In general, the way theological education is offered favors the pre-service Christian leader. Seminaries utilize a University model of education whereby students come to be trained as professionals before launching out in to the world and life of ministry. There is little or no thought given to whether or not these individuals are called, gifted, or spiritually formed in such a way that they even ought to do the job they are supposedly being trained for. Consequently, word has it that about 50% of the leaders Seminaries graduate aren’t doing “ministry” five years later. Here, the mindset is, “Once we figure out what it means to be successful, we’ll be able to live it out and help others do the same.” Sadly, the observation above and the disconnect between ideas and reality discredits this mindset.

At the same time, there are thousands upon thousands of churches out there who are convinced that they have the gospel all figured out and they know basically everything they need to know about what being the people of God in the world entails. These churches (and therefore the people they mean to serve) suffer for lack of reflection, insight, and the sort of spiritual refinement which comes from deeply wrestling with who God is and the implications which flow from that. Here, the mindset is, “As long as we are achieving our definition of success, we can rest in the assurance that we have it all figured out.” Equally as sad, the fact that most people either can’t tell a Christian from anyone else or they can and it makes them sick, discredits this mindset as well.

Both these mindsets are woefully deficient.

Allelon, a group I have been enamoured with for some time now seems to sense this unfortunate misalignment and is trying to do some things to move toward a more unified and holistic system. Below are two videos in which Alan Roxburgh (on staff with Allelon) is interviewing Ryan Bolger (professor at Fuller Theological Seminary) about the relationship between the missional church movement and theological education. If you care about such things, both are worth your time. If you don’t care about such things, then I doubt you bothered to read this far! Either way, I’d love to hear your thoughts and reactions.

I touched on this issue in my masters thesis and will include some of my, more constructive, thoughts in a future post.

Related posts:

1. Missional Church and the Future of Theological Education: Follow Up
2. The Missiological Future of Theological Education – Introduction
3. The Missiological Future of Theological Education – Training Reflective Practitioners

 
Today was a monumental day in the life of JR Rozko. With the push of a (send) button, a project, quarter, school year, degree, and season of life was brought to a close. Told you it was big!

I finished my masters thesis this morning and sent it off to the professor who mentored me through the process, Dr. Ryan Bolger. The writing process was a good one for me. As I read and researched, my topic seemed to get bigger and bigger – making it harder and harder to narrow it down, but also more and more interesting.

It was only today that I finally decided on a title, “Restoring Hope to the Church in Western Culture: Exploring the Relationship Between Culture, Theology, and the Church.” The paper ended up being divided into three main sections – one on the Church and culture, one on narrative theology, and one on missional ecclesiology. The main authors I interacted with in the thesis were Nancey Murphy, Lesslie Newbigin, James McClendon, and Darrell Guder as the editor of Missional Church. As I was writing I realized that the direction I had decided to go intersected at many major points with the rest of the work I have done throughout seminary. So, I decided to choreograph the thesis in such a way that I could reference all my other major writings as appendices.

All said and done I have a 374 page project (including 17 appendices) which represents a compendium of my integrated thought on a missiology of Western culture. I’ll try to get it uploaded soon and provide links for anyone who wants to give it a glance. The actual thesis (minus appendices) is only 70 double-spaced pages.

What now? I get to relax and enjoy the next 10 days with family and friends while I am in Ohio. On Dec. 18th I’ll be heading back to California to celebrate Christmas with family out there. Maria returns from Norway just before New Year’s and we’re excited to be reunited and celebrate the new year together (guess this paid off!).  In January she will be continuing her MDiv program at Fuller and I will have the opportunity to partner with my good buddy Wess as TA’s for Ryan’s class, Church in Mission.
I’ll be looking for work on top of that, so if anybody who reads this knows of anything interesting in the Pasadena, please let me know.

Related posts:

1. Jesus – A Theological Deconstructionist
2. For the New Year
3. Toward A Missional Vision of Theological Education: Conviction Shaping

Don’t get me wrong, I really like Oslo (quite unlike middle school), but there is so much that is different.  The words are hard to pronounce, most of the signs are written in Norwegian, the streets, instead of being aligned in some sort of grid, are kind of maze-like, making it tough to remember how to get around.  Everyone speaks Norwegian.  Thankfully, almost everyone is fluent in English as well, making communication at least possible, but at the same time I have come across some Norwegians who are hesitant to engage in conversation in English because they are shy about how well they can speak it and others who kind of have an attitude about it (not unlike arrogant Americans who look down on those who only speak their native language).  Like the rest of the world (except for the US), Norway operates on the metric system – liters, kilometers, meters and so forth.  Oslo is extremely expensive, moreso than either southern California or New York City.  A gallon of gas (here that would be 3 liters) is going for about 6 bucks (actually 12 kroners per liter).  A 20 oz. bottle of diet Pepsi is a little more than 3 dollars and a pair of jeans will run you around 100 bucks.  It’s not cheap living.

On the upside, there is a great public transportation system.  The bus lines, subways, and trans all operate as a single unit.  Meaning, if you buy a weekly or monthly pass, it is good for any of those methods of transportation.  The city is nowhere near as crowded as cities in the states.  It is cleaner and less noisy as well.  People walk or bike everywhere and over long distnaces.  It kind of feels like Disneyland with some cars thrown in. 

Maria bought me a bike and a map, so I have been busy figuring out the city and where stuff is.  There is something cool to see everywhere you go.  There’s a river with trails along either side, a mountain in the distance with a ski jump from the Olympics.  The harbour is not far away.  More centrally, there’s the Parliment building, the Royal Palace which you can walk right up to, massive cathedrals, and other sites of architectural note.

I have spent a good bit of time at MF, the school Maria is teaching at.  They have granted me “hospitant” status which means I have access to all the resources of the school – library, Internet, workout facilities, and even classes.  Starting tomorow I will be attending a biblical thelogy course on synoptic and pauline theology (in English).  I have also met a bunch of Maria’s friends and a number of them have invited me to play futbol (soccer) with them.

This truly has been a great experience so far.  I have been made keenly aware of just how much of a disservice is done to Americans when they are led to believe that theirs in the culture to which all others ought to aspire, or even worse, the only truly valid one.  There is so much more to the world than America and American culture. 

I’ll definitely have more to say about that and about Oslo in general later (more pictures as well), but that should do for now.

Ha det bra!

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I never thought I would go to a Christian college, but in so doing, I found myself a part of a community of friends who shaped the way I think, see, and dream.

I never thought that when I graduated I would step into a youth ministry position at a megachurch, but these were three of the most formative years of my life.

I never thought I would relocate to California to attend Seminary, but the time I have had to spend with my family out here, living in a culturally and ethnically diverse community, and the friendships I have made are all some of the most important things in the world to me.

I didn’t plan for any of these things, they all sort of snuck up on me unexpectedly. In each instance, I ventured into stages of life that were both scary and held little intrinsic promise.

Many people told me that going to a small, Christian college was a horrible decision. Everything inside of me told me that accepting the position at RiverTree was a bad idea because of how far in over my head I would be. Coming to Fuller tore against every fiber of my being – it made so little sense.

What do all these things have in common then? They all share the common feature of being what I (and others) discerned to be the leading of God.

Sometimes I think about where I’d be, what I’d be doing, and who I’d be if I had decided to do what made sense and what was comfortable rather than taking risks and doing be best to follow what seemed to be God’s leading. I feel like I know 2 things for sure…

1) God would still be present, He would still love me, and He would steal work in and through me
2) My experience of Him, His grace, His provision, and the excitement of what it means to follow after Christ would be incredibly lessened.

I don’t think God’s promise to be with us is necessarily contingent on whether or not we take the risks and challenges he places before us, but like any good teacher, God can only give us what we are willing to receive. Once when I was completely stressing over a major decision I had to make, a good friend and mentor asked me, “JR, how many people do you know from Scripture that felt ready and equipped to do what God was asking of them.” None. There were none. Abraham, Moses, David, Isaiah, Mary & Joseph, the disciples, Paul, even Jesus himself, they all balked at, questioned, or otherwise demonstrated the insecurity they felt toward the task to which they were called. Why should we expect any less?

Heaven forbid that I ever lack the courage to follow where God seems to be leading – that I trade the depths to which I might know and expereince God in all his fullness for the sake of doing that which makes sense, seems logical, and ensures safety and security.

Related posts:

1. (More) Things I Never Thought
2. For the New Year
3. Ten Things You Should Not Expect From Missional Churches

This post is well over due, but better late than never, right? One of my professors at Fuller, Ryan Bolger, who is an international authority on the Emerging Church discussion/movement and who has taught me a great deal about what missional engagement within Western culture is all about, had the chance to offer some thoughts to the rest of Fuller’s faculty on what the future of theological education might need to look like if it is to continue to be of service to the Church in Western culture, and the world.

One thing he said was, “I dream that my seminary will move away from the professional training model and will equip entire communities for mission.”

You can read the rest here.

I think what Ryan is dreaming about and articulating is a welcome advance toward the more complete kind of intergration between Church, community and theological education that I talked about here.  It’s this kind of model that gets the pastor/teacher inside of me all excited.

Related posts:

1. Yeah I’m Sappy, Step Off
2. Community, Seminary and the Church
3. Alan Hirsch – Making Missional Marketable

Community at seminary is something of a mixed bag. I was just commenting to my roommate Ryan the other day, “I finally figured out what the problem with seminary is. It’s not college.”

In college relationships came first while school work and classes were a distant second. In college, if an unexpected nice day were to come around, attending classes would be quickly replaced by spontaneous games of football, basketball, angle ball, or any other activity that involved

1) being together
2) being outside
3) having fun

We really don’t have that luxury at seminary. For starters, the very nature of what we are doing is temporary and people default to being guarded about their time and levels of intimacy. Also, this ain’t cheap. Most of us have college loans and the reality of paying those off as well as the new ones incurred in grad. mandates that we take what we are doing pretty seriously.

The upside is that I can relate to the people at seminary in a way that I have never (and probably will never) been able to relate to anyone else. We are all currently more focused on the importance of theological, cultural, and psychological dimensions of the Christian faith than we might ever be again. We can have deep and profound conversations – conversations that have the chance of changing us in a moment and the kinds of conversations that have the potential to change the entire trajectory of the church in the world. That sounds kind of dramatic, but the reality is, mainline denominations don’t hire pastors with out MDiv’s and most other church traditions (mine is an exception) always look more favorably on those with theological education and pastoral training. Not only that, try being a theological educator without a PhD! Like it or not, me and my peers at Fuller and other comparable seminaries around the globe (though mainly in the US) are indeed the future shapers and guardians of the Church. So maybe it’s not such a bad idea for us to take what we are doing seriously. I’m off point…

Here’s my tension. I’m not at all convinced that the model of theological education that I am currently a part of is really the best way to get at it. In fact, I’m not even sure how biblically faithful it is. Wouldn’t it be better to integrate theological education and community/ministry involvement? Some seminaries (Fuller and Bethel for sure) have a couple degrees that you can complete w/o leaving your home context. You fly in periodically for intensives and do the rest of your stuff online and at home, but I’m not sure this is all together good either. Afterall, this education is still individually (not comunally) concerned and focused.

Here’s where I am going. I am hoping for a future in which the church communities we are a part of take primary responsibility for theologically educating and equipping their congregations. I think there’s a name for that – oh yeah, discipleship. Sounds strikingly like an idea that some Jewish carpenter had about 2000 years ago, man was he ahead of his time.

Back to the point. Community is important. Christian/Church community that much more so. Not only should people not have to leave the communities of which they are a part in order to receive quality theological education, I think the very idea is endemic to God’s vision for the Church.

Here’s what I am saying – I want a rich and challenging expereince of Christian community and quality theological education and I think the Church is the answer. Let’s go!

Related posts:

1. Discussing Church, Christ, and Community
2. Toward a Missional Vision of Theological Education: Community Rootedness
3. Northern Seminary & 3DM: Discipleship Oriented Theological Education

The other day I found myself lamenting the place I am in right now (Seminary) and even more to the point, the people I have to listen to (professors: theologians, missiologists, philospohers, etc.). I found myself remarking, “I just want to be ‘in the trencehes,’ doing ministry, involved in peoples lives.” And then I thought of this scene from A Few Good Men. Don’t ask me why.

You will undoubtedly remember the scene. Tom Crusise screams at Jack Nicholson, “I want the truth!” Nicholson snaps back, “You can’t handle the truth!” He goes on to inform Cruise, “I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly phathom. You weep for Santiago (you lament Seminary and professors) and you curse the Marines (and you scorn the very people that make it possible for you to do what you long to do).” Nicholson goes on, “You don’t want the truth. Becasue deep down, in places you don’t talk about at parties, you want me on that wall. You need me on that wall.”

It’s true. I only have a desire to do ministry and live out my theology because others before me spent the time, energy, and money to learn, study, research, and teach. As one who desires to be in the trenches and involved in peoples lives, I must admit that the only reason I am willing and able to do so is because of the very people and institutions whom I was lamenting.

Then the voice in my head said, “Ah, but thanks to the miracle of the printing press, you have God’s Word, the Bible in your hands. Better than that, you have the Holy Spirit in your heart. That’s all you need really.” And I was quickly relieved. Until I realized that this is the same defense of the Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and every other deviant sect of quasi-Christian faith who claims that its teaching is the true one.

So I did a 180. Christian theologians, missiologists, ecclesiologists, philospohers, psychologists, sociologists, etc. and the institutions they form, far from being superfulous or even necessary, are to be coveted, cherished, gleaned from, sat under, and yes, scrutinized, critiqued, never idolized or deified, but always respected and admired. Theirs is a great task, a task that were we as Christians to abandon would soon provide for the poorest excuse of Christian faith imaginable.

So, to all those who at times, like me, think that we should just chuck the system and get out there and “do it,” let’s not be too hasty. Come to think of it, I hope that I can remember that there was probably no greater scholar and theologian that Jesus himself – and it had nothing to do with the fact that he was God. It had everything to do with the fact that he sought to love God with all his heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Related posts:

1. Community, Seminary and the Church
2. The Emerging Guild of Missionary Theologians
3. The Theology of Linkin Park

Not gonna be much here in the way of coherence, so take it as you will.Classes this quarter have been great – demanding, but great. New Testament 2 is a lot of rehashing of stuff I have learned before with a gem or two thrown in every once in a while. I suppose I should admit that we are looking a good bit deeper into some of the issues we just glossed over in college. Theology and Culture has been much better than expected and it has me constantly reflecting on the relationship between the two, especially in terms of learning to see how God may be active in the “non-church” culture. Religious and Cultural Environment of Christianity has been helpful in terms of understanding things with a lot more historical background; and Anglo-American Postmodernity makes my head hurt but I am probably learning the most in there.

I am also getting the opportunity to be a teachers assistant (TA) for one of my former professors in her class, Spirituality and Mission. This is a great opportunity as I will have the chance to help facilitate a class discussion over a novel that students will be writing a paper on and then I’ll get to review and grade those papers. I should also have a hand in grading the final research papers at the end of the quarter.

I am really starting to sweat the questions I need to ask as I come closer to graduation. Where will I go? What will I do? Is this church community I have in mind just a dream? Am I gonna be able to pay off my loans?

To these I have recently added the questions: Do I want to leave? Am I ready to separate from significant relationships that are just beginning to take root? How will I cope with not being in an environment that fosters loving God with your mind through serious theological study, reflection, and dialogue (this may be one of the toughest ones)?

With all that in mind, feel free to pray for me at your leisure.

The past 2 weeks were filled with guest lecturers on the Fuller campus. James Dunn (New Perspective on Paul), Richard Hays (NT Scholar from Duke), and Geroge Marsden (American Historian from Notre Dame) were all here sharing some great things with students and faculty.

My friend Wess and I decided to take the plunge and get our own websites. His is gatheringinlight.com and mine is lifeasmission.com (maybe you’re there right now!). I’m kinda excited about some of the options I may have for this site down the road. I have already moved my blog over there (if you’re at blogger then you’ll know that I am posting to both currently, but sooner or later, it’ll all be over there).

I am playing in Basketball and Volleyball intramural leagues this quarter. Actually, I have a b-ball game in live 7 hours. Better get some rest. Night.

Technorati Tags: random, life, prayer, school, future

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Thanksgiving with my family was great. I went out to my dads on Wednesday and just hung out that evening and all day on Thusday. Laurie made an unbelieveable meal and then we all took naps. It doesn’t matter how cliche that it – it’s still great.

Yesterday was just about as perfect as you can get as far as weather goes, so I decided to go for a long run. I ended up going 7 miles! That’s a new long distance for me. Today, I am paying the price with sore shoulders and a sore back.

I succeeded in getting an enormous amount of writng and studying done this weekend which should help the next 2 weeks be a bit more bearable. I finished 3 major papers – “Affluence and the Kingdom of God” for my Biblical Foundations of Mission class, a reflection paper for my class on Isaiah which I wrote as an imaginary dialogue between God and myself, and a paper on the missiological, christological, ecclesiological, and leadership implications of Paul’s letter to the Colossians. I think I feel pretty good about them, but I guess I will know for sure how to feel about them when I get my grades back (wink, wink).

So, all is good in So Cal.

Peace.

Related posts:

1. Winding Up

Related posts:

1. Catching Up