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.