Jonathan’s goals was to promote maximum conversation so he did not shepherd the group to an easy resolutions but rather invited us to live into the openness of the conversation. During this time several things came to the fore.

• There is no one format of ministry in the Church of the Brethren, in fact there is no one format of congregational ministry in the Church of the Brethren.
• The commitment to visible unity and awareness of apparent diversity in the denomination was also there but not as a theme or even an abiding concern.
• There was a perception that 80% of the congregations in the Church of the Brethren are not large enough to support a seminary trained pastor. What was not said very often but I am sure is part of the reality that the participants brought is that some congregations make the choice for someone outside the M.Div. trained community as a decision not just as a matter of financial expediency.
• Other topics included orthodoxy, women in ministry and the need to make concrete the challenge of Matthew 28 and the Book of Acts.

On Wednesday morning Tara Hornbacker lead the group through a World Cafe conversations that matter process. She took the secular process and “brought it to the water three times” that is to say she used Scripture to help spark the discussion. She started the group with the story of Mary and Elizabeth and invited the participants to describe a time in our life in ministry were our heart leapt. This I think for many of us was a high point. As I think someone commented that it was good to have time to celebrate moments in ministry more than we complain about moments in ministry. She lead us through the issues of calling, training, credentialing and sustaining ministerial leadership. Later in the afternoon the participants broke into four groups corresponding to the issues. The small groups dreamed about alternative ways of approaching these topics. In the evening we heard the reports.

Also we heard from the observer, Keith Harder of the Mennonite USA. He observed that the design of the consultation was innovative. He wondered aloud why we did not go to Ephesian 4 equipping the saints as a place to begin. He was struck by our ability to candidly talk about our fears. But he asked what happened to those fears; we did not in a programmatic way resolve the fears listed. He suggested that we live in an age of anxiety. Fears seem to fit more as an expression of the world not an antidote to it. He set up a set of what ifs:

• we would started with the context of ministry in the twenty-first century
• we had focused on the vision and purpose of the church
• we had focused on the purpose of credentialing

He pointed to one of the interesting tensions in any working ecclesiology. This is the tension between the notion of set apart ministry and the affirmation of the ministry of all. Mary Jo thanked the participants and promised to share with us the notes form the conversations. Then we closed with worship that brought us back from the deep dive of conversations.

Kudos to Jonathan, Tara, Dan, Kathy, Paula Ulrich, and MattMcKimmy. They did a good job.

Learnings for Bethany

The emphasis was that there is a need for a range of models for bi-vocational. For instance Missouri-Arkansas does not have a single full time pastor in the district. Our students are a minority in the Church of the Brethren. We are a Church of the Brethren seminary.

• We are moving in the right direction to the degree that we are working on distance education.
• We are moving in the direction of this group as we continue to work toward a missional perspective on the task of theological education.
• We are on the right track, and need to redouble our efforts to recruit ecumenical students from around the nation and around the world. While the theme of nurturing a culture of call, I think it would be a mistake to think that a culture of calling will mean a major rise in the number of Church of the Brethren seeking a seminary education.
• We may be approaching a time when we like ESR are training persons who should anticipate a bi-vocational life?
• How do we do all this and continue to nurture a local campus?