Travel Logged

Garrett-Evangelical has been proud to offer a variety of travel course opportunities for our students each year. We are pleased to be able to share some of our students travel stories over the next few weeks.

Becky Wilson (second from the right)
in Bethlehem

One of the many things that stood out on my first visit to the campus of Garrett-Evangelical was a flyer promoting a travel course to Rome. While I have not yet experienced Rome, my experience as a seminarian has been marked by travel.

By whatever means available from my home in Detroit to Evanston.

By train to downtown Chicago for urban ministry conferences at SCUPE.

By bus through the Galilean hillside.

On foot through an Israeli check point from Bethlehem to Jerusalem.

And last summer, by plane to Philadelphia for the travel course, United Methodist Studies: Wesley and the 19th Century.

This was my first trip to the City of Brotherly Love. I ate my first cheese steak, tasted soft pretzels from several vendors and preached a sermon from the pulpit of Historic Old St. George’s United Methodist Church.

Travel courses are a lot of fun. They are also hard work. Each student was required to preach two sermons on the trip. No big deal, right? Except for the fact that the assignment was to preach contemporary interpretations of John Wesley sermons. I considered dropping the course when I was assigned The New Birth. (Seriously, I did.)

Standing in the chalice shaped pulpit of Old St. George’s in the summer heat was a daunting task. Once my body adjusted to the pulpit’s swaying I found my voice and delivered a sermon to my professor and classmates. In this preaching moment I felt a powerful connection to the history of my denomination and my family roots, which are half-grounded in Methodism.

Originally hesitant to embrace the topic, but in the end, encountering a new birth of my own.

Traveling to Lovely Lane Chapel, Old Otterbein, Long’s Barn, Cokesbury College, Mt. Olivet Cemetery, Gettysburg and Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, I was reminded of the importance and the power of seeing life and learning history from a location other than our own backyard.

It is one thing to read about the evolution of Methodism in America, but it is another thing to travel through it.

It is one thing to read about Jesus’ travels in and around Galilee, but it is a totally different experience to put your feet in the Sea of Galilee and contemplate your future ministry.

It is one thing to read about violence and oppression, but it becomes real in a whole new way when an Israeli soldier’s gun brushes against your leg as he walks the aisle of your tour bus.

As I begin my final year of seminary, I realize how fortunate I am for the opportunities to travel and experience the world outside of the classroom. All of my courses at Garrett-Evangelical, not just the ones involving travel, have filled me with a boldness to preach The Gospel and with an eagerness to transform the Church and the World.

I am also eager to visit Rome.

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Becky Wilson is a third year Master of Divinity student with a concentration in Urban Ministry.