WANTED: A Challenging and Stretching Experience

Ultimately, I chose Garrett-Evangelical for several reasons. First, Garrett-Evangelical’s reputation preceded it. At least one of my undergraduate classmates pursued graduate study at Garrett-Evangelical and recommended it highly. One of the things I was seeking was a high level of academic rigor, because it is my lifelong dream to pursue doctoral studies. As I have learned from these first few weeks of “introductory” classes, academic rigor is one thing that Garrett-Evangelical has in spades.

More than just academic rigor, though, I was in search of an experience that would stretch me and expose me to different ways of thinking and seeing both God and the world.

You see, before coming to Garrett-Evangelical – in all my studies, which include three different degrees in religion or ministry related areas – I had never had a professor who didn’t look a lot like me. Eight years of Christian theological education from people that looked and talked like me. Don’t get me wrong, those were good years and I cherish the knowledge I gained from them...but I didn’t want more of the same. Instead, I wanted to hear from professors who didn’t look like me or talk like me or share a similar story with me.  Again, Garrett-Evangelical has that in spades.  It is obvious from even a quick look at the website.

Here in my first semester, I have two classes on campus. Both are taught by African American professors. It is challenging and exciting to engage learning from a different perspective, and I am grateful to Garrett-Evangelical for providing me the opportunity to do so.  Moreover, I eagerly anticipate the years to come when more and more such opportunities will present themselves.

When I began searching for a school at which I could complete my Master of Divinity studies, I had two main standards: academic rigor and a multi-cultural learning environment.  Oh, and it had to be close to home. I was concerned initially that I would have to sacrifice one or the other in order to stay close. I needn’t have worried.

Garrett-Evangelical is already proving to be just what I was looking for, and I can’t wait to see what the rest of the journey holds.

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Joe Boggs is a first year, Master of Divinity student at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary.

Do You Remember Why I Called You?

Starting my third year (and final - woo hoo!) of my Master of Divinity degree, I have heard about calling... a lot. Today I heard yet another sermon on calling from Rev. Dr. Mark Fowler of Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary. It really was a fantastic sermon but after three years in seminary, the word “call” almost becomes cliché when it is constantly brought up in sermons during chapel, when we dissect and analyze it during VFCL, and over and over again you get asked the “tell your call story.”

Don’t get me wrong, our call stories are incredibly important and at the church where I am doing my field education this year, we’re hoping to spend a lot of time looking at the intersection of vocation and faith through our preaching, small groups, and other areas within the life of the church. But as a person in ministry, especially as we trudge through the ordination process in our respective traditions, calling can be a huge pain.

Calling can be exhausting, frustrating, sometimes even disappointing. It often seems to go from this brilliant flash of light illuminating the path before us to a dark rain cloud making us wet and cold but always reminding us that it is there. Sometimes the longer it takes to fulfill that call (i.e. the longer it takes you to get ordained) the more annoying and frustrating calling can be… And God help you if you’re calling isn’t crystal clear and you see not one path in front of you, but many.

So back to chapel and the sermon. Dr. Fowler truly did preach a fantastic, powerful sermon on calling. Yet, for the first half of the sermon, all I could keep thinking in my head was, “Yes, I know I’m called. I’ve done the whole ‘Here, I am. Send me,’ business. God, could you tell me something I don’t know?”

You would think I would have learned by now never to ask questions/make demands of God…

All I know is that the next thing that popped into my mind was, “Do you remember why I called you?”

Clearly, God takes after my professors who love to answer questions with questions (or maybe vice versa?).

And so I sat there, in the Chapel of the Unnamed Faithful, with the sun shining through the stained glass windows, surrounded by friends and fellow seminarians, a very impassioned sermon going on, and it was like everything faded away in that question.

Do you remember why I called you? 

Seminary has made me talk for so long about “what” I am called to or “when” I was called or “how” I was called but I don’t remember ever being asked “why,” why was I called. Why was I called at this time in my life? Why was I called to this thing or that thing? Why me?

Sure, we’ve talked about gifts and graces for ministry but I never found that those “spiritual gift inventories” to really be the “why” of calling – more of a justification for choosing to follow a calling.

Do you remember why I called you? 

As that question kept playing over and over in my head, I went back to all those moments where I felt called. The points of time in my life that I’ve written about in so many papers, told so many times to peers, professors, and mentors. I’ve talked about my love of the sacraments but God didn’t call me because I love the sacraments. I’ve talked about my gifts I've been told I have for preaching and teaching, but God didn’t call me because I can preach a good sermon and I can teach. Because really, those are things that have grown over time as I’ve 1) learned more about the sacraments and theology of the sacraments and 2) done more preaching and teaching to develop those skills.

It was during the pastoral prayer before communion that I remembered why. My calling, or at least that first nudge in the direction that would eventually lead me to this time and place in my life, came way back in high school, somewhere in the freshman year era. It was shortly after I had been asked to give my “testimony” at youth group. I didn’t know theology (or at least didn’t have the big words to articulate it), I barely knew the Bible, and I had only been actively attending church for less than a year. The only thing I had was a story of a truly hard-knock life and a story of how my life was better with God in it. From a preaching standpoint – it was a terrible sermon from the shaky, nervous delivery to zero exegesis – but those stories were why I was called.

 Do you remember why I called you? 

I was called because I had a story and more importantly, I had a story to share. A story of a girl who, to quote Rihanna (and this will never happen again), “found love in a hopeless place.” A story of a girl who discovered the transformative love of God for her and for all people and vowed to make sure everyone knew they were loved, both by her and by God. I was called because somehow God saw that despite having gone down a rocky road time and time again, I still had the capacity to love and that love for others and the love that I have experienced from God has continued to drive me ever since. That love helped me to slowly overcome my fear of public speaking so that I can give half-way decent sermons. That love drove me to Oklahoma City University for a BA in Religion, drove me to Garrett-Evangelical for an MDiv, and drives me to still pursue ordination. And that love has burned a story into my heart that, after all this academic study of the Bible, church history, church leadership, pastoral care, and years of deconstructing and reconstructing my theology, still rings true and I still believe must be told.

Do you remember why I called you? 

To be honest, I had forgotten. I had forgotten that, to be a bit cliché again, Jesus loves me, this I know. I had forgotten that story of love that set me on this path in the first place. I had forgotten why God would call an imperfect, broken misfit like me. God called me because God saw an imperfect, broken misfit who loved people, loved God, knew that God loved her, and had a fire inside her soul driving her to want others to know they were also loved because the world is full of imperfect, broken misfits who need to hear that message, who need to be not only told they are loved but shown they are loved.

Do you remember why God called you?

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Tasha Sargent is a third year Master of Divinity student at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary.

A Prophetic Transformation: Reflections on FASPE

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

It’s difficult to convey the intensity of the FASPE (Fellowships at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics) experience of spending two weeks with 35 people - seminary students, medical students, group leader, faculty, historians, guides - traveling, eating, rooming, and discussing together the role of our professions during the Holocaust. We travelled to Berlin, Krakow, Oswiecim, and Auschwitz; places where the Holocaust was planned and executed. “It’s a complicated and simple story,” as one of our lecturers described this history. It’s a story where we confronted the devastating realization that the annihilation of the Jews of Europe was not a secret, planned by a cabal of thugs and madmen. Regular folks - preachers, librarians, engineers, secretaries, students, teachers, lawyers, doctors, all made decisions that led to their participation in, or sometimes resistance to, the persecution and genocide. The ethical decisions made early on were not decisions about genocide; they were decisions about prejudice, about submitting to the government’s requests for information, about what you might be willing to accept in return for the offer of security during wartime, for power and wealth and influence. These are decisions similar to ones we all face today and have no way of foreseeing how they will escalate. 

I began the trip feeling entirely inadequate and unprepared for the emotional and intellectual challenges ahead, praying for God’s word to be a lamp for my feet and a light for this journey. I ended it in deep and humble awareness of the transformation within me and around me among the FASPE community that God brought together in this brief and incredible time. The faith transformation took hold of me in Krakow, after studying several days in Berlin. During our walking tour of that beautiful ancient city whose Jewish community and culture seemed to be destroyed, the weight of the history we were studying sat heavily on my heart. That evening I joined FASPE friends for Shabbat services at the one synagogue where Jews worship in Krakow today. The Rabbi below welcomed in the Sabbath with joy and with children running around his feet. Afterwards, he invited us to dinner at the Krakow JCC where people streamed in, women set up additional tables in the hallways, and brought out more plates of food: this community is alive! Alive and singing. Alive in the beauty of the blessings and in the rhythm of the songs and in the faces of those around me; here is the truth of God’s mercy and God’s eternal promise of new life. I have been transformed by experiencing a taste of the Jewish spiritual traditions which sustain and foster life and healing even in the midst of overwhelming death and brokenness. The next day I wept and prayed with Jesus in Wawel Cathedral, where a prayer card spoke to me - “we beseech you stranger, to harken as the wounds of your Lord speak silently to you, ponder if you have shown them proper gratitude.”

The prophetic transformation took hold of me as I left Auschwitz, stepping through the places where barbed wire and guns prevented so many people from ever, ever walking away. Because I have read the words of those who could not leave; and met their presence in the barracks, the latrines, the cells; met their absence in the rubble surrounding the gas chambers; because God brought me here now to hear and to see, I cannot step away without embracing God’s call to speak peace. To be the presence of mercy. To involve myself in the life and community of those who are the most disempowered, the most suffering where I am now. To stand against wickedness: the wickedness that steals in to my own heart when complacency and fear and covetousness encourage silence, and the wickedness that steals into society and becomes systematic evil when complacency and fear and covetousness encourage political complicity by individuals and institutions.

FASPE confirmed that if I am to be a Christian leader then I must speak and act in ways that de-legitimize systems of oppression today in my community. We cannot preach a gospel of liberation in our churches and not act against the injustice of U.S. systems of incarceration. We cannot preach God’s love poured out over all creation without also breaking down the barriers we’ve tried to erect against God’s love for people, based on their sexual orientation or what we perceive to be gender difference. We must challenge ourselves and our congregations to examine Christian texts that have legitimized antisemitism, and not be complacent that the legacy of Christian anti-Judaism is over. We must ever claim our responsibility to listen to and walk with the most disempowered people in our communities. And as we open our hearts to God’s call on all of humanity - even inadequate, unprepared me - to live out our questions, our laments, and our thanksgiving in community together then we will taste God’s glory.

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Mary Rawlinson is an MDiv student at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary.

The FASPE is an intensive two-week fellowship program that examines the roles played by clergy in Nazi Germany and during the Holocaust.  This historical examination is used as the foundation from which to discuss the moral codes that inform and guide human action, and to consider the fundamental ethical issues facing the clergy today.  FASPE’s integrated approach includes historical, theological, philosophical, and literary sources; survivor testimony; and on-site workshops in Berlin and Auschwitz.