Year 9 at IWU (2005-2006)

0. 1997, Year of the Hire
1. 1997-1998 First Year Schenck
2. 1998-1999 Married Schenck
3. 1999-2000 Go New Testament
4. 2000-2001 Williams Prayer Chapel
5. 2001-2002 The Year of 9-11
6. 2002-2003 The Greece Trip
7. 2003-2004 The Sabbatical
8. 2004-2005 The Israel Trip

1. I forgot yesterday to mention the senior prank in April 2005. They kidnapped the professors at 6am and brought us to Noggle for breakfast. You'll notice President David Wright in the picture. I also forgot to mention that he wandered through the Religion Division that year (2004-2005) on his way to be Dean at Azusa Pacific's Haggard School of Theology in fall 2006.

Dr. Wright had been instrumental in the explosion of the College of Adult and Professional Studies around the time I came to IWU. I've already mentioned that he saved the MA in Ministry program by putting it online in 2002. Then he handed the program over to Russ Gunsalus as Director.

He and his brother also had a hugely innovative idea that they worked on for a couple years. If I remember correctly, it was to create something like a roundhouse to convert bits and pieces of competencies into college credit. It was twenty years ahead of its time, and we can now elements of it in play today with badges and certificates.

2. I also forgot to mention a fairly important moment in the pre-history of the seminary that took place in the spring of 2005. My final posts will increasingly deal with the lead-up to the founding of the seminary.

In the spring of 2005, a seminary was in conversation with IWU first to move its campus to Marion and then perhaps to have a branch campus here in Marion. The president and dean of the seminary came to campus and some of us from the Religion Division met with them (including myself, Keith, and Steve Lennox, who was in his final year as Chair). It seemed like their proposal diminished the longer IWU interacted with them, perhaps because their faculty were not keen on moving.

At one point, a rather blunt (but completely fair) question was asked. We could see how associating with IWU's Religion Division would be beneficial to them. For example, it would provide them with a fairly straightforward potential stream of students. IWU was nearing the peak of its growth trajectory. It had far greater resources than the small seminary did. And the Religion Division was pretty strong on its own so could provide top flight adjuncts.

Thus came the question from someone. "I see how this partnership would benefit you, but how would it benefit us?"

You can imagine that this question was not received well, although there was no good answer in response. I suspect it marked the end of the conversation. But it presented the key question that, as usual, Keith Drury formulated crisply. "IWU has only one seminary card to play in the next ten years. Are we going to play it on this opportunity?"

3. In fall 2005, Henry Smith became president-elect. Jim Barnes would then step down and become chancellor in the fall of 2006. Smith asked Bud Bence then to serve as Vice President for Academic Affairs in the fall of 2005, a role he would fill until 2008. Bud had been Dean at Houghton in the early 1990s.

Meanwhile, Steve Lennox stepped down as Chair of the Religion Division and David Smith took on the mantle. David would then be Religion Chair until he left for Kingswood in 2010. The tradition of taking on the mantle of leadership for a time and then stepping back into teaching is a long one in STM. It is a model that I deeply admire.

I love the ancient story of Cincinnatus. He was a Roman farmer. But every once and a while, the Romans would come get him to lead them into battle. He would grab his toga, lead them to victory, then go back to farming.

4. The Religion Division added four faculty in the fall of 2005. Can you believe it? Two were a set--Elaine and Brian Bernius. Hiring husband-wife teams is tricky, both for the couple and for the organization. In their case, it has worked spectacularly. They are both Old Testament professors.

Elaine has served IWU well and is so widely respected at the university. More than one of us has tried unsuccessfully to prod her into leadership. In a pinch, she stepped into leadership of the General Education committee I think in 2010 and served in that role for seven or eight years. Anyone whose ever been involved with Gen Ed knows that it is one of the most contentious and sensitive domains of the university. The conflict can be exasperating. I am immensely impressed at how she navigated those years.

Elaine has since stepped down from gen eds, but she continues to shepherd one of its offspring--the First Year Experience (FYE). This concept is rather clever too. Rather than zap credit hours with a course dedicated just to orientation, it envelopes an existing requirement within a co-curricular package. Certain gen ed sections are designated as FYE. Good faculty mentors teach these sections and are given resources for pizza, coffee, and social gathering (and a little "cheddar cheese" for the trouble). These courses actually begin during New Student Orientation (NSO) week, so the student already has a support group before the first day of class.

Brian Bernius would eventually become a Division Chair after the Religion Division became the School of Theology and Ministry. I think this change took place while Dave Ward was Dean (2012-2016). Ward is of course organizationally brilliant, the kind of person who could easily be a college president. So he organized STM with two division chairs whose form relates to disciplinary areas but whose function relates more to a division of labor.

Interpretation. Brian is Chair over Bible, theology, and history in terms of content, but his function is much more to oversee the development of curriculum and assignment of classes. By the way, this division is called "Religious and Ministerial Studies" because STM has no desire for the Bible, theology, and history to become an academic ghetto. Keeping ministry in the title was important.

But in terms of giftedness, Brian is brilliant at curriculum. His economization of curricular atoms is so intertwined that he regularly has to give the registrar chocolate to atone for his sins. It's good for the students but sometimes requires some extra work for the infrastructure. The other chair is David Vardaman, over the Division of Practical Ministry. David will be taking over for me as Interim Dean this next year.

5. The Religion Division also managed to hire two intercultural studies professors in the fall of 2005--Norm Wilson and Steve Pettis. Steve stayed for four years, I believe, then left to pursue a business venture. Norm on the other hand has remained in STM to this day, now as Professor of Global Ministries.

Norm served for years as a missionary and has brought a passion for justice and diversity. His Spanish is peerless, enabling him to assist other areas like Spanish Teacher Education and Spanish. He has faithfully reminded us over the years of our need to recruit and retain diverse faculty. He is zealous to provide opportunities in urban ministry for our students too. He and I went up to Mick Veach's church two years ago to explore possibilities, and Norm has also tried to work out ways for our students to connect with Shepherd Community Church in Indianapolis.

I see that Bob Whitesel came on the faculty of the university full time in the fall of 2005. In Henry Smith's first year, the university would consist of three main units--the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS), the College of Adult and Professional Studies (CAPS), and the College of Graduate Studies (CGS). The Graduate Ministry department would now be in CGS, with Russ as Director and Bob as the only full-time faculty person (and thus faculty chair :-).

6. Now to the courses and students I taught in 2005-2006:

• Fall 2005 I taught General Epistles. Students included Jonathan Bell, Dan Bellinger, Chris and Rachel DeMarse, Aaron Duvall, Jason Farell, Amber Livermore, and more.
• I taught two sections of Honors College New Testament in the fall, with students like Stephen Cady, Brian Clark, and Jacob Hogan. I used deSilva's textbook. I changed textbook every time in part to get free books. I used Green, Achtemeier, and Thompson once. I used Luke Timothy Johnson once. I used Raymond Brown once.
• I suppose this is as good a point as any to mention that the Honors College would eventually create its own self-contained gen ed curriculum around 2009, I believe. It is therefore much more integrated than the gen ed curriculum of the broader campus. There are strengths and weaknesses to this approach, IMO. 
• I taught Intertestamental Literature again in the fall of 2005. Students included Mike Cline, J Fry, Ryan VanMatre, and more.
• I taught Corinthians and Thessalonians in the spring. Students included Scott Ferguson, Daniel Freemyer, Ian Swyers, Mark Ziegler and more (to get a sense of class sizes, I had 25 students)
• I also taught Hebrews in the spring with students like Brian Bither, Rachel DeMarse, Scott Hendricks, Abby (Hontz) VandenBosch, Jared Kendall, Ben Robinson, Stephen Mowat, and Paul Ward (34 students).
• I taught IBS in the spring, I think for the first time at IWU. (The name had changed at some point from "Methods of Bible Study" to "Inductive Bible Study). There were students like Zach Bardsley, Greg Boyland, Glen Davis, John Harmon, Kimberly Hunt, and Kip Shipley.
• I mentioned earlier that I used to tell prospective faculty that, if they could find 6 students and were willing to teach an overload, they could teach anything. This spring I taught an elective course, an advanced topic course in New Testament studies--"What are they saying about the New Testament?" We read Stephen Neil, Tom Wright, Jimmy Dunn, and more. I think Eric Key may have had something to do with prompting this course. People in the class included him, Brian Bither, Brent Dongell, Alan Downing, Elijah McKnight, Paul Ward, and more (18 students). 

7. This is the year that Jerry Pattengale tapped me to be "Director of Visiting Scholars," using money from a Lilly grant to bring scholars to campus. The themes mostly had to do with faculty and student development. For example, in October 2005 we brought John Braxton and Ellen Brier to campus. They spoke on topics like retention of students and how to develop in the area of scholarship.

I led the first Ash Wednesday service in Williams Chapel on March 1, 2006. I mentioned that Dr. Cherry has long since taken this over. Her worship students currently plan, run, and minister in the service each year... except for this past year when it fell on spring break.

I also found another infected memory. I haven't entirely untangled it yet. Somehow I thought I was leading a liturgical service when my Bell's palsy started. But all my records (including my blog) indicate that the "cathedral service" started in the 2005-2006 year. I had thought Judy Crossman asked me to do it, which makes sense in 2005 since it was this year that she left her Dean role at IWU and went on staff at College Wesleyan. Memory is a fascinating thing!

8. I joined Facebook on February 4, 2004, about four months after it became public. I see that Bethany Perkins made the first post to my wall: "Hey, Just thought I would put something on your wall! See ya and Tuesday!"

I blogged a lot of content that year, including:

• What is the "Wesleyan" at IWU? It was an attempt to identify what the Wesleyan identity of the college was. I've dabbled with this a lot, including a self-published booklet: The True Wesleyan.
• I blogged on tongues.
• I opened for a time cafetutor.com for instructional videos and such. YouTube eventually made that site obsolete.
• I evaluated different translations.
• I wrote one of my position pieces, "Wesleyan View of Communion".
• I wrote a piece on February 26, 2006, hinting at the idea of IWU starting a seminary, but it would get me into a little hot water with my friends at Asbury: "Whatever Became of Asbury?"

9. We did indeed have coffee chats with Dr. Henry Smith on starting a seminary in the summer of 2006. Dr. Smith was about to become president and he was praying whether starting a seminary might be an early contribution of his presidency. He invited a number of us over to the president's house to talk about it, and there was a flurry of emails between us promoting the idea. My thought was, "Real denominations have seminaries. Are we a real denomination or what?" For the second talk, Bud Bence invited a number of people over to his house.

10. From May 30 to June 1, 2006, the Wesleyan Church hosted a "Truth Conference." I gave a paper on "The Bible and Postmodernism." The paper before me was given by Carlton Fisher of Houghton. I was encouraged to know that his thinking and mine were largely on the same page.

11. There were a number of significant moments for my academic career that year as well. In the fall of 2005, I joined the steering committee of the Hebrews Consultation in the Society of Biblical Literature. Several of us, including David Bauer of Asbury and George Guthrie of Union, had proposed such a unit. But there was another group with a similar proposal, including Gabrielle Gelardini, Craig Koester, and Ellen Aitken. SBL had us merge the two proposals and Gabrielle would chair for the next few years.

I gave two papers for that beginning year. The one has since been published, "An Archaeology of Hebrews' Tabernacle Imagery." I am quite proud of that piece, even if it has not convinced anyone. The other was a state of the question piece.

My commentary on 1 and 2 Corinthians came out in April 2006, my first book published with Wesleyan Publishing house. I would go on to publish 20 more pieces with them, and they took over or printed in different versions four of my books with Triangle. So I currently have 25 books published with WPH, more than any other author they have.

Very significant to me was another conference at St. Andrews in Scotland in July 2006: "Theology and the Epistle to the Hebrews." I wrote a paper on Hebrews' theology of Scripture of which I am also very proud. It would be published in the conference volume.

I had a spark at that conference. To me it was one of those trajectory solidifying moments. In my early career, I had largely dated Hebrews to the later first century. But I had been dabbling with the idea that it might have been more of a consolation after the destruction of the temple. Richard Hays' paper was moving in the same direction.

When I taught a graduate class in Hebrews using David deSilva's book, I had also been struck with how Hebrews 5:11-6:2 really fit a Gentile audience more than a Jewish audience. In my early days, I mocked the idea that Hebrews might have been written to Gentiles. But these verses gnawed at me.

Then the spark. What if Hebrews was written to a group of Gentile converts who were tempted to abandon their faith after the destruction of the temple? It was exactly the kind of paradigm shift that you would expect to happen under the new perspective on Judaism that Jimmy Dunn, Tom Wright, and others had been such an integral part of. This is because the older paradigm could not see clearly that Gentiles would have seen themselves converting to a form of Judaism, not to a distinct religion. The temple would have been important to many of them just as it no doubt was to most early Jewish Christians. (Raymond Brown and John Meier's Antioch and Rome was a catalyst for me here as well)

I was desperate to publish the idea as soon as possible, because it was so clear a next step that I figured a whole wave of people would suddenly see it and want to publish on it. Of course I was wrong on that one--there was and is no such tide. In fact, I am quite an outlier here--especially in American circles. Either they don't see it or I am crazy. I'll let you decide. :-)

I worked the new idea into the revised publication of my dissertation in 2008, so I did get it out in nuce. But it has taken me 13 years to get the fuller form out. It's depressing but it takes me 10-15 years to get my scholarly work from concept to print, unfortunately.

Angie went with me to Scotland. She took a day trip to Glasgow during that time to see some art, which she loves. By the way, Ardelia Williams was always helpful to her in helping her know what to see on these trips (e.g., which museums to visit). Angie also got to meet some Hebrews scholars, including the up and coming David Moffitt and Amy Peeler. They are now the leaders of the field!