wow-long time, short post

Good night.

I have not written in a very long time. I apologize for this and will try once again to make it at least a weekly thing. It has been crazy busy with midterms the past couple weeks and it looks like it will only get crazier in the near future. Oh well, I guess that is what I signed up for. I suppose the horrendous busyness is a good way to teach me to say no to things. For me this is a hard learned lesson, but one I am learning and that I know I will be thankful for in the long run. This is an opportunity to learn what self-care looks like in the midst of chaos. You know, it is kind of silly but the ELCA has this spiritual wholeness wheel that I have been trying to live by the past week or so. Last week was my synod's candidacy retreat and we spent a good deal of time talking about the wheel which has six parts: Physical, social, emotional, intellectual, vocational, and financial. Running through all of these is spiritual wellbeing. Now, I normally think stuff like this is ridiculous, but after just a few weeks of seminary, it is clear that so many church folk need to learn to better care for themselves.

I tell you that to tell you this: today was my first day at my teaching parish. This is a program where seminarians become a part of a single church body in the area. My context is a mission congregation called Jacob's Well. I feel like this is going to be a great fit and it will certainly get me started on my focus on mission and emerging ministries. Today's message was about economic justice and freedom (obviously, being Reformation day, this is not a "regular" Lutheran church). It really made me question my relationship with money which is something that I think about a lot. The question always bothers me: is it ok to still have plenty of money and just give, save, and spend it well or are we called to poverty? This is probably the question I struggle with the most. Jacob's Well today made one of the first decent cases I have ever heard for the first option of stewardship. You can check out their website for more info on the link above. Also, when you get a chance, look at this site. Talk to you soon.

Tim

pleasantly heretical

Good evening. I am just coming from what may have been the most fruitful conversation that I have had here thus far. It came in the most surprising place-from a class that I normally don't put a lot into or get a lot out of. The ruach blows where it pleases. Let me explain.

I haven't been completely honest in my conversations with many of you and in my blog. Seminary, in some ways has been quite a difficult adjustment. I think this explains how I have often felt here: creep. I have felt so out of place in many ways. Like a heretic. I get the whole Lutheran thing and I am more than happy to call myself a Lutheran because of the firm foundation in theology of the cross-what I think to be the most positive theological move that the church has ever made. My big problem has to do with what the church is teaching. In our affluent context, I don't think we need to have such an enormous emphasis on anselmic atonement theory. Great, we're going to heave. Now what? I get it, saved by grace through faith, but I am starting to see that, especially if the Kingdom of God, Jesus central message in the gospels, is to be even a partial reality, then it is time to focus our efforts on community and discipleship. Our churches need to be challenged to listen to what Jesus says in the gospels, and take Him seriously. We are so happy to hear about how we've been saved for heaven, but we are so offended when we are asked to widen our community or work for the hope of the proclamation that salvation is a present reality.

This may be disjointed, but in short, have been drowning in a sea of this orthodoxy here, finding few other friendly heretics with whom I can huddle. Fortunately, no, by the grace of God, I stuck around in my Ed 1 class after we were free to go watch the holy game tonight. The few of us who stuck around talked. I was given a glimmer of grace.

Our conversation boiled down to forming church around perichoretic relationships. This p word is a fancy and very useful way of talking about the Trinity. Mutual indwelling is the fancy term to describe the fancy p word and what that means is that all the parts of the Trinity are interconnected but have sure borders as well. As Tertullian put it, "three persons, one substance." I won't go much further, but I really encourage you to read about it. Moltmann writes extensively on the subject. In any matter, this image of the trinity affects our communities as we seek to form those in the image of the perichoretic trinity. Our communities are called to be places of mutual indwelling and respectful "interpenetration." (snicker at this point.) To put it in the easiest terms possible I will use Peter Rollins' paradigm shift. The old way that church was "done" was modeled in a "Believe-then behave-then belong" paradigm. In this, orthodoxy was key. We formed groups because we believed the same stuff. In this way, salvation is understood as an end event in which we go to heaven for believing the right things (sounds like works righteousness to me.) The shift is being made to "Belong-then Behave-then Believe." Like children born into a family, we first belong to each other and to God. Then this affects our ethics. Finally, we may agree on some points. From this point, we can respectfully disagree and know that none of us know. This may have been a rambling discourse, but it is all I can offer right now. Good night and good luck.