continued from last week
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1. There was a provision at Asbury that, if a student was on a more academic path, they could exchange some of the pastoral ministry classes for Bible or theology. Similarly, if someone had taken some of the required courses in college, you could take more advanced classes.
With the second provision, I did an independent study in Aquinas rather than take an introduction to theology. I took Philosophy of Theism instead of Philosophy of Religion. I took Patristics instead of church history. I had taken the introductory courses at Central.
In terms of opting out of practical ministry classes, I petitioned out of Servant as Liberator, the social justice course at that time. I also had taken evangelism with Bill Philippe at Central so I petitioned out of that course as well.
This allowed room for two extra Bible classes. I mentioned the independent study I did in the summer with Dr. Bauer on Acts. In the J-term of my final year, I did another independent study with Bauer on the book of Hebrews.
2. My interest in Hebrews had come from my holiness background. I had been told that Hebrews was the Leviticus of the New Testament. And Leviticus had a lot to do with holiness. Hebrews of course had that great holiness preaching text -- "Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man will see the Lord" (12:14, KJV). There are also verses about being sanctified and perfected through the sacrifice of Jesus (10:10, 14).
I had highlighted these verses in orange in college as having to do with entire sanctification. By my final year of seminary, I knew that they were not about a second work of grace but about the purification that happens when one first comes to Christ. True, Hebrews insisted one must remain pure thereafter as well. Still, Hebrews seemed like a challenge, perhaps the most challenging book of the New Testament (perhaps outside Revelation).
Two years later when I was applying for doctoral studies at Durham, Hebrews seemed a good topic to run by Jimmy Dunn. Along with Acts, I probably had a more thorough knowledge of its contents than any other book. It wasn't necessarily because I loved it more than Paul. I would say I loved Paul more. But it seemed my best hand to play.
Bauer had also introduced me to a key article by C. K. Barrett on the eschatology of Hebrews. In it, he had argued for a synthesis of the Platonic and the eschatological. I included that in my letter to Dunn. I was not aware at the time, I don't think, that Dunn had put forth a similar thesis in his Partings of the Ways. Dunn liked my proposal, I suspect thinking I might be able to support his hypothesis in greater depth.
I was privileged to meet Barrett when I was in England. I mentioned that his chapter in the Festschrift for C. H. Dodd had a significant impact on me. He smiled and said that he wasn't sure if he still agreed with it -- or even fully remembered what it said.
3. Barrett was an interesting person, it seems to me. He was a Methodist preacher. However, someone told me that the small, blue-collar, grassroots congregations out in the countryside sensed a disconnect between his books and preaching (sometimes formerly coal-mining communities--Margaret Thatcher had brought their epoch to an end). Of course, I have no sense that Barrett was in any way liberal in the vast scheme of things (Witherington studied with him, I believe).
But I understood this disconnect. It seems to me that, when you have come to know so much that is under the hood, you realize that much of the car's inner mechanics are not particularly helpful to the person who merely needs to drive the car to get places. Perhaps Barrett in his own way, not entirely unlike Boers, thought that it was the surface story that those congregations needed to drive the car of faith to where it needed to go.
I want to be clear, though, that Barrett believed in the central story--the cross, the resurrection. In that he was quite unlike Boers. He just had a much more precise conversation when he was presenting papers or writing commentaries. That's my take.
4. I also finished out the practical ministry courses that final year. I had Wayne Goodwin for "Servant as Leader." (As an aside, I found that "Servant as" curriculum a bit cheesy in title.) I remember three things from the course. First, he loved a systems approach to management. I was never quite sure what the big deal was. It seemed like common sense to me.
I remember him setting out five leadership styles. It was something like autocratic, charismatic, laissez-faire, democratic, and systems approach.
Lastly, he was enamored by Walter Ong's recently published book Orality and Literacy. It stayed with me as I moved more deeply into the field of biblical studies. I had first learned about paradigms and paradigm shifts -- Thomas Kuhn in other words -- with a 1 hr capstone we had to take at Central. That was the only class I had with Martin LaBar at Central.
Ong basically argued that a paradigm shift began to take place in the early 1500s between civilization consisting of an oral culture toward a more literary culture (primary to secondary orality). With the advent of computers in the late 1900s, people said we were at the dawn of an information age. But things have changed dramatically even since then. Is this a digital age? Will it be the age of AI?
5. I took Servant as Proclaimer with Don Demaray. I thought it was a great class. I had taken preaching with Ken Foutz at Central and had enjoyed that too. I think I've mentioned that I preached all over the South as a student, mainly in North and South Carolina. We traveled, mostly singing, from Virginia to Florida to Tennessee.
Demaray had us preach the pieces of a sermon and then finally the whole one. I changed my topic at the end. He had loved the build up pieces on running the race of faith. I still got a good grade when I switched at the last minute to the problem of evil, but he wished I had finished the other one.
He would begin every class by saying, "Let's pray that this will be the best class ever! Why not!" I always thought that was funny. They can't all be the best class. We would all explode.
6. We were required to do supervised ministries, one church and one institutional. I did my church one as a summer internship at Zephyrhills Wesleyan Church in Florida. My brother-in-law Eduardo Garcia was pastor in those days. Ironically, I heard that the church is closing today. Sad. Zephyrhills has exploded as a retirement community. My father-in-law has a place there.
I did that a couple of summers while my sister and brother-in-law were in the Philippines. It was a good experience. I enjoyed preaching. I didn't enjoy visitation so much but that was very much expected. I think I've mentioned the visitation I did with Jim Wiggins when I was at Central.
Another supervised ministry I did was at a nursing home near Shakertown. I enjoyed the case studies. I did one on whether you should correct someone who was having delusions of being somewhere special, like at a beach. It seems silly to me now. Of course you shouldn't correct someone who is not in complete control of their faculties.
That's the conclusion I came to then. But I was coming out of a mindset with a very impoverished understanding of fact-telling. There's a difference between what is known and what should be said. My wife insists I am not "on the spectrum," but the fact that it's ever been a conversation probably says something. My mother used to say, "You don't have to tell everything you know."
My first and last "integrated reflection community" (again, who came up with these names?) had Stan Beck as supervisor. Skip this paragraph if you are prudish. We always laughed about him because he insisted on asking everyone about masturbation. I nicknamed him "Stand Back." Those were naturally funny conversations for a 20 year old (I started seminary at 20).
7. We took Myers-Briggs in that first course, I think I've mentioned. I found the test helpful. I didn't take it as a self-fulfilling prophecy. It genuinely rang true to my sense of myself. It gave me words to describe my characteristics. An introvert, although not extremely. Intuitive off the charts--a struggler with details and the concrete. A feeler--more interested that people get along than that they be corrected for being wrong. Desiring completion more than wanting things to linger incomplete.
This grid has proved helpful to me ever since, and I was sure to include Myers-Briggs in Wesley Seminary when we founded it. I would learn more about the categories then. One of these is a dominant function. For me, it is being intuitive. I have come to consider myself unusually gifted at seeing the big picture.
That means of course that "sensing" is my inferior function. I have come an incredibly long way with managing details and the concrete, but it remains a constant fight.
I can be friends with almost anyone. I once mused that I even like the people I don't like. To me, "thinkers" are often illogical because they don't understand people. They don't understand the world or how it works. I laugh at Aristotle's focus on humans as rational animals. The same with Descartes and humans as thinking things.
We are more often irrational animals. We are herd animals. Even those who fashion themselves thinkers are frequently driven and tossed by the winds of their own unexamined assumptions and biases. Their sense that they are consummately rational often leads them to miss their own skew.
8. I've already mentioned some pieces of my time at Asbury. My senior year, Chris Fisher, Ed Ross, and I edited the Short Circuit. I mainly did cartoons for it. I had worked in the cafeteria all three years at Asbury. The first year, Ed and I were dishwashers. My last two years I was the front cashier and I put up the menu for the night on the board.
At some point early on, I got tired of just listing the items and began to draw them into pictures that were often along the lines of The Far Side. Those two years at Christmas I did a Menu Calendar that I gave away as Christmas presents. I would pick my top twelve favorite menu drawings to go along with each month. I also made Christmas cards from card stock with drawings. I was never a spectacular artist, but I was above averaage I suppose.
I also did improv my last year. It was something along the lines of "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" I think I did pretty well. I don't remember being funny in high school or college. I was too painfully shy I suppose. My Dad and the Miller side of his family were funny (Old German Baptist folk).
Sometime while I was at Asbury I think I started being funny. Maybe because I had moved out of paralyzing fear into the freedom of the Lord. The next couple years were probably the happiest of my life.
9. I always sang. I was in the choir at Central. I was in the "Singing Seminarians" at Asbury, under Bill Gould. We went to Bolivia my last year, Santa Cruz. Scotty and Rachel Gulledge, Mike and Cathy Rash were on that trip too. Alvin Whitworth played for us in the US, although I don't recall that he went on that trip.
A few things stand out to my memory. I tried to learn a little Spanish but of course wasn't close when we were there. I remember trying intently to listen to an older man say something to me in a church. The national superintendent said to him, "El no habla Espanol." Ouch.
I remember spending a very cold night sleeping on a bus just a little up country.
I remember a time when Scotty complimented them (in a southern accent) for their "cheese biscuits" and the translator was a little dumbfounded at how to translate that. Then another time Mike said a somewhat complicated sentence and the translator said something about how difficult a sentence it was, and everyone laughed. Mike was taken aback with a little paranoia because he hadn't said anything funny.
10. Those were great years. I feel privileged to have experienced them. Of course, when we started Wesley Seminary, we didn't plan to reinvent the wheel. There were already plenty of seminaries like Asbury. And most of them weren't doing particularly well. What there was a market for was a practically-focused seminary. We targeted the 85% of Wesleyan pastors who didn't go to seminary.
This was the "F" of my Myers-Briggs coming out. I loved the Asbury model. But I knew it wasn't the model for most people. It wasn't the model that most ministers needed.
That's in large part why Wesley grew to over 500 students in 6 years. We created a practical, accessible, and affordable seminary. After Wayne Schmidt and I left, in my opinion, the gravitational field of traditional seminary education increasingly moved it in the direction of all the dying seminaries.
I wonder if we have just seen the long term result. They have had to abandon their building for reasons of emptiness.
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