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Learning the Self: Sources of the Self

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My time as a student at Regent was most definitely a time of expanding my reading and study. Regent majored on the life of the mind and the Professors there were keen to introduce us to key primary source material at every turn. For this I am ever grateful. One of the men who had a key influence on my reading was Prof. Paul Williams. Two of the books that make it on to this list of 40 are there because of him, and this is the first.  Before I move on to the book, I will add that Prof. Williams influenced me in more ways than this. He modeled for me a dialogical form of teaching and led me into a deeper understanding of leading and teaching well, specifically in a group setting. He deepened my appreciation of the carefully and wisely spoken word, both by example and by rebuke (for which I am still grateful). He welcomed me with gracious hospitality in several ways and thus shared with me the grace of God while showing me more of how to do the same. Lastly, he taught me how to make a...
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Learning the Way: The Way of the (modern) World

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In my second year as a student at Regent College I read The Way of the (modern) World: Or, Why it's Tempting to Live as if God Doesn't Exist. I feel fortunate to have not only read this book, but had the opportunity to study with the author. It is an incredibly important book by a deeply wise and intelligent man: Dr. Craig Gay.  Not only is this an important book in general, it was also a very important book for me at the time. There were a number of places of intellectual wrestling in my life during this season. I wrestled with my critical feelings towards the many churches that seemed to have given far too much ground up to modernity. I wrestled with what kind of minister, pastor, or teacher I could be in our culture and ways of doing both church and school. I tried to think through the varying philosophical options and through my own tendencies towards both luddite-ism and my equal propensity to get sucked in by new technology and gizmos (to be clear, I tended towards reject...
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Learning the Call: The Glory of Preaching

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(This post is intentionally linked, in title and content, to an earlier one in this series: Answering the Call ) As I noted in my last post , we are now into my seminary years. Early in my journey of answering God's call in my life I really had no idea where he would lead me. As I began seminary I knew that the time for clarity would have to come soon. I had 3 years of study and practicum ahead of me; after that, I would need to make some decisions.  At this point in my journey, as I started to study at Regent College, I leaned fairly heavily towards becoming a teacher/professor. I had found, through my undergraduate degree and now again in Seminary, that I deeply enjoyed the process of research and writing, thesis and argument, and the life of the university appealed to me. Books are, after all, much easier to work with than people! They sit on the shelf until you want them, they go back to the shelf when you are done, they never change... You might be laughing as you read that. A...
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A Few Things I Should Tell You; "The Confessions of Augustine"

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There are a few things I should tell you.  We are heading into my seminary years. 40 books in twenty years. 20% of them, or the next 8 books, will be selected from the books I read during my time studying at Regent College. I took my Masters of Divinity at Regent. This was a three year program that I did do in three years, but we took a year off in the middle and returned to S. Korea to teach English again. I'll tell that story when I get to those books.  A few things follow from this.  First, you are going to notice something of a shift in the types of books selected. They are still good books, but some of them are much more geared to my training as a pastor and, therefore, may be of less interest for you to read (the next book in this series will be a great example of that).  Second, I'm not entirely sure of the ordering of these books. I know, with certainty, which two I have chosen from my second year in S. Korea. The rest, however, have varying degrees of certai...
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Interpretation and Memory; Justification by Success

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Do you ever spend some time reminiscing about something - some season, some event, some person - and then have your memories corrected by someone else who was there? I think we've all mis-remembered like this. Held on to the good things and forgotten the hard or, perhaps more commonly, the reverse. I know I do.  On other occasions I find that time has altered an experience. What was horrible in the living has become humorous in the telling. This is not mis-remembering but, perhaps, reframing. In outdoor activities I have heard this called "Type 2 Fun." It's not fun now, but we'll enjoy talking about it later.  We have lots of stories from our time in S. Korea that fit into both of these categories.  I know I have often found myself remembering all the fun we had in our first apartment together - things like: celebrating our first Christmas together with a mini-tree, Costco pumpkin pie (we had to go back and buy a 2nd one because we ate the first one so fast it did...
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Seeking Understanding; Understanding Leadership

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Kristina and I wed in the spring of 2004. It was an amazing day. Kristina is an amazing woman.  Prior to our wedding we had a great plan laid out for the beginning of our marriage. None of it came together. Somehow, by the grace and plan of God, on the day of our wedding we had plane tickets to S. Korea, a 3 week job teaching English at a summer camp lined up, and 6 weeks before we left the country.  We went on our honeymoon, stayed at the home of some good friends, and visited family around the country before packing up to board a plane and fly across the world. Neither of us had a lot of stuff; I had lived on and near campus throughout university and Kristina had lived at home. Still, we maxed out our suitcase allowance. And this was back in the day when you could check two bags a person with a maximum weight of 50lbs per bag. We even had to do some rearranging as when our bags were weighed one of them was slightly over 50lbs and one of them was under. Why did we have so muc...
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Walking in Faith: Fear and Trembling

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We come now to the end of my undergraduate years. If you've been with me since the beginning of this series you know that this is book number 10, which also makes it the end of year number 5 (or my fourth year of studies, since I started at the end of high school).  One of my last classes was a required 400-level limited enrollment seminar class. In this class 10 students, along with the professor, did close readings of key texts in religious studies. The first two weeks were lectures. In each of the remaining 10 classes one student gave a presentation on one of the 10 textbooks and then we discussed it. Our grades were determined by in class participation in discussions and that one presentation. No finals. No multiple sets of assignments. Just the teachers opinion of your engagement and familiarity with the material as well as one big assignment. The Prof. of this particular class was wise, a great teacher, and a skilled facilitator of discussion. I enjoyed the class a great deal...
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