~Eugene Peterson

I must admit that I found myself caught up in the hype of the Obama presidential campaign…and I knew better. Now don’t get me wrong, I still believe he was the best candidate for the job. I still believe that people like him can begin to right some of the wrongs of this country and world, can move our nation toward justice and equity for all. I still believe that people like Bono and Jeffrey Sachs can move us toward the elimination of global poverty. I still believe that governments and institutions can, and should, be instruments for good in this world. I just can’t buy into the hype, though, the empty promises inherent in any kingdom of the world.

I put my trust, rather, in the kingdom of God. I trust that the upside-down way of life that Jesus put on display for the world will ultimately transform this world. I have seen enough to know that by giving up all that I have, I will have so much more, and so will everyone else. I have seen enough to know that loving my enemies and praying for those who persecute me will always result in less bloodshed than a life of seeking revenge and redemption through violence. I have seen enough to know that the way of Jesus Christ is the best possible way of living and that I would give my life to this dangerous, compelling existence any day over an allegiance to even the best possible kingdom of the world. I choose the world of grace.

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Jason Bowker is a 2nd 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 are in communal living with 2 other married couples and serve as worship leaders at a small Episcopal church in Maple Valley, WA.

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I can remember back in high school when my friends who were Catholic would celebrate Lent and I just had no idea what that was about. I knew they gave up something for 40 days but then they ate fish on Friday? I grew up in a Baptist church so the Catholic religion and traditions were lost in my world.

Fast forward a few years and you will see a more astute Christian version of me participating in Lent the only way I knew how: I gave up sodas one year and I think gum the next year. Nothing too earth shattering or world rocking, but I am a lover of Diet Coke so it was hard. From what I understood I was to give up an earthly comfort and, when craving to partake in this earthly comfort, I should pray to God and ask Him take away the temptation, remind me of His sacrifice and then all will be well with my soul (for the time being).

Now I find myself in a different place. I have walked a rough road when it comes to organized tradition and I’ve experienced heartache in the my work with the church. But I currently find it pretty near impossible to separate the two. For most of my life I have defined myself by my religious beliefs so… what do I do now? What defines me? I struggle to be called a Daughter of the King or a Bride of Jesus or a Christian at all.

Conundrum.

I was talking with a friend while at MHGS today and she mentioned this idea that she heard from Peter Rollins: instead of participating in Lent through the act of taking something away from your life to bring you closer to God, Peter suggests doing something a bit different.

Add something to your life.

Search for the answers to the questions you may have been too scared to ask out loud.

Read, discuss, doubt, wonder.

explore.

For me this takes on a pilgrimage vibe of sorts. Am I ready to give up my anger and deal with the sadness underneath? Do I want to search for the answers God has waiting for me, or am I looking for a particular answer to an unknown question? What if nothing has changed in 40 days? What if everything has changed in 10? Am I ready for my life to be different, or for me to be different? I don’t have any answers, but that is what this journey for me is all about.

Mars Hill Graduate School is a learning community located in Seattle and dedicated to transformation through the study of text, soul, and culture. MHGS offers three graduate degrees:

M.A. in Counseling Psychology ·   M.Divinity ·   M.A. in Christian Studies

Our students are writers, artists, bloggers, theologians, and counselors who are devoted to experiencing God through relationships. Learn more about joining us in a transformational education today or see when an MHGS conference will be in your city.

Rob Bell on MHGS

“I always like the questions and your responses that come out of this place. I am such a huge fan from across the country. Keep being who you are and pursuing that unique thing…you are an inspiration to lots of us.”

The obvious reason for putting together a book is that there has just been so much new atheism literature over the past few years.  But then—and this ties into our particularity—everyone who is a Christian in this city is living as a Christian in the midst of a general population that has Bill Maher sensibilities, and thinks Christian faith is simply ‘Religulous’.  Does being a person of faith essentially mean living a life that is running blind on the wheels of faith?  That’s what pisses Maher off so much. But here’s the catch: that’s what pisses our readership off as well—the anti-intellectualism that grows like a fungus in some Christian cultures.  As for Christian responses, we see folks all the time “respond” to atheism with all sorts of tactics like anger, sarcasm, vitriol; the people who do it best in my opinion realize there is an art form and humility to being a person of faith and that we must be in dialogue with people different than ourselves. As Brian McLaren says in his endorsement, ‘atheism isn’t just something to oppose or refute—it also can be a mirror, with much to teach us about ourselves and our distorted and unworthy ideas about God and religion.’ So when we were soliciting content a few years ago for this issue I really felt the pressing need to think about what an authentic response to the new atheism might look like, one that might be able to have some traction in a city like Seattle.  I don’t really see the new atheism as a threat to the Christian faith, as such, but it certainly does pose a serious (and much needed) threat to certain iterations of the Christian faith.  I don’t feel, most days, offended or threatened by the new atheism, but this is a much more interesting and culturally significant conversation to have than, say, tithing or porn.

Check out the whole interview, it’s a great read. PS. You should already be reading The Other Journal. It’s a great collection of writings on theology and culture.

I am reminded of my time as a youth pastor. We used a myriad of inclusive language, strongly emphasizing that everyone belonged and all should feel welcomed in our group, but everyone could sense this was not true. We had one student who was a self-described ‘Goth,’ and it was clear early on in my ministry that this student did not feel welcomed in our ‘normal,’ straight-laced meetings. As much as my words spoke of inclusiveness, our attitudes of exclusivity were clearly seen in this student’s quick departure from our community. He was not welcomed to the table.

We create these divisions out of a spirit of necessity. When you operate within a ‘some are in, some are out’ system, in order to be ‘in,’ some must be ‘out.’ In order to prove our own belonging within the community of faith and the realm of salvation, we must operate within a system where some people are not invited into the life of faith. This way of thinking has nothing to do with the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God is a place where everyone is welcome at the banquet table, where none are excluded from the table of fellowship. Throughout the gospels Jesus is constantly telling stories where the people who would never be invited into fellowship are the very people who are the honored guests. Jesus continually challenges the assumed ‘boundaries of belonging’ within his own culture, asking his followers to be boundary-less people, welcoming all to the table of communion. I wonder what it would look like for individual Christians and communities of faith to be places where everyone is welcomed, where no one is excluded. Would it be possible to address the unwritten, unspoken rules of our communities in an effort to allow everyone access to the Kingdom? I pray we will have this boldness.

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Jason Bowker is a 2nd 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 are in communal living with 2 other married couples and serve as worship leaders at a small Episcopal church in Maple Valley, WA.

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“Together, when we brace our backs and bend our knees, can we then carry the weight of hope for the hopeless.” Founder of Collective Hope, Andrew J. Bauman

Collective Hope is a non-profit organization founded in 2009 out of a desire to do something. Something might not sound heroic or a word of much promise but when we do as little as something to fight global poverty we can be a part of radically transforming lives and instilling hope in a hopeless world.

Nearly 3 billion people live on less than US $2 day.

About 1.4 billion live in extreme poverty on less than US $1.25 day.

Collective Hope comes out of our longing to do something to help alleviate this poverty in some of the poorest countries in the world. Our first step is currently on an 11-acre farm in Malawi, Africa. We are in the birthing stages of creating a sustainable farm and a farm exchange program.

According to UNICEF, 25,000 children die each day due to poverty.

Collective Hope’s vision is to do something for these children who remain sick, orphaned and unseen. By creating small loving“Parent Homes” for orphans with HIV/AIDS, birth defects, malaria and other diseases that render these children nearly hopeless.

More Global Poverty Statistics

It is simple to get overwhelmed by the amount of need in this world, to become frozen or numb. It is far easier to live a life ofignorance and insulation, than to actually feel the pain of hunger, disease and isolation. Yet our hope is that you will enter into the sorrow and poverty with us, that you help us gather hope to fight global poverty.

For more details on how you can join the fight against global poverty please find us on the web at collectivehope.org. Make sure to join us on Facebook, and Twitter as well.

Peace to you- Andrew & Christy Bauman

I hate.  I love.  I hate.

I hate that I both love and hate.

How can I ever claim to love if I ever once hated?

I love community.  But I hate!

How could I have ever experienced, or hope to experience, community if I ever once hated?

I hate those who hate — those wrecking balls of community.

Ironically, then, I hate myself — a hater, a wrecking ball.

How could a community ever have loved me, or possibly love me, because I once hated?

Could a community love me, my hatred included?

Could I love them in return, my hatred included?

I would love them.

I would love me.

They would love me.

We would love we, our hatred included.

I would love that.

This piece was an assignment for the class ‘Essential Community’ taught by Drs. Dwight Friesen and Christie Lynk. Students were tasked with writing for 10 minutes about their ‘confession and hope for community.’

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Isaac Unseth is a 2nd year M.Div. student who grew up in Plato, MN (population: 350).  He enjoys hosting friends for meals and hiking…alone.  Isaac recently lived in intentional community with his peers for the first time and learned a lot (i.e.  moved out disillusioned, spent, and sad).  But he is following the in-explorable call again, currently living with a married couple considerably older than he.

From ‘laid off’ to ’survival mode’ to ‘grad school student’ in 4 months. Welcome to my summer of 2009.

Less than a week after I received my acceptance letter from Mars Hill Graduate School I was laid off from my job. This was the beginning of the downward spiral into survival mode until it was time to move across the country. I had previously worked at Starbucks before my foray into Human Resources and quickly fell back into the routine of early morning shifts making custom coffee and tea beverages for the great people of Houston, Texas. I also took on a second job at a gourmet grocery store in their espresso/gelato bar during the evenings and weekends. Survival was the key, not necessarily living, and I survived. I was so excited to put my two weeks notice in at my second job and begin my transfer to a Starbucks store in Seattle that I didn’t even cry when I drove away from my family in the rented Kia mini-van that would take me to my new home.

Christmas break was the first time I was able to be in that same environment with family and friends without having to be in survival mode. I was able to be present, in the moment, and that was something that I was incapable of since being laid off in April. There was a moment with my mom where I said that it all felt like a dream, that it was almost impossible to believe that it was my reality for 3 months.

On the plane ride home from Houston I was reading Trauma & Recovery, a text by Judith Herman assigned for a class this semester, and in describing people who suffer from post traumatic stress disorder the author states that these people say that the trauma they incurred was viewed as more like a dream than a reality that was lived.

I do not wish to discredit those to have lived through wars, physical attacks, sexual abuse, etc. but to realize that those months in my life really were traumatic makes me wonder if trauma is not something that can be measured on a scale of 1-10, or cannot be measured at all. According to Herman, trauma is defined as ‘a deeply distressing or disturbing experience,’ which also implies that traumatic experiences can be different moments for different people. It’s easy to look back on those months and just simply be glad they are over, but to see the pain on my roommate’s face when I share that story with her makes me realize how far I have disassociated myself from this experience, which then makes me wonder how truly traumatic it actually was.

Maybe I will never know. The new question is: will I be okay with not knowing?

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 always thought a story was something I read, not something I lived.

‘Tis a new year, my friends. The calendar pages have turned and we all have a fresh start, a clean slate to be whatever we want. Most people decide who they want to be through a tradition that we call ‘new year’s resolutions’ where we make lists of things we want to accomplish in the next 365 days. When asking friends what their resolutions are for 2010 you might hear things like loose weight, quite smoking, make better grades, etc. which are all great things to desire… but I can’t help but believe that there should be more.

My friend Stephany told me one year that instead of making resolutions every New Year she will write out a yearly To Do list: go sky diving, pay off my credit card, travel to a new city with friends. It made her year more of an adventure and something to experience rather than something to (hopefully) accomplish. Donald Miller also wrote a book called A Million Miles in a Thousand Years about editing his life and living a story that is worth telling. Stephany and Donald have hit the mark with something because when you resolve to loose weight or eat healthier then it is all on you because there is isolation in a resolution. When you choose to write a better life story you will find that you are not alone, that you are a part of a larger story full of people who long for meaning and depth to their narrative and that you will engage with others in the midst of your story.

2009 was the most fulfilling year of my life thus far. I accomplished most things on my yearly To Do list and my life was truly changed because of certain people along the way who shared their stories and their lives with me in my journey. I had the opportunity to finally move to the Pacific Northwest, a dream that I have a had for years. I read a classic book that I had seen every movie version ever made. I had adventures with friends because I challenged myself to ‘just say yes’ to opportunities that came my way and am a better person because of it.

This year is the year I will be active. Why? Because I have signed up to run a 5K in June with some friends here in Seattle. This year I will travel. Why? Because I long to see to world and experience new and different cultures, and a trip for Ireland is being planned for July. This is the year that I will live out the adventures that stir my heart to change my life because I want to live a life that is a grand adventure. What are you doing in 2010?