Basically, this is the timeline:

-April 10th: Jen does her panel interview for her candidacy committee. If approved, she applies to Luther and Trinity.
-August 1st: All final evals from Jon are due in.
-August 15th: Jon’s Internship ends. He might stay on as a pastoral assistant.
-sometime in August: Jon flies out to SoCal and goes through approval
-September: Jen starts school again, either at Trinity or Luther. Jon goes through “the draft”.
-October: Jon (hopefully) gets a call. With a call, he is ordained and either goes to small town in Minnesota (that is within 2 hours of the Cities) to join Jen or Jen and Jon move to new small town in Ohio that is near Trinity.

The thought is this: I’m about 75% leaning toward Luther and 25% leaning toward going back to Trinity. If I get into the M.Div program at Luther, I would start in the Fall and live on campus until Jon could move up. I would be away from Jon and the boys for at least a month and frankly, I’m not looking forward to being away from my menfolk (the cats AND Jon). We’d probably use our free round-trip on Northwest to let me visit or Jon could use it to come and check out congregations. (I would miss my Cat Cat and Pufferpie though…)

If I get into the M.Div program at Trinity, I would have to commute to Columbus daily (i.e Jon would have to take me) but we could probably work around that. Depending on where he gets called, I’d have to move onto campus at some point or I might be able to just commute if we could buy a second car. (*thinking wistful thoughts about financial aid*)

To be continued…

I might be wrong… but I’m pretty sure that this is a LUTHERAN seminary and not a Wiccan circle. If this is indeed a seminary, why was I and quite a few other people subjected to a sermon this morning that was like a New Age blessing rite except with random verses thrown in? The people who read were good readers, but that’s the only praise this “sermon” deserved. L was preaching on a text from Revelation which parallels the Isaiah 55 passage where the prophet calls for all to come. I was expecting a bona fide sermon which might actually say something about God, not a bunch of New Age chanting!!!!

The worship music was good this morning (probably because the person organizing the band wasn’t there). They managed to do the music some justice. (Incidentally, the person who organizes the music this week was being arraigned on trespassing charges. He was arrested at a sit-in at Senator DeWine’s office regarding issues of the School of the Americas and the issues going on in Colombia.) The anthem we did (“Come to the Waters” by John Foley SJ) was really good and I sang soprano to balance things out because we would have had 2 sopranos, 5 altos, and 3 men otherwise.

The benediction was this:
And now as you go, may God go with you.
May she go before you to guide you,
behind you to encourage you,
and beside you to be your friend.
May she go above you to watch over and care for you,
and beneath you to catch you when you fall.
And may she be forever in your heart;
filling you with her peace, her joy, and her love.

The last time I checked, “she” was a gendered pronoun. If we’re forbidden to use “he” because it is a gendered pronoun, shouldn’t the same rules apply to “she”??????? Maybe some people at this seminary have a problem with matriarchy and would prefer not to have it shoved in their face!!! It just seems like there is a double standard: I use “he” and have people jumping down my throat, gossiping about how “un-enlightened” I am, and ripping on me in class; but L can get away with using “she”.

I would have walked out this morning but I’m too much of a coward to stand alone and protest it. I didn’t have my cell phone on me so I couldn’t blame my walking out on that. I basically just said “he” under my breath when all the “she” instances arose and substituted “him” under my breath for “her”.

Why does this irritate me so much? These people actually think this will work in the parish. I wish I could be a fly on the wall during the meeting after her first sermon when her church council objects. When I supply-preached, I asked the pastor what would be appropriate and his response: if you use any pronoun other than “he”, you will lose the congregation and NEVER be invited back again.

How I wish the seminary could actually be in touch with the real world…

In Glendale, Ariz., the 12,000-member Community Church of Joy, which has a school, conference center, bookstore and mortuary on its 187-acre property, has embarked on a $100 million campaign to build a housing development, a hotel, convention center, skate park and water-slide park, transforming itself into what Dr. Walt Kallestad, the senior pastor, calls a ‘destination center.’ (Hvala Ellen!)

Question: if this is the kind of Jesus the members see on a daily basis, what is going to happen when they move out of the community to another church in that denomination (in this case an ELCA church) and find that churches are not like this normally.

All that money spent on convention centers, skate parks, water-slide parks, and stuff like that could be put to better use as funding for missions and homeless programs. Or, it could be used to help the Native Americans in that area.

I’m all good with building Christian communities but the churches mentioned here seem more concerned with sheltering their members from the *gasp* thought of living within their means and building communities where the highly capitalist lifestyle can perpetuate itself. Maybe I’m really mistaken, but didn’t Jesus preach against such shows of wealth in the Gospels (especially Luke)?

Worship is another thing that I wonder about. It’s all about Powerpoint and contemporary music. Maybe it’s just me… but wasn’t it the hymns and old-school type songs that kept Lutheranism going for the last 500 years? Could we maybe function as a Lutheran church and not a wannabe Baptist church?

Jon just told me that they’re probably gonna withdraw from the ELCA. I wonder why…

This morning, I went to the local Episcopal church (St. Alban’s) with one of my classmates and it was a lovely service — almost enough to make me want to regress except that I really don’t like the politics in the ECUSA. The hymns were all familiar and the liturgy was the same one I said for 5 years when I attended in high school and college. The sermon was OK (there are some really good Episcopal preachers I know but I don’t find many) and the choir was heavenly. It was also nice to have the wafers again instead of the nasty crumbly bread that we get during Eucharist at school.

Survey
So far, my survey has yielded the following results:
A (traditional): 1
B (contemporary): 1
C (mixture of the two): 8
Thanks to those of you who returned your answers already. It is really helping me with my paper!

My answer to the questions would be C. I love both traditional and contemporary when they are done well. I intensely dislike a lot of the contemporary services I attend because they are either lifeless or they’re merely entertainment.

I’m doing a survey of how my generation and seekers prefer to do worship. If I don’t know you and you want to participate, please email me and let me know!

kathleen, one of the campus ministers asked me to preach for a few of the churches that support the united campus christian ministry and i agreed. i am, however, at a loss as to what i should speak about and what scriptures to use. mike suggested my thesis topic so i’ll probably talk about the use of patrick’s breastplate and caims. i’ll post my thesis (well… actually just a senior seminar paper) on here tomorrow. email me with ideas of how i could put that into a sermon. i especially want to hear from people who don’t consider themselves christian since i want to know what you think. i’d also like to know why you read my journal. (i’m parroting krissy’s question.)