Fuller Lectures

In my previous two posts, I covered the morning part of the 2017 Heck Lectures at United Theological Seminary. Now we move to the afternoon, which began with worship, led by Rev. Dr. Sherry Gale. Gale drew on Elaine Heath’s God Unbound to address the question: How we are sustained in our faith? She noted how questions about law have remained at the center of the Church’s discords. No one is ever drawn to the Church on the basis of behavioral expectations. For the Church to maintain its witness, the whole of the Church must embody Galations 3:1-9 and 23-29 in ways it has not imagined before. That means fully including and embracing all in the church, regardless of gender, race, and sexual identification [her word]. For the afternoon session, there were two breakout groups. One was to invigorate those who have been serving in ministry for some time. The other was to encourage those who are new to ministry, or have not yet begun serving. Since I fit the latter category, I attended t...

In the last post, I set the background for Dr. Andrew Park’s understanding of han . He defined han as “the wound of victims that festers in their hearts.” This wound leads to a black hole of collapsed pain within sufferers. Not only does their Spirit become broken, but wounds caused by trauma lead to measurable changes in the brain. This wound manifests outwardly in many ways, including an inability to deal with stress, quick reactivity, self-blame, and numbness. In order to heal the brokenness in the lives of individuals, the debilitating wound must be allowed to surface. In Park’s understanding, han is both personal and collective, and its effects manifest both actively and passively, consciously and subconsciously. On the collective, active, subconscious level, Park argues that han can express itself as racial resentment. [NOTE: Members of our own MTSO community have recently signed the Boston Declaration . The Declaration decries, in part, “current trends in Evangelicalism an...

On October 18, 2017, I attended the Heck Lectures at United Theological Seminary in Dayton. MTSO was generous enough to provide me with an SEP grant, and the opportunity to share what I learned with our community. I was spurred by the theme of the lectures: renewal. United has embraced church renewal as a core commitment, and I was curious to see how this was reflected in their teaching, theology, and approaches to social justice. (Amos Yong’s Renewing Christian Theology was my doorway into renewal theology; that interest led to an invite to the Fuller Lectures. You can find my blog posts about that incredible trip below.) The learning and worshiping communities at MTSO and United have the potential to offer so much to one another. They are the closest United Methodist seminaries geographically (about a ninety-minute drive apart), with distinct theological and social focuses. In a time when our culture is caught up in such fraught, divisive political and social stances, how can t...

This was the final day of the conference. Today I will make my summaries of the sessions brief, to allow space for a conversation I saw as especially significant. Morning worship: Absent the Spirit of God, true unity cannot happen. When you start talking about taking down barriers between groups, the devil gets busy. Andrea Smith: Indigenizing Salvation Smith described how the history of missionization is a history of genocide. When speaking of revolutionary change, she asked, what if instead of focusing on all we must lose, we consider what we gain? She noted how a secular change of policies will be insufficient to destroy white supremacy; we must be born again, which requires a total epistemological and ontological shift. Ours is a God of the impossible. Through God, we can imagine the unimaginable. Andrew T. Draper: The End of “Mission”: Christian Witness and the Decentering of Whiteness Draper outlined five practices white Christians must engage in, in order to...

Elizabeth Conde-Frazier opened the morning by stressing that this could not just be another conference. We were all here to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit. She had each of us write down why we were here, so we would have to see it and hold ourselves accountable. Then we had to answer: what will I do when I leave this place, and with who? That way the next conference would not have to be about the same thing. With a bold disregard for time limits, she proceeded to outline the situation faced by Latin American clergy, and how racism continues to affect how we live the gospel in mission. She had so much to say; here are some of the points that stuck out to me as essential: Sin points to a breach in relationship. Repentance requires turning from evil and turning toward God. Turning away from God is apostasy. When we are in a state of apostasy, we live in idolatry, as we are living now. Turning to God is a process, not an event. White supremacy is perpetuated in colorblindn...

I will post a wrap-up at the end of the day, but a point was raised yesterday that's been sitting heavy. I wanted to leave it here to take up its own space. One of the panelists said that, to him, Christianity is dying to Christ daily. When the church forgets that and instead exists to perpetuate itself as an institution, it stops being the church and loses its prophetic voice. I'm curious about other people's thoughts. What do you think it means to die to Christ daily?

This week I am attending the 2017 Missiology Lectures on Race, Theology, and Mission at Fuller Seminary in Pasadena, California. First off, thanks to the Methodist Theological School in Ohio for granting me an SEP, and to Dr. Elaine Nogueira-Godsey for writing a letter of support. If you are an MTSO student and have not yet taken advantage of the SEP grant, do it ! It is an incredible opportunity to attend an event and share your knowledge with the learning community. This lecture series challenges the North American Evangelical community to address issues of race in terms of the church’s mission. I attended because I am interested in bridging the divides that polarize the church. Where are our points of agreement amid our differences? What do we all need to work on? How can we learn from one another, so we can more effectively act as the body of Christ in our hurting world today? The event started off Wednesday morning with chapel (as every good day should). Conference co-or...