Reflection

Sorry for the all-over-the-place-ness of this post I began drafting this post two Sundays ago, but did not get a chance to work on it and fully develop my thought. After chapel last Wednesday, I added new insight. Now, one week later my thoughts have reached critical mass. Here, let me show you.

At church, we are in a sermon series about Titus. two weeks ago, our pastor preached about elders. (Titus 1:5-9)

Initially, this might not seem as relevant to the general church population, but I think its clear how important it is to inform God's people on the pre-requisites for leadership, not just for those who would want to be elders, but for everyone. We should be able to hold our leaders to the proper standard. If we don't know what that standard is then we might follow a wolf in sheep's clothing as it were and we've all aware of the effects of that. As if that insight wasn't enough, the sermon spoke to me in an additional way, namely because I am in seminary training to become a pastor, a leader of the church.

The requirements of elders are very high and I won't go into all of them here, but I will point out the ones that really stuck out to me. Titus 1:6 talks about being a husband of one wife (having the spirit of fidelity), having children who believe and not having the charge of debauchery or insubordination. Basically a requirement of elders is having an upright family.

It certainly adds weight onto my shoulders and it feels like a load I will not be able to lift.

Frankly, I do not come from a great family background. I feel my parents did the best they thought they could, but I have many flaws in my view of family and have fear of repeating the mistakes of the past. I worry that if I have children I'll be a poor father and not be a positive presence in their lives. I worry that they won't believe in God and put their faith in Jesus and that will fall to me. I worry that I will be a poor husband neglecting my wife's needs.

This in of itself is a difficult situation, but to compound it, according to this passage it would also mean that I was not fit to be an elder. While this would be a secondary concern to the welfare of my family, it is a close second. I am about to spend the next three years of my life and x amount of dollars for this education because I am called to be a pastor and if how I led my family would disqualify me from that calling, I think I would be rather confused, maybe angry too. What would it mean for my life from there?

That's where last wednesday's chapel comes in.

We heard a message from Psalm 73 and when reading it, v. 26 really stuck out to me in regards to my initial thoughts about my concerns about my leadership. Here's the verse:

v26: my flesh and my heart may fail but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

Maybe I will fail. Maybe my family will be a major struggle in my life, but in light of this verse I feel more prepared knowing God is my strength and portion despite who I am. It doesn't mean, however, that I will not work on them. I don't think it is an excuse to be lazy, but it does remind me that if I rely on God's strength I will be made strong. Doing that is a whole other story.

Don't you agree?

Prayer support

Hello everyone,

Thanks for checking in on my blog! It's been really busy here and I am processing an number of different writings right now, but haven't got the chance to clean them up and get them out of my head, but I did want to let you guys know about if you were interested in praying for me while I'm here.

If you are interested in praying for me and getting my prayer letter updates in the mail monthly you can let me know your address and I will add you to my prayer team! if you don't have my email you can leave me a message expressing you need my email address.

Just so you know, my monthly updates are posted up here as "official updates" but if you like getting it in the mail feel free to drop me you address. :)

ok back to work.

peace,

calvin

learning to love God more

After I got back from my first church history class today and I felt full of so many thoughts; here are some.

First of all, the prof is very cool. I like her style of teaching. She broke down the structure of all stories (stasis, catalystic event, opposition, crisis, climax resolution) and talked about it was something ingrained in us as humans by the greatest Author of the greatest Story, God. She explained how this archetype fits the story of God and His church.

To be honest, I've heard the breakdown of stories before in english/writing courses throughout my life, but I don't think I thought about it AS deeply in the context of the Gospel as I just have. She talked about how no author would knowingly enter their own story if they knew they would die and suffer in it. Its like if Emma Thompson's character in Stranger than Fiction, wrote into her story that she would push Will Ferrell's character out of the way and be killed by the bus herself. That just wouldn't happen, yet, God did that very thing. He entered his story as a man, Jesus Christ, into time and space, fully aware of that He would die. To express this, the prof showed this clip from Life is Beautiful. I've never seen this movie before, so I didn't know what was going to happen.

Anyway, in this clip the father and son have been arrested and are being moved to a concentration camp, while the mother is away. When the mother comes back to see that her husband and son are gone she goes to the train station where her family is to try to get them back. When she arrives she speaks to the head nazi officer and says, "There's been a mistake, my husband and son are on that train." He confirms to her that there has been no mistake in putting them on the train and tells her to go home (she's not Jewish). Then, she says to the officer, "I want to get on that train," as the train begins to pull away. At first, he ignores her, but after she insists, he stops the train, gets two guards to open up a traincar and fulfills her request . She gets onto that train, knowing that she is going to face pain, suffering and (most likely) death.

After watching this clip, some people began to tear up. The professor began to make the connection to the Gospel and she too got a little choked up. Honestly, I want that. I want to be so enamored with what God has done for me personally and for the world, that I cannot help but have to take a brief moment to gather myself. Not for the sake of saying I have that or looking more spiritual like a pharisee, but to be able to have so deep a love of God and so full an understanding of His work, that I can say I know Him like I know a close friend. To know Him so well that I'd be so moved when thinking about how much suffering He went through for someone as meaningless as me. Yeah, I want that and the reason I don't is because I don't love God as much as I should. So, I think one of my goals here is to learn to love God more.

I hope that you will join me in this journey as well. It'd be such a blessing to be able to say after three-ish years that you and I loved God more than that day than the day you read this post. That's my prayer for you and for me.

Week 1

Fall is back in the air after a beautiful Sunday afternoon. I do love the briskness of fall.

So, nothing is 100% clear to me, but after my first week at seminary, I feel like I belong. It will be difficult at times and feelings of doubt will arise. In fact, there have already been a few rough moments, but despite a couple of bumps, I feel at home here. I can already see where I might be able to minister to others here and in what ways I can learn from them as well and that is very exciting.

I'm learning many new things here, which I suppose is a good thing as I'm paying a decent amount and I'd like to maximize my learning. Here are some insights I've come to.

• I'm incredibly slow at reading: I already knew this, but being here has been a refresher course in this reality.
• There is such diversity amongst just Christians, never mind everyone else. It's mostly Caucasian and Korean folks here, but in terms of theology, and beliefs of "debatable matters" it certainly runs the gamut.
• I am really blessed to have come from BCEC. More on this in another post and probably with some more time.

Needless to say, it's been a change from what I've been used to.

Anyway, I want to give you a view of my life at GCTS. My roommates are cool. We live in a suite with a double in which I share and my third roommate is in a single. We're pretty different and I am excited to see what their church experiences were/are like and how God led them to pursuing a career in full-time ministry. I look forward to getting to know them better as the year progresses and hopefully we will grow together and understand better how God works in all people, if only in a sample size of three.

Moving along, I've gotten a number of comments about my name over the past seven days. It has looked like this:

"Hi my name is ____. Whats yours?"

"Calvin"

"That's a good name for seminary" or "like John Calvin?" or "are you Korean?" (happened once, I think they thought my name was from John Calvin and that I was from a Christian Korean family...which are quite prevalent, if you didn't notice.)

my response is usually

"you know, I've gotten more comments about my name and John Calvin here than anywhere else." or "no, I'm named after Calvin Klein." or "no, I'm not Korean."

I've never thought about my name in relation to the theologian, just jean and comic books usually...oddly that seems to explain a lot.

Finally, in my description of this blog I wrote, "To document my experience at GCTS and ultimately (hopefully) point you to Christ's work in my life." I wanted to flesh this out a bit so you can better understand what I'm trying to do and how I'm trying to do it.

I am starting the first of three(-ish?) years of immersive academic training for my life as a pastor and I want to document where I was during these years. I want to look back and see God working in the minute details of my life. I am confident that I will encounter things here that will make more sense in the future and I want to be able to reminisce and praise God for His faithfulness and brilliance.

But, this blog is not just for me (or else I would have made a private blog or not told any of you this address.) I want you to be able to see what I'm going through so that you can pray for me and praise God alongside me. If you know me, you know that I have a hard time filtering myself (I'm working on it), so to be honest my posts will probably be fairly personal. I hope that you will not take advantage of my trust.

Anyway, just so you know: My posts will consist of random thoughts, processed reporting, prayers for me to remember, and anything else I may come across in my time here. I invite you to leave comments, encouragement, rebuttals, admonishment, love, etc. and with these, we will hopefully be better and definitely be able to praise God together.

Peace.

Monday Morning Prayer

Father God,

I thank You once again for this opportunity to study Your Word. Lord, I am far from the most intelligent Christian in the world, so while sometimes I do not understand it, I thank You for calling me to Gordon-Conwell. As I begin my first day, I pray that You will remind me of Your strength and of my weakness so I will always be operating off Your provision and power. Search my heart, God, and reveal to me any self-serving motives and keep me grounded in Your Word. I pray for mental astuteness and that I will not be intimidated by my classes. I hope my actions while here will bring glory to Your name, in and outside of the classroom. I pray that you will continue making me into a man of integrity and a better example of Your love on this earth, if only just slightly better than I was before. Thank You again for your faithfulness in my life.

In Christ's name,

Amen

first day

As my first day comes to a close, I wanted to jot down some thoughts to remember what I've heard/learned in my first 24 hours.

I am probably young compared to the overall age of the incoming class, but I feel older than many of my peers. It seems like a lot are fresh out of undergrad and that's cool. I feel like they will do well because many of them studied the bible/religion for the past few years.

In one of my updates, I mentioned feeling intimidated by that and in some ways I am, but I also have a stronger sense of how God has led me here. In the morning session, many of the professors talked about engaging the current culture ("think theologically, engage globally, live christianly") , to bring our heart to the classroom as well as our minds, and to connect both with our hands when we minister. I feel like God has brought my to this point where I know exactly what they are talking about.

A huge part of my decision to go to seminary was based on needing to be better equipped to engage the world with the Gospel. I feel like I can be relevant, but not necessarily with the Gospel. It seems like GCTS will be a place where I will be trained for that. Very cool.

Another part of how God has led me to the decision to attend seminary is because in my ministries I had the heart for His people, but not the mind. Not that I was mindless, but intellectually and academically, I am ill-prepared for the effective ministry I feel called to do. GCTS also seems like it might be good for this too.

Then, there was this concept of connecting the mind, heart and hands, bringing all three to the table and how it is not a complete view of the Gospel without all three. Being able to exegete, do hermeneutics, etc is very important, but it is not as valuable without the heart for people. If you do both of these, this is great, but it is not as valuable without getting your hands dirty for God. This is what I want to be; a smart, big-hearted, filthy-handed, man. Like Jesus.

Pretty good for a first day no?

So it begins.

It has taken me a really long time to complete this post because to be honest I didn't want my first post to be an unplanned stream-of-conscious, though if you follow this blog you'll definitely get a healthy dose of that.

After many years of avoidance, I am finally starting seminary. Initially I thought I could delay going, or that it was a phase that would pass. After retracing my steps in life, however, I can see that in many ways, I was built for this life. From mediocrity in potential-careers-turned-hobbies to disapproved condo purchases, I can see how all my successes and failures have led to this.

Sometimes I look at facebook and I see old friends and wonder about this decision. They seem to be making "good" money and doing "cool" things and I wonder, "what if i was that way" or "why couldn't that have be me?" Seems reasonable right? But honestly, if i was even slightly different, I'd be completely different. It's like this: if i were _____er or ____er or whatever I wouldn't be exactly who I am, equipped in this specific way, for this particular call...if that makes sense. So, to be honest it's reassuring. What I dont quite know yet is what life will look like after seminary.

Over the quarter century that I've existed, I've heard whispers about what God has in store for me and I'm anxious to see what's next. I see the potential for destruction, but I am also excited about the potential for good. Now I just need to do my part to fulfill that potential for good. What/how I do in seminary will have a direct affect on my future ministry work. So it begins: My life as a seminarian.