Christian girls beheaded on way to high school

This is why we need more people in international conflict resolution.

Three girls have been beheaded and another badly injured as they walked to a Christian school in Indonesia.

They were walking through a cocoa plantation near the city of Poso in central Sulawesi province when they were attacked.

This is an area that has a long history of religious violence between Muslims and Christians.

A government-brokered truce has only partially succeeded in reducing the number of incidents in recent years.

Police say the heads were found some distance from the bodies.

It is unclear what was behind the attack, but the girls attended a private Christian school and one of the heads was left outside a church leading to speculation that it might have had a religious motive.

Two or three other girls who were walking with these had their throats slit, but according to news reports they live. The region where the girls were beheaded has been a flashpoint for Christians-Muslim fighting and of Christian persecution. Voices of the Martyrs reports that 2003-2004 saw a series of assassinations of Christian pastors and leaders (no word on whether there was similar assassination of Muslim imams and leaders). VoM also blames Saudi money for funding radical mosques in the region, claiming that before the money started flowing there was less religious tension.

Kathy earlier had wondered what it meant that Jesus said "I have come not to bring peace but a sword." One might posit that this is the sword, distant as it seems to us in DC. Obviously I don't mean that Christ came to kill these girls, but if Christ was implying one of the outcomes of following Him would be violence (resulting from persecution) then few stories illustrate as vividly what so many of our sisters and brothers in the global body of Christ face.

You attend church, you go to school, you go to youth group. Maybe at some point you had an in-tears-praying experience, maybe you've just always grown up believing. One morning you're walking with your four friends to school, as you doubtlessly do every day. You might be a little nervous about a test. You might hope that that guy from the cricket team talks to you today. You might be tired of listening to "that girl" always talking about which boys like her, but you put up with her prattle because it's nice to have company on the walk.

Then six men dressed in black come at you. Maybe your first fear is of being mugged. You then realize this is more serious--will they rape? Why are they doing this--do you even suspect it has to do with your religion? Do you have any reason to fear your head being chopped off before you see their machetes? Maybe your life flashes before your eyes, maybe you get a prayer, maybe your faith is so strong that you aren't even afraid, and your prayer is "Lord Jesus, please forgive these men."

Maybe you only get halfway through.

According to the Italy-based news agency AsiaNews, the three deceased have been identified as:
15-year-old Yusriani Sampoe
16-year-old Theresia Morangke, and
19-year-old Alvita Polio.

The result of Christ might be a sword, but the same Christ, in the same gospel, said "blessed are the peacemakers." May Christ fill all of his vessels in Poso, Indonesia, and may our prayers be with them and with the families of Yusriani, Theresia, and Alvita.

(For more info on them, check ChristianPost and International Christian Concern.)

Preaching podcast

New communications media have all sorts of possibilities for Pastors. Blogs, I think, could be great for the Reverend whose parsonage is too far out in the woods to meet with other Pastors and discuss the week's lectionary--post the lectionary text and comment back and forth on it.

Or, for those who can meet, they could record the conversation they have and podcast it or post a transcript for Pastors that are not in as close community.

It is now easy as pie for Pastors to record their Sunday sermons and choir anthems and podcast them so anybody could listen to 'em from their computer or iPod. Really, we at the seminary could do that from our chapel for our Tuesday and Wednesday sermons, if the school were really interested in publicizing it. (And maybe there's legal issues--I dunno.)

One podcast that's been fun for me to listen to is "- Voices From the Past." From their description:

Hear some of the most famous sermons preached in the last 100 years in audio form. Be blessed to hear treasures that haven t been heard by many in this generation.

You can pick it up here: http://www.sermonindex.net/vftp.xml.

Right now I'm listening to an audio compilation of sermons with instrumental music of varying kinds in the background. Whoever composed it even paid attention to left channel/right channel stuff to augment the rhetoric.

I'm sure that the theology is suspect in many of the sermons. This one included a preacher talking about how "I went to Africa thinking I could preach to the savages the word of God, but I found that they already heard it--and had rejected it! A continent of willful savages reveling in sin and they will deserve to burn in Hell." Not even Bruce Wilkinson gets that bad.

However, for those into Christian oral tradition, it's like going to a museum. I feel sorry for the souls led astray by some of these men (mostly), but I think I do learn some from hearing them preach.

To Post

With Blogger, the kind of blog software this site uses, you need to create an account to start a post. Unfortunately, the best way I've figured out to do it is to email me. You can just put "REQ: blog account" or something in your subject line. But make sure we know you're related somehow to this school, though!

My email address is "jmorey" at the email domain for Wesley Seminary students. I won't type the full thing here 'cuz I don't want a bunch of random spam from folks outside the institution.

Bib Interp and MTSers

Because I felt it would be ridiculous to earn a degree called "Master's in Theological Studies" without ever having taken a class in Biblical interpretation, I registered for it as an elective this semester.

Now that I'm halfway through it, I can't believe it isn't required for us. Taking the intro courses to Hebrew Bible and New Testament do help to provide some socio-historical context for understanding the original meaning of a text (yep, it's just like interpreting the Constitution, only more difficult), but bringing it to today really is a whole different thing.

As a youth director I would look at the assigned lectionary text, or the text up for this day (or a certain issue) in the Serendipity New Testament for Groups and pray for an hour over (A) what is the message, (B) what activity will echo this theme, (C) what questions will get the kids talking about the theme, and (D) what closing prayer will really reach them? If a student brought up an idea outside the theme I discerned, I would helpfully try to get them back on topic.

I feel like I manipulated 20 kids into buying my agenda, without my even knowing I had one.

Although this class provides structure for interpreting the Bible, I really find it liberating. While the Spirit certainly moves, a more systematic approach than "read and pray" has really opened my eyes to subtleties about what authors are really saying, and how I need to look beyond the plains of "what speaks to me" and into the horizon of "what was the author's message?"

And in so doing, it's as though the Spirit has more room to work within me. Until last week I had seen Paul as a blowhard. His rhetoric has always turned me off, although I understand his style of writing was an accepted norm at the time. But reading Phil 4:1-9, knowing to look at the passage's plot structure and interpreting it in conversation with sources like Wesley's commentary, I believe this man had the rhetorical talents of MLK!

Anyway, to fellow MTSers, I highly recommend the Biblical Interpretation class. Some days are still wastes of time, but this is one class wherein the tools and skills I am learning I will be able to use long after when I graduate from this school. Rank it with Systematic Theology in "courses I wish I would have taken before my last year." It would have augmented so many of the others.

Youth Ministry in the tradition of Constantine?

At Wesley we offer a special emphasis in youth ministry for people seeking their Master's Degrees. A former youth director myself, this programmatic emphasis was particularly appealing to me when I received Wesley's first informational packet, including a sermon on "Youth Ministry After 9/11" that made me wish I could read it aloud to the youth group at my old church. (Unfortunately, it turned out that the emphasis is only workable for M.Divs, not M.T.S. students.) Back home in Minnesota, my closest community is shaped by those with whom I served in the youth ministry trenches through church groups, mission projects, and Bible Camps.

This month's Youth Worker Journal has an article, Domesticated Prophets (it's a PDF), by the director of the Huntington University (where?) MA program on youth ministry. He looks at the development of youth ministry as a discipline from his early days, when unbudgeted risk-taking youth workers put it all on the line and embraced a childlike faith, and compares it to the industry it's become, full of proper respect, more resources than you can shake a stick at, and organizations whose sole purpose is to track other organizations.

Sometimes it bothers me to think that more than a few really outstanding men and women of God can work in youth ministry without having a single meaningful relationship with a teenager. It can frustrate me to consider how many wonderfully gifted people seem hell-bent on developing the next national campaign, program, organization, curriculum, or speaker’s tour that will launch us all forward into an unprecedented season of fruitfulness. I wake up wondering if running ministry leaders through the gauntlet of formal schooling may not exactly be what God had in mind for the Church.

He concludes

We youth ministers once embodied a prophetic message that the rest of the faithful needed. Kid-rescue required fearless adventurers, personifying Jesus’ profile of disciples who couldn’t be dissuaded because there was no money, resources, or respect. Our lack of regard for all things professional was simply an unintentional by-product. “Let’s go, Jesus! I’m ready, if you can use me!"

Some called such bravado naïve. I prefer to think of it as childlike. And now that we’ve been properly domesticated, I fear we’ll all settle for a Church we would’ve never tolerated 25 years ago.

That’s a legacy this old-timer would rather not be a part of.

Plenty of y'all are involved in some sort of youth work now--do you share these concerns?

Exegeting Katrina

Floods in New England, Mudslides in Guatemala, Hurricanes galore…



Particularly since Katrina there has been a lot of fuss over how to interpret God as God is related to natural disasters. Does God cause them? Does God simply choose not to prevent them? Either way, why?

Many of us have heard how Katrina is the result of our society’s sins. Environmentalists say if we were better stewards of our world then the ocean wouldn’t be warming, water levels wouldn’t be rising, and hurricanes wouldn’t be as increasingly frequent or intense as they are becoming.

Some say Katrina was in effect a result of our own actions, our own free will to engage in activities that end up modifying ways this planet works. The unique vulnerability of the poor to the disaster is also our societal sin, for which part of our community is being punished (though not by God). That view is echoed by Wes Granberg-Michaelson, General Secretary of the Reformed Church in America, in an article here.

Or maybe, because the satellite images were shaped like a fetus, we’re being punished for abortion. Or maybe Louisiana was being punished for Mardi Gras or for hosting an event for homosexuals. Maybe God Hates F… well, you know. Interpretations are coming from people with their own agendas all around the world.

Walter Brueggeman, whose book Prophetic Imagination is required reading for all seminary students, affirms the blame-your-sin-of-choice tradition from a Biblical perspective, but also notes three other models by which Biblical authors interpreted natural disasters. His article in this month’s Christian Century magazine is a great read.

His summary:

There is no one teaching on this subject in the Bible. Taking a biblical view of a natural disaster means:

• attending to a dimension of moral judgment,
• noticing where the power of chaos continues untamed,
• accepting that such a wave of destruction may be an exhibit of God's greatness, and
• trusting that God prevails over chaos in order to sustain life and keep it safe.

When we have such texts in hand, the remainder of the work is imaginative, faithful interpretation.

This bugs me personally because it seems my take, which is more in line with Granberg-Michaelson’s, that God is not the author of evil but many of the worst impacts of Katrina were things we could have, should have, and did see coming but did not as a society act upon, may not be Biblical.

If environmental scientists are right and these things do keep getting worse, we’ll need to develop an effective line on disasters. Read Brueggeman and react.

Useful info for massive amounts of time off like Reading Week

If this were a useful blog, it would probably have information on how to stem the boredom and fight off cabin-fever that comes with being stuck on campus during Reading Week. In the spirit of sharing resources with others:

I like to leave as often as possible--even if just for a night of camping or a couple hours' drive to a good hiking spot. In the past these have included Coopers Rock or Harpers Ferry in West Virginia. Both are within a 3-hour drive. Just over an hour is Cunningham Falls (in the Catoctin Mountains) in Maryland. In Virginia there's Bear Creek down by Richmond (2-3 hours) and of course Shenandoah National Park is about 2.5 hours away.

My favorite spot, though, because it's only a 30-minute drive, is Great Falls National Park. It's really beautiful and easy as pie to reach. (Tell Mapquest to take you to the intersection of Old Dominion Drive and Georgetown Pike in Virginia.) You can hike for miles up or down the muddy Potomac River and catch views like this one:

Posting and getting accounts

If this is an unofficial student blog, anybody should be able to post to it. If everybody tosses up something, we'll have a messy blog fast, so it would be cool to categorize posts somehow. If you know of mods for this Blogger software or other hacks, post 'em in comments!

If you are a student or alum of Wesley and would like an account, then email me. Jmorey at the Wesley address for students. Put "REQ: WESLEY SEMINARIAN ACCOUNT" in the subject, say who you are, and you'll get an invite when I get the chance to check email.

Reading Week--don't look yet

It's easy to get ideas for new things that you'll never have time for once school starts again during Reading Week. At a nearby Mexican restaurant last Sunday night some fellow seminarians and alum had discussed the idea of creating a blog for Wesley Seminary, where we all attend(ed).

It turns out that creating a blog is embarrassingly easy. What would a seminary blog look like? Asbury Theological Seminary has one, and it's essentially a new devotional every 2-7 days. I like visiting the blog of a seminarian in Grand Rapids, Michigan, whose site is called Bridget Jones Goes to Seminary. In contrast to the regular devotional model, "Bridget Jones" shares about her own life and struggles at a Calvinist seminary. A student at Eden Seminary in Missouri, Chuck Currie, has his own blog, "views on faith and Christ from a UCC Seminarian," but he delves more into politics than our vision might be. Luther Seminary, in the glorious Twin Cities in Minnesota, also has a blog, apparently run by the Seminary's administration, but it's not regularly updated.

Lots of models, but none really of the group blog this one could be. What would it look like to have a student-run blog? Where would our focus be?

If there are other blog models out there, please let us know! If you have ideas or the Spirit is moving you to contribute to this effort, please add your comment--maybe we'll be breaking ground...