Against Nothingness

(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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

A Beautiful Mind  was released in December of 2001. I did not see it in theaters. I saw it at some point during my studies as an undergraduate student. It's a great movie and you won't find any spoilers here.  A Beautiful Mind is a biographical film based on the life of American mathematician John Nash who, among other things, made some important contributions to game theory. Prior to watching I had never heard of game theory. There is no reason I should have; I was a religious studies student. But it fascinated me. Being a university student with easy access to large libraries and a deep-set joy in learning I headed to the stacks and looked up game theory.  Four of five books later I decided that most of what was written on game theory was far too abstract and involved mathematics I did not care to learn. But all was not lost. Some game theory books are shelved very near economics, business, and leadership books. And, if you are like me, you do indeed find yourself judgi...

There are iconic questions. "Whom shall I send?" "Will you marry me?" "Can you hear me now?"  I started out in ministry as a youth and young adults pastor and one of those iconic questions was "How do I know he/she is the one?"  Concerned with being a good and wise pastor I tried to ask some good questions, listen carefully, and offer sage advice. But what floated in the back of my mind, tongue-in-cheek, was: "Has he/she read The Dark Night of the Soul over the phone with you?"  Kristina and I met during the summer of 2001. I recounted parts of that story in this post . We started dating, long distance, late in the fall of that same year. We dated for 1 year before we got engaged and were engaged for 1.5 years before we were married. All of this was long distance. People have often asked us about this. Our response is that there were certainly difficult things about having a long distance relationship - you miss one another, you don...

When you start to read the classics of Christianity, as I did in Toronto and afterwards, you will find a lot of writing on prayer. The Kneeling Christian, several books by E.M Bounds, the Desert Fathers, and more all found there way into my hands. As I read I experienced a buildup of pressure to pray more. But, since I did not pray more, I also experienced a buildup of guilt.  In so many ways I was still very young and immature in my faith. I was a university student still out of my depths in Religious Studies and therefore working hard at school, a volunteer student leader in a campus ministry, and I was playing way too many video games. On top of all of that, Kristina and I started dating in my second year of university. This was an entirely long distance relationship. She studied at Simon Fraser in Vancouver. I studied at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. Neither of us had money for plane tickets, but we rode buses.  In other words, my life was full of good things. But...

During my second year of university, fueled by the discover of Crux that I mentioned in this post , I started visiting Christian bookstores. Nothing I found in Alberta matched up to Crux (until I found Pilgrim's used books in Calgary which, sadly, is no longer around). Still, one does what one can.  On one such visit I bought my first systematic theology: "Finney's Systematic Theology: The Complete and Newly Expanded 1878 Edition."  600+ pages of theology from the engineer of revivals. It sits on my shelf, unread to this day. I still tell myself I will read it sometime, if only out of historical interest, but it may never happen.  Why did I buy it? Three reasons. A friend pointed it out and said something like "this is the kind of book you should read." I had a hunger for deeper biblical and theological learning. I was sinking into the "Arminian/Calvinist" debate and Finney seemed like he might help (And who knows, he might have).  Why didn't I...

What do you do when you are in over your head? How do you face being out of your depth?  I over prepare. I worry away at something, pulling it this way and that, planning out as many eventualities as possible, and take in as much information as I can find. I read a lot (I know, you are shocked!). In school I could come across as an over-achiever but what many didn't know was that this was born out of anxiety.  So I had a long list of books, meant to prepare me for Religious Studies, as I wen into my second year of undergrad. I knew math. I knew physics. I knew chemistry. These were firm ground beneath my feet. I did not know history, philosophy, sociology, textual studies, world religions, or ancient languages. These were shifting sand. So I picked up the books and read.  One of those books was  The Social Construction of Reality.  This is a book which re-frames the task of the sociology of knowledge as an analysis of the social construction of reality....

(This post picks up on the story I told in my last post , though you can start here to. This is another long one folks. I'm having fun writing it, I hope you enjoy reading it. If you want to hear about the book and not about me, jump down to the end of the pictures) I returned to following the call of Jesus during my first year of university. Through a crucial relationship with a Power to Change staff member (Thank you Trevor!) I signed up for a national summer project.  I know, some of you have no idea what that means. Let me tell you. University students from across Canada sign up to go to one city (Toronto for us) for the summer and, while there, work during the day and do leadership training and outreach during evenings and weekends. Power to Change staff hand over leadership to the students after 6 weeks.  A lot happened that summer for me. I learned how to scramble eggs, cook perogies, and survive on a rice only fast for several weeks (with multi-vit...

(My last two posts in this series, here and here , picked up on the story I started in my introductory post , and therefore didn't have as much story themselves. This book requires quite a bit more of an introduction. You've been warned!) During my high school years God called me into ministry. I balked. I could wax philosophical about how a calling to ministry is so much more involved in terms of what it requires of the whole person. I could point out that Forbes article that lists being a pastor as the 5th toughest leadership position available. But the truth was two-fold: The call scared me and to obey would cost me the things I really wanted - money and security.  What teenager looks at a potential career path and says, 'You know, that sounds utterly terrifying. I'm in!' For that matter, what adult does this? In hindsight, if what you think of as your calling doesn't scare you in some way then you probably haven't identified your calling,...