For Boston . . .

Annie MacNeal at Thursday's Prayer Vigil for Boston

On Thursday April 18, the historical date for President’s Day which is highly celebrated in Boston, Garrett-Evangelical students gathered for a prayer service to lift up those who were affected by the Boston Marathon Tragedy on Monday. Being one of the only students from Massachusetts at Garrett-Evangelical and having many friends who ran in the marathon, organizing this prayer service was much needed. Working with the Dean of Students, Rev. Cynthia Wilson, the Dean of the Chapel, Rev. Anne Ferguson, and a professor and fellow Bostonian, Dr. Mark Fowler, we were able to put together a litany that not only provided prayers, comfort, and a sense of community, but also explained what it meant to call Boston home.

As we gathered in Howes Chapel and shared an opening prayer, I started to feel the sense of love and support that I had felt isolated from, being far away from my family in Massachusetts. Dr. Fowler continued our service of prayer by explaining what Boston meant to him and to other Bostonians, New Englanders, and those who have connections there. He shared that Boston is not just a city or a place, but a sacred home. Boston has this extreme sense of community that is hard to explain to people who have not been there. Dr. Fowler continued by taking out his Boston Red Sox hat and explaining that even Boston sports teams are not just about sports, but are a symbol of hope, solidarity, and community. He then shared the passage from Matthew 5:14-16 which says: “‘You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hidden. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.” In Boston, we understand the city built on a hill to be a reference to Boston itself on Beacon Hill.

We continued the prayer service by lighting candles and speaking aloud names of those affected by the Boston Marathon Tragedy as well as others who have been affected by violence in general. We stood in solidarity with our brothers and sisters at Boston University School of Theology and lifted their community up in prayer. With a final word of prayer we concluded the service with words of comfort and embraces filled with love. Dr. Fowler and I turned to each other and both said, “I needed that.” As much as we both long to be home in Massachusetts with our friends and family, it was wonderful to know that we were supported by the Garrett-Evangelical community.

I hope everyone at Garrett-Evangelical, Chicago, and our nation will continue to hold Boston in their prayers in the days ahead and I am so thankful that I have a community here even though I desperately miss my community at home.

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Author:  Annie MacNeal, First Year M.Div. Student from Massachusetts 

Photo Credit: Kyle Reynolds, First Year M.Div. Student

What are you Reading? Part 6

In anticipation of summertime reading, we recently asked our faculty to tell us what they have been reading and the answers may surprise you! Throughout March and April we will be sharing their book recommendations on the seminary's blog.

This week's entry comes from Mark Fowler, Associate Professor of Church Leadership, and Mark Teasdale, E. Stanley Jones Assistant Professor of Evangelism.

Dr. Mark Fowler
Associate Professor of Church Leadership

David Goldsmith’s Paid to Think: A Leader’s toolkit for redefining your future.  BenBellaBooks, 2012.

The complaint of many students and clergy is that they are over-worked and overly tired all the time.  So many tasks are laid upon them to complete and they lose a sense of their ministry and calling. The title of Goldsmith’s book intrigued me as it seems to adequately distinguish the role of a leader from the endless tasks of managing the day-to-day operations of the church. It has often been my contention that without adequate leadership we will collapse under the multiplying weight of managerial systems that are offered to fix what only good leadership can hope to provide. Paid to Think is a great guide to the areas in which leaders should involve themselves.

Goldsmith’s approach is entitled Enterprise Thinking and brings together his work across a wide variety of institutions and businesses. The language of the book is not ecclesiastical, but the notion of enterprise is not foreign to the missional thinking of the church. The approach is to meet the current challenges of emerging from the former “silo” thinking and work patterns of former institutions to a missional/enterprise driven capacity. It is a great book of formation for those who are marinated in the scripture, theology, ecclesiology and practical polity of the church and can make the applications. The book is broken into four categories: Strategizing, Learning, Performing and Forecasting. Some of the sub-headings that I found helpful are “Managing Your Priorities,” “Leveraging Technology,” “Enhancing Global Awareness,” “Innovating Everywhere” and “Forecasting the Future.”

Leslie Griffiths’ A View from the Edge.  Abingdon Press, 2010.

This autobiography of Leslie Griffiths is a compelling narrative of a life of faith and hope that is an inspiration to us all. Lord Griffiths is currently the Superintending Minister at Wesley’s Chapel in London and was made a life peer in the House of Lords. Leslie is a tireless good will ambassador for the church and a dedicated missionary for Jesus Christ. Many of us know him from his endless travels to lecture, teach and spread the good news of the gospel in a rooted Wesleyan spirit. And, he is a gracious host to the Mother Church of Methodism.

However, this autobiography reveals a noble and courageous witness to the personal struggles and difficulties that append themselves to a rise out of desperate poverty, the dedication to a tireless commitment to education and the life of the mind, a sacrificial dedication to the missional life in Haiti and throughout the world and a steadfast witness for the Methodist Connexion while pushing its limits and boundaries in many places.  Lord Griffiths is an exemplary figure in the life of world Methodism and this volume is a priceless memoir.

Dr. Mark Teasdale
E. Stanley Jones Assistant Professor of Evangelism

I am currently reading David Copperfield by Charles Dickens.

One of my great joys in studying evangelism through a historical lens is the ability to read literature of the historical era I have under consideration. Since my own era of primary interest is the nineteenth century, Dickens happily falls within my bailiwick. Dickens offers keen insights into the values and patterns of life that pervaded Victorian England, including a quiet and abiding faith in God, a profound respect for the power of women to improve those within their sphere, and the central importance of having an unimpeachable character. Dickens is also a shrewd social critic. Following young Copperfield from a happy home, to the streets, to working man, to successful man, Dickens addresses the troubling irony of the grinding poverty experienced by some concurrent with the creation of vast political and economic machines to enrich the elite and educated.

What are you Reading? Part 5

In anticipation of summertime reading, we recently asked our faculty to tell us what they have been reading and the answers may surprise you! Throughout March and April we will be sharing their book recommendations on the seminary's blog.

This week's entry comes from Brooke Lester, Director of Emerging Pedagogies and Assistant Professor of Hebrew Scripture, and Nancy Bedford, Georgia Harkness Professor of Applied Theology.

Dr. Brooke Lester
Director of Emerging Pedagogies
Assistant Professor of Hebrew Scripture

David M. Carr, Writing on the Tablet of the Heart and The Formation of the Hebrew Bible: A New Reconstruction (Oxford: Oxford University, 2005 and 2011 respectively).

In these works, David Carr examines the apparent role of memory in the life of the ancient Near East’s professional scribal classes. In this view, to “study” a text was to have committed it to memory, and scribal education involved memorization of the culture’s body of “canonical” texts. He then examines the implications for any theory about the composition of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), with its clear and repeated evidence of manuscript collection, redaction, and revision.

As an educator in Hebrew Bible, I am excited that all of our field’s composition theories (from “JEDP” to present) are vulnerable to constructive critique under Carr’s thesis. As a special student of inner-biblical interpretation, I am intrigued that all theories of inter-literary allusion in the Bible—how biblical texts “read” (or recall?) other biblical texts—likewise require reassessment in light of Carr’s insights into “scribal culture” in the times and places that produced the Hebrew Bible.

Dr. Nancy Bedford
Georgia Harkness Professor of Applied Theology

I’m reading…

Elizabeth Bishop, Poems, Prose, and Letters (Library of America, 2008). I always have a book of poetry nearby, and this one includes some very beautiful writing. All the connections that Bishop had to South America make her of particular interest to me.

Augustine, De Trinitate. I usually also always have one of the classic treatises in theology on hand. In the last couple of years I have been thinking a lot about Augustine’s influence on the Western or Latin tradition, and how best to retrieve its liberating possibilities.

Finally, in the matter of mystery fiction/detective novels (always a must for me), I continue to savor the books about Sicilian Commissario Montalbano by Andrea Camilleri. Another series I like is by P. L. Gaus,  focussing on Professor Michael Branden. They shed light on many aspects of Amish and Mennonite communities in Ohio and their relations with the “English.” I recently also re-read Gaudy Night, the classic by Dorothy L. Sayers.

What are you Reading? Part 4

In anticipation of summertime reading, we recently asked our faculty to tell us what they have been reading and the answers may surprise you! Throughout March and April we will be sharing their book recommendations on the seminary's blog.

This week's entry comes from Barry Bryant, Associate Professor of United Methodist and Wesleyan Studies, and Jim Papandrea, Assistant Professor of Church History.

Dr. Barry Bryant
Associate Professor of United Methodist and Wesleyan Studies

I have been reading books on "jihad" lately in preparation for my sabbatical lecture, "Renounce, Reject, Repent, Confess, and Resist: United Methodist Baptismal Vows as Jihad." There are two books of note from that list. The first is Reuven Firestone, Jihad: The Origin of Holy War in Islam.

Firestone's argument is that jihad has not developed in a linear unanimous fashion but in complex and nuanced ways based on what he calls "non-parallel trajectories of influence." He treats jihad as a phenomenon and asks how and why the idea of jihad evolved in Islam. He suggests that jihad has been developed as the result of Islam's friction with its context. The ideology of jihad eventually became determinant to Muslim identity and this has been expressed in violent and non-violent ways. 

The second book is Jacqueline O'Rourke, Representing Jihad: The Appearing and Disappearing Radical. While Firestone looks at the development historically, O'Rourke looks at the more recent debates and critiques them, primarily with the aid of post-colonial theory and concludes that most of the descriptions of jihad have been tailored to suit the needs of Western ideology and its "war on terror." What results is a depiction of jihadist as terrorist without grounding the jihadist's stance within the particularities of his own oppression. O'Rourke refuses to use the simplistic categories of "good" and "bad" Muslim to discuss jihad. Instead, she discusses the idea of jihad as a way of envisioning future democratic projects and what justice might look like in a post-colonial world. What I have realized is that when jihad is understood in this way, it approximates what United Methodists vow in baptism to become a part of not just a post-colonial world, but to participate in the "kindom" of God and the renouncement and rejection of evil, and the resistance to oppression and injustice. 

Dr. Jim Papandrea
Assistant Professor of Church History

I just finished a novel called The Living Wills by Brendan Sullivan and Rick Kaemper. It's one of those books that starts out with what appears to be several separate stories of unconnected people, but by the end you find out how they are all connected, and it all comes together in a very satisfying ending.

But this book is also interesting because of the way it was written. One of the authors, Brendan Sullivan, is a motivational speaker and collaboration coach, and so they actually used corporate collaboration techniques to write the story. It was a real "practice what you preach" project.

I also just finished Defending Constantine by Peter Leithart. While some of his conclusions are not quite convincing, it's a book everyone should read because it does debunk a lot of the myths surrounding the person of the Emperor Constantine. The fourth century is a very complicated time in the early Church, and anyone who wants to understand it cannot simply accept the standard assessment of Constantine that makes him out to be the villain of the story who ruined the Church. Leithart doesn't say much that's new or shocking, but this book is arguably more accessible than some of the other treatments that cover the same ground. I recommend that people read it, and decide for themselves.

I'm just starting Christian Hymns of the First Three Centuries, by Ruth Ellis Messenger. It's an old (and probably outdated) treatment, but I'm prepping myself to read Charlie Cosgrove's book on the Oxyrhynchus hymn.