Often postmodern Christians (whatever that really means anyway) get accused of not taking the Bible seriously, as sacred. I would strongly disagree though. My experience with the emerging church movement has been one of intense love and respect for the biblical text, just not for the traditional biblical inerrancy that is prevalent in modern Christianity. Marcus Borg says it this way:

“…the emerging paradigm sees the Bible’s status as sacred, as “Holy Bible,” as the result of a historical process, not as the consequence of its divine origin. The process is known as canonization. The documents that now make up the Bible were not sacred when they were written, but over time were declared to be sacred by ancient Israel and early Christianity…By declaring these writings to be sacred, our spiritual ancestors declared them to be the most important documents they knew” (Borg, The Heart of Christianity, 47).

After reading Borg’s thoughts, this seemed so obvious. If the sacred-ness of a text does not come from the communal affirmation of it through canonization, then any other ‘gospel’ or writing would need to be seen as sacred too, including the Gnostic Gospels and anything else someone has said “came from God” or “came from the Spirit.” This communal affirmation of a text’s importance seems to give it much more credence and respect.

It is for this reason that I plan on exploring an idea I am calling ‘relational hermeneutics’ for my integrative project in a few years. There is a growing movement in the church where communities are attempting to read the scriptures collectively, rather than simply as individuals. The Evangelical emphasis on personal ‘quiet time’ can easily lead to an onslaught of destructive readings that are not held accountable by the community. Relational hermeneutics takes seriously the idea that everyone has something to offer one another as we all approach the scriptural text, rather than simply hearing from the ‘expert’ on high and believing their (typically ‘his’) opinion. I desperately desire to see this healthier, holistic, communal way of reading the text take root in churches, and anxiously await the opportunity to explore this idea further.

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Jason Bowker is a 3rd year M.Div. student at Mars Hill Graduate Student. He is passionate about the church and preaching and plans on pastoring or church planting following graduation. In his free time, Jason enjoys rock climbing, camping, playing sports, and playing guitar. He and his wife live in Capitol Hill and serve as worship leaders at a small, Episcopal church in Maple Valley, WA.

For the C.S. Lewis class, four of us did a presentation on Prince Caspian. We focused on the novel’s theme of exile and return, viewed through the lens of Isaiah. Since I first read the book in 1999, I’ve been haunted by the image of the Penvensie children wandering around the ruins of a castle only to slowly realize its their former home of Cair Paravel, but somehow hundreds of years have passed. That feeling of being in a place that was once home, but is now completely unfamiliar or in ruins is resonant of other characters in the book who have been living exiled from their culture or identity. The tree spirits have gone dormant, the animals have gone wild and forgotten how to speak, or hidden their speech if they’ve not gone wild, dwarves have had to “pass” for men, and even the children have trouble recovering the memories of their Narnian identity.

We wanted to offer our classmates an aspect of this experience in the context of our own lives. We did this in three ways. First we completely demolished the classroom. As people entered the room, they had to sit amongst the ruins, or as some identified, the “war zone” remains of the classroom. Then, with many people on the floor next to turned over chairs and tables, we began by hearing portions of Isaiah 44, which in the context of the Narnia story and our sitting in the rubble of our classroom, held more potent meaning than I’d expected. Here’s a bit of the text.

Isaiah 44:21-28
21 Remember these things, O Jacob,and Israel, for you are my servant; I formed you, you are my servant; O Israel, you will not be forgotten by me. 22 I have swept away your transgressions like a cloud, and your sins like mist; return to me, for I have redeemed you. 23 Sing, O heavens, for the Lord has done it; shout, O depths of the earth; break forth into singing, O mountains, O forest, and every tree in it! For the Lord has redeemed Jacob, and will be glorified in Israel. 24 Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, who formed you in the womb:I am the Lord, who made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens, who by myself spread out the earth; 25 who frustrates the omens of liars, and makes fools of diviners; who turns back the wise, and makes their knowledge foolish; 26 who confirms the word of his servant, and fulfills the prediction of his messengers; who says of Jerusalem, “It shall be inhabited,” and of the cities of Judah, “They shall be rebuilt, and I will raise up their ruins”; 27 who says to the deep, “Be dry— I will dry up your rivers”; 28 who says of Cyrus, “He is my shepherd, and he shall carry out all my purpose”; and who says of Jerusalem, “It shall be rebuilt,” and of the temple, “Your foundation shall be laid.”

Then, still in the dark and destroyed classroom, we played this video.
(It had music but we can’t seem to get it to play).
It works best (is most emotionally manipulative) if you play some wordless soundtrack music with it. We used Max Richter.
And the video ends at 3:32, but the powerpoint continues after it.

The Caspian Experience from Kj Swanson on Vimeo.
Then we led a more formal presentation and discussion time, but as we spoke, two of our group members slowly returned to classroom to its proper shape, so by the time we were done, the room looked normal again, except that no one was sitting in their usual place. Everyone was spread out along the edges or in clumps at some tables. Many of us had been “exiled” by the disruption of the space.

Hard to say how much of our ideas came across in the presentation or even in this blog post, but we loved doing it. I realized in the process that this was probably my last group project ever at MHGS, and I loved getting to work withpeople I’d never partnered withbefore. I felt like I was the old timer getting to work with the energetic whippersnappers who will be at MHGS long after I’ve graduated. Kind of like old Professor Kirke getting to hear Peter, Edmund, Susan and Lucy tell about the world they found in the wardrobe. It was wonderful.

Kj’s post was originally written for her blog.

Baan Santisuk. My home for four years, from 2003-2007, and home to the Pukronghin family (Ratchai, Pai, Pat, Nat) for two years after that. Even after I moved to another community for my last year in Bangkok and then moved to Seattle in 2008, Permsup has felt so real to me. Because that’s where I know God moved. That’s where I know I experienced real fellowship. Now that its gone, its still real to me – and undoubtedly to so many others.

When we think of place, investment, development, return, lasting value, worth…a place that is going to be bulldozed in the near future does not usually come to mind. When I moved into Permsup in 2003, we knew it would one day be bulldozed. We actually expected it would happen far sooner than it did. A government road project was coming through and the people were squatters and there was little they could do about it, except prepare for that future reality. I’ve often said, if I knew we would remain there for four years before the bulldozing began, there’s many things I would have done differently. I would have invested more in that place. Improved my house to be more of a community center, maybe created a computer lab for the kids in the slum to learn technology and marketable skills. Made it what you would think of as a “permanent” home and center. But because there was always the threat that we could be evicted in a few months, we never did make more physical improvements to the place. It was indeed used in a myriad of ways for community gatherings and house church meetings and microfinance trainings and so on. But it was always like a tent. My team leader joked that it was like camping out, only for years on end. Indeed, this is the life of squatter slumdwellers, for decades on end.

But was that place temporary? No. Its eternal. The life of the ages was celebrated there.

If I had it to do over again, even if I knew for certain that we only had a six month time frame to be there, I would have invested everything. I’ve often looked back and said, “Yea, who cares if we would have invested $10,000 of our donors’ money and then have our improvements bulldozed six months later? For those six months, the value that those people would have gotten would have been life changing – saying ‘You matter.’ It would not be a waste. For those six months – and forever after, it would be absolutely worth it. And its not like we couldn’t raise more money from donors to invest in the next place later.”

Place does not depend on time. Place is worth it. Time, however short, is worth it. Being present, with all you have and are – that’s what matters. Martin Buber, baby. I and Thou. Be. Present. Incarnation. You. Matter.

Lives matter. And lives don’t fade away when houses are moved out of and communities are demolished. Lives go on, shaped by what they have experienced – and then go on with the potential to shape their future and others’ lives.

Investing in place matters. Place is sacred. Sacred space is space that we dwell in here, now. Not the space we dream of dwelling in there and then. There and then, we will always remember how we dwelt here and now. And that is all that will make us real there and then.

Setting down roots – even if they will be violently uprooted later. Risking, investing. Feeling – pain and joy. Celebrating and mourning, longing. Trying, striving, emptying for the hope of new birth, new life, resurrection, here and now. That’s reality. Everything else is just air.

Permsup, rest in peace. But I know you live on in many hearts, in many lives, in many places. May all the moments in which heaven touched earth in you continue to bear new birth, like yeast in dough, in so many other places.

David lives in the Rainier Valley and is a student in the Master of Divinity program at Mars Hill Graduate School and worships at Rainier Avenue Church.  Before moving to Seattle, David ministered in the slum communities of Bangkok, Thailand with Servant Partners for five years, pioneering new house churches, mentoring Thai leaders, organizing squatter communities for relocation, and consulting micro-business development operations.  David loves researching the Buddhist context and pioneering new ways of sharing the gospel of Jesus.  His pioneering work on Buddhist contextualization has been published in Communicating Christ in Asian Cities: Urban Issues in Buddhist Contexts, edited by Paul De Neui.

Dwight Friesen, who teaches theology at Mars Hill Graduate School, which is not affiliated with the church, says these reviews are akin to an “ecclesiastical bandstand,” with people ranking places of worship as if it were an Olympic competition. He also says online reviews present bigger theological problems.

“It reduces church to a commodity to be consumed,” says Friesen. “The church, at the end of the day, is not a commodity — it’s more like a family.”

You can listen or read the entire story here.

In the Divinity program here at MHGS, the introductory courses on Biblical Greek and Hebrew are followed by two classes that take grammar and vocabulary to the level of exegesis and application by focusing specifically on an Old and New Testament text. Both “Ruth” and “Romans”, where we examined how translation effects interpretation, were two of my favorite courses of my four years here at MHGS. In the Romans class, I was introduced to a peculiar situation in Romans 16:7 where translations actually disagree about the gender of one of the apostles Paul addresses.  I had never heard of Junia, and was skeptical about this supposed woman apostle.  By the end of my research, however, I was shocked by what I found, and at how little attention its received from the church community.  While my paper was written for a Greek language course, I tried to make it accessible enough to introduce curious readers to this story—which was to me both upsetting and inspiring.

Download the Paper Here (PDF.)

Kj Swanson is currently in her 3rd year at Mars Hill Graduate School in the Masters of Divinity program. You can read more of Kj’s writings on theology, culture, and scarf-making on her personal blog.

I was teaching an adult class at an area evangelical church when we fell into a discussion (diversion, rabbit trail) about how Paul was asking the Thessalonians to live counter-culturally. (See especially 1 Thes. 4:1-12.) I said that we Christians in America today may not feel this contradiction on a daily basis the way someone living in Thessalonika would.

Immediately one of the participants spoke up with, “Oh yes, we do! Why, this very Sunday a church just up the road is having a peace thing with Buddhists and Muslims and Jews and God knows who else. What kind of a witness is that? Talk about cultural compromise!”

“Yes,” I replied, “my wife and I are the greeters for it.” continue reading here…

Tom Johnson is the interim academic dean of Mars Hill Graduate School in Seattle and a former PCUSA pastor. He lives on Whidbey Island, Washington.

In the Spring of 2008–amidst dreary, overcast Seattle skies–forty students, representing all three degree tracks, gathered together for the first in a series of three courses in our Leadership curriculum. Our primary focus for the course was on making them more aware of the strengths and liabilities they bring to leadership (Leadership 1). In subsequent semesters they would continue their work by examining their proclivities and behaviors while working with teams (Leadership 2), and learning how to facilitate broad systemic change in organizations (Leadership 3). Since this first course asked them to wrestle with their own particularities as leaders, many of the discussions and much of the content focused on their previous experiences or conceptions of leadership and both the problems and promises of those experiences. The format was highly interactive and provided a great deal of space for testing, and reflecting on test results. We spent three days together wrestling through the harm of their leadership experiences and wondering about ways to lead that would embody a more compassionate, holistic approach and that would honor the cacophony of voices in the room.

Prior to the course beginning we asked students to submit a one- to two-page essay chronicling their experience in leadership, and to keep a journal about a particular leader of their choice for one month. The hope in this pre-class assignment was twofold: first, we wanted to hone their attention on what they value in leaders and what shapes their expectations of those leaders. Secondly, as teachers we make a concerted effort to tailor our course around some of the specific leadership questions and concerns in the room. For a generation of leaders who feels largely neglected and overlooked because they value different things from their leaders, it was crucial to us that they hear the weight of their own experiences and be forced to wrestle with them with integrity.

During the week leading up to class, we communicated often with each other about our impressions from the course essays, and we were overwhelmed with the amount of cynicism, betrayal, and contempt our students had both received and dealt as leaders. We had a hunch that our group was suspicious of anything having to do with leadership, but the realities of our students’ stories and words were dark and heavy.

In response we felt that the final course assignment needed to be different than most. Rather than asking our students to simply recap their learning through a paper or recite how they had been influenced by the material, we felt that it was crucial to their development to make their stories count in a way that they hadn’t before. So we asked them to write “Leadership Stories from the Future,” essays that are both reflections of where they’ve been as leaders and earnest hopes for change in how leadership is done. Our hope was to get them thinking generatively and positively toward a future of leadership to which they could truly and passionately give their lives, and one which kept them from sinking into an abyss of leadership disillusionment.”

Tom is a 2007 graduate of MHGS with a Master’s of Divinity, and currently serves as one of the school’s teaching assistants. He also writes on his personal blog, No Direction Home.

David Rice has been asking this question throughout his time at Mars Hill Graduate School. David is finishing up his MDiv degree and has been focusing on what the farmer and the earth have to teach us as pastors and ministers. Part of David’s work has culminated through a paper he wrote for Independent Study. Below is an excerpt:

What I wonder about though is the loss that is incurred when a people move in a certain direction, toward advancement and development, that causes them to choose new paths while forsaking some of the old ones.  In a culture obsessed with innovation and advancement, it can be easy to forget the good that is still present in the old paths and ideas.  What is lost, for instance, when eaters no longer want to purchase the lettuce that is grown on the family owned farm a few miles away because it costs a quarter more than what they can get at the supermarket?  What is lost when, over time, that family farm cannot stay afloat because eaters ultimately value the single bottom line of short term economic value over the triple bottom line of long term economic, communal and environmental health?  What is the cost of individuals and families forsaking the parish of their childhood for the mega-church community across town?  What is the cost of a pastor who no longer cares for one hundred families in her neighborhood but who oversees an organization that ultimately cares for over one thousand families throughout her community?  What is lost when local churches are consolidated into regional churches?  And what is lost when pastors trade in their role of spiritual shepherd for organizational leader and manager?  Put differently, what is lost when pastoral work becomes industrialized?

Pastors need to learn a different way of pastoring from someone who has not been conditioned by industrial culture to look at things from its perspective.  Agrarian minded women and men are voices crying out in the mostly rural parts of our culture, speaking truth to the powers that be, those who run our culture from an industrial stance.  Most of these folks are farmers who moonlight as writers and speakers.  Some teach at seminaries, others raise grass and good soil.  What they have in common is their ability to wade through the empty promises of industrial culture, those of progress, advancement and development, pick up a few good tricks along the way, yet mostly stick to their traditional ways of living, relating, and taking care of the earth.

Download the full text here.

David is a fourth year MDiv student and enjoys urban gardening cooking with his wife and new son.

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The Texas heat had subsided to a relatively manageable 95 degrees.  Inside we remained unaffected, enjoying the luxury of modern air-conditioning.  This was one of my last nights with friends in Dallas, and we spent it like so many nights before.  Sitting on the couch, watching TV, and enjoying each other’s company.  For me this was perfect.  I was in my element, fully at ease and completely comfortable.

In a couple of days I would be leaving for the unknown.  The thought of which filled me with a small sense fear and anxious anticipation.  I had never lived outside of Texas before and knew only a couple of people in Seattle.  How was I going to adjust?  Was I going to make any friends?  What if choosing to move turned out to be a mistake?    As I allowed my mind to travel back to these thoughts, the feeling of unsettledness would grow.  But tonight I was in my element, fully at ease and completely comfortable.

As the evening winded down, one friend asked, “What expectations did I have for the next few years?  It is the kind of question that can bring you back to that place of fear and anxious anticipation, as it did that night.  However as the first day of classes draws near, I’m growing more aware of a sense to set aside the expectations and fear, and to start enjoying the journey.

Like any other journey it will be filled with its lows and highs.  There will be times of joy and triumph, as well as times of trials and heartache.  There will be new stories and experiences, all of which will help to shape and transform the person I am today.  Most importantly, amidst all the fear and overwhelming expectations the journey is also full of possibility and hope.  So rather than project how I hope this journey might turn out, I am choosing to take it all in stride.  I am choosing to capture the moment, rather than anticipate the future.

Back home in Texas we would often close our worship gatherings by sending people off to start a new week with a blessing written by Larry Hem.  As I prepared to leave Dallas and start this new journey, I was reminded of this blessing once again:

“May all your expectations be frustrated.  May all your plans be thwarted.  May all your desires be withered into nothingness, that you may experience the powerlessness and poverty of a child and sing and dance in the love of God who is Father, Son and Spirit.”

The divine community of the Trinity is often held up as the ideal human community. Some would even say that the Trinity is the revelation of perfect communion. This is why egalitarians and subordinationists both look to the Trinity for justification of their social worldviews. I was interested to learn for myself why various scripturally sound Trinitarian models that are used to legitimate human social systems (including church ecclesiologies) were incompatible. This led me to follow the idea that the Church may be looking at the Trinity in an incomplete way.

The question boiled down to the contradiction between the Egalitarian Trinity held to by some in the Emerging and some other forms of church and the Patriarchical/Subordinationist Trinity of the more traditionalist church. The former is a theological necessity in that it is the very definition of Trinity. To deny it is to undermine the entire Christian faith because Christianity relies on the fact that the Son and the Spirit are fully God. The cross has saving power only because the person on it was fully God. The indwelling of the Holy Spirit is only profound because we are indwelled by the person of the Spirit who is fully God. To deny the egalitarian nature of the Trinity is to deny the saving power of the cross and everything that makes Christianity a religion in its own right.

Yet the latter view of the Trinity is scripturally grounded. The Son did indeed submit himself to the Father. The theological problem with the patriarchal Trinity is that the Father is ultimately God above the Son and Spirit – implying that the Trinity is not ultimately God. I see this view as undermining the Trinity at the most basic level. So the project then became one of seeing divine subordination not as a static or eternal state, but seeing it as part of the larger trinitarian life of mutual submission and egalitarianism. Essentially, my interest was to integrate the subordinationist Trinity into the egalitarian Trinity, and in doing so remove the contradiction and see that the Trinity is indeed egalitarian. This was done by imagining the absolute divinity of God not solely as the person of the Father but as all three divine persons of the Trinity. And this required the integration of the economic and immanent trinities within a dynamic system.

You can read the rest of Steve’s interview here and even read an excerpt of Steve’s original thesis.