Christian Higher Ed

During the past two days, I was privileged to announce the names of just over 500 students (minus the few who didn't show) who graduated from Bethel. We had beautiful weather in Northern Indiana for the ceremonies, and good times were had by all.

Of course I get all reflective on such an occasion. Many of the students walking across the stage were so great to have as students. We're very proud of the kind of people they've become. And there were a few of the others... I like the metaphor of the gardener or farmer for education. We're beyond the days of indoctrination and forcing students to adhere to sets of dogma (both religiously and disciplinarily); but there is a desired outcome, the kind of crop we're trying to raise. And so we aim to create the kind of conditions where that particular sort of crop flourishes. Using this kind of approach, there will be the rogue weed that sneaks through. But also our crop of graduates is healthier for having genuinely come to own the values rather than us force-feeding them.

Spiritual Disciplines

I just finished teaching a six week class on the spiritual disciplines at NMC. It was designed to be a sampler class, exposing people to various disciplines with assignments to practice a different one each week. I've done such a class several times now, and it never ceases to amaze me at the outset how few of the evangelicals who've spent their whole lives in the church know much about the substance or purpose of the spiritual disciplines. By the end, though, I've yet to have a member of such a class believe the spiritual disciplines not to be worth pursuing as a component of a life of discipleship. Thoughts about the spiritual disciplines will be a prominent feature of future Stump Speeches. I believe them to be crucial.

For now, here's a quote from Amma Syncletica, a fourth and fifth century Desert Mother:

“It is dangerous for someone not ‘formed’ by experience of the ascetic life to try to teach; it is as if someone whose house is unsound were to receive guests and cause them injury by the collapse of the building… For the mere articulation of words is like the inscriptions painted in perishable colours which a very short period of time has destroyed with blasts of wind and splashes of rain. Teaching that is based on ascetic experience, on the other hand, not even all eternity could destroy. By chiseling away the rough edges of the soul, the spoken word bestows on the faithful Christ’s everlasting image done in stone.”

The Life of Blessed Syncletica, trans. Elizabeth Bryson Bongie (Toronto: Peregrina 1999) v. 79, 50.

In the beginning...

"Words, words, words" -- Hamlet

"In the beginning was the Word" -- Apostle John

The proliferation of blogs seems to be saying something similar to Andy Warhol's Mona Lisa -- what is the point of a masterpiece if it can be reproduced ad infinitum? The explosion of words has rendered them almost meaningless. Who can hope to say anything worth saying? Who would read it? Perhaps it is enough that these words exist in cyberspace as electronic blips on a server somewhere. Are they ideas in the mind of a silicon god?

And yet write we must. There is something essentially human about keeping a written record of our thoughts. So begins my blogging journey...