Greetings!
My summer at home in Indy is officially over. I had a good summer, I worked as a standardized test grader for the first two months, and spent the end of the summer taking Free Methodist History and Polity online to help me as I work towards ordination with the Free Methodist Church. I even got to preach at West Morris Church, which was a fantastic experience!
Now however, it's time to get back into the groove of things. It’s the end of week one of the fall semester here at Asbury Seminary, which also means that according to my tradition, it’s about time for me to send out a Mara Report! If you are curious, this is just a little life update about how my life is going and what my semester looks like so far. As always, feel free to pass this on to anyone who is interested, and to read as much or as little as you want to know.
Big News!
I’m going to start with the big exciting news for me this semester. I’ve been invited to be the Lead Chapel Intern for the seminary chapel office this year! I initially was invited to apply for and then join the chapel team at the end of last school year. As I prepared to return to Kentucky after my summer at home, I was really looking forward to participating in the behind-the-scenes aspects of chapel, helping with planning, set up, and service during the services. I even came back to Wilmore a few days early so that I could go on the chapel team retreat and get to know the leadership and other interns that will be part of the team this year. The day after the retreat, right after I had finished moving my stuff into the dorm, I got a text inviting me to come by the office where I was offered and then accepted the lead chapel intern position!
I am super excited about all of it. I’m still going to be doing all of the tasks of a regular chapel intern, but as the lead intern I will also be in charge of a lot of coordinating tasks, most notably scheduling the chapel interns for roles during chapel services and inviting students from our community to pray, read scripture, and help serve communion every week. It’s quite the adjustment considering I am still trying to learn everything that is involved in each role! I have a really good support system however. I’m going to be working pretty closely with the worship coordinator in charge of our team and our director of chapel, the amazing Jessica LaGrone. I’m really looking forward to working with them both, and with all of the other amazing chapel interns!
Classes
Inductive Bible StudyBig, unexpected news aside, classes for the semester started this Tuesday, September 3rd. I’m taking three classes again this semester, two in person and one online.
In person class number one is Inductive Bible Study of Matthew, with Dr. Bauer. Everyone on campus abbreviates it to IBS, which can cause some confusion for newcomers or non-seminarians who hear it! IBS meets on Tuesdays and Thursdays. There is one section of the class that meets 8-9:15am in the morning, but I lucked out and got into the 9:30-10:45am class section, so I get to have a slower start for my mornings. Dr. Bauer is very well respected on campus. He has a reputation as super knowledgeable, and that this class with him in particular is very rigorous, but will also teach you so, so much. Having been in class with him twice now, I can see how that reputation is well-earned. So far we are focusing on methods of Bible study – what does it mean to be “inductive,” rather than deductive, and why do we need a methodology for studying the Bible anyway? He’s already laid down some groundwork of how important it is to start with the text and let it speak to itself before you start applying specific lenses and analysis, as well as making a point that methodology and the guidance of the Spirit should not be contradictory or competing perspectives, but should both be present in our reading of a Bible passage.
All of that makes my brain and my heart very happy! I think that this class is certainly going to involve plenty of work, and plenty of brainpower as I absorb and learn the massive amounts of information Dr. Bauer is going to be throwing at us, but I also think that it’s going to be really valuable, and that his style of teaching is going to mesh well with my learning style. That’s nice after some of the bumps I ran into last semester!
Care of Persons
Class number two this semester is Care of Persons, which is in person with Dr. Martin Mallory. This may surprise a few people, since I was originally signed up for Church History part I instead, but when my Church History class got canceled about two weeks before move-in, I swapped in Care of Persons instead.
Care of Persons is taught through the counseling department. It’s primarily focused on self-care and pastoral care and counseling. M.Div students have to take either this class or Pastoral Crisis Intervention as one of our requirements. I’ve heard good things about both classes, but there are a lot of students that really love to talk about how incredible Dr. Mallory is in this one, so I’m glad that I get to take Care of Persons with him.
The class meets on Tuesday evenings, 5-8pm, which is going to make dinner plans interesting. One of the students suggested planning a schedule to bring in snacks every week, so I think that will be a nice bonus at least! As for my impression of Dr. Mallory, (He asked us to call him Martin. I’m working on it.), I think he’s going to be really cool to learn from. He seems like he has a lot of energy, but he definitely also has a whole lot of experience with offering counseling and teaching these topics all over the world. In our first class, he established that we are not going to be recording classes in any way, because he wants everyone to be comfortable sharing their experiences, even experiences that are painful or intense. I think that this class is going to be very heavy duty on an emotional level, which I find a tiny bit intimidating, but mostly really exciting! The professor is clearly very passionate about the topics we will be addressing, but also seems like a very experienced teacher, who is good at meeting students where we are at. This is one of the reasons why I enjoyed taking psychology classes while I was getting my physics degree. Anybody who spends that much time thinking about people tends to be pretty well equipped for a teaching position.
One takeaway I did find from this Tuesday, was that IBS in the morning with Care of Persons in the Evening, and chapel in between is a lot of information to take in. I had already signed up for an online class specifically to avoid having three classes in the same day (again), but I have now also made the commitment to try to avoid doing huge amounts of schoolwork on Tuesday afternoons between classes. I’ll probably use that time for things like meal prep or laundry, productive activities that still give my brain a little time to rest between absorbing massive amounts of (very cool) information!
Gospel Catechesis
That does lead me rather naturally to class number three, Gospel Catechesis, my only online class this semester. In all honesty, I would rather be taking this class online, but I’ve decided that it’s worth it to me to take a class online in order to make my schedule less crowded and more flexible.
The class of Gospel Catechesis, as best as I understand it after a week, involves learning how to teach and foster spiritual learning and formation. It’s not a class that I tend to hear a whole lot about on campus, but it’s also a topic that interests me a great deal. Based on the first week, I think that I will have a lot of reading and discussion posts to do for the class, which is nice in that it incorporates discussion into even an online class, but can be somewhat intimidating when I open a discussion forum, and find over one hundred unread posts in the thread. I’m hoping to push my classwork for this earlier in the week this semester, “scheduling” my online classwork for Mondays now that Labor day is out of the way, so that I have a better chance of keeping up with the discussion a bit rather than coming into the conversation later, after I’ve made it through my busy Tuesday classes. It’s a work in progress, but I’m looking forward to the class and the books we will be reading for it.
Seminary Life
Beyond the classroom and the chapel office, things are going well. I’m still living in the same building in women’s single housing, but I’ve moved up a floor to live with three girls that I met and became friends with last semester. Moving back in was a bit of a hassle, but I’m mostly settled in by now, and I’ve gotten to have a lot of fun interactions with all of my roommates. I think that we are going to have a lot of fun this semester!
It’s also been fun just getting settled back into the campus community. I have spent so much of the last two weeks catching up with friends from last year and getting to know some of the new students. The lead chapel intern thing has been a helpful push to motivate me to go out of the way to get to know more people, and to make the new students feel welcome, but I’ve also had the chance to pick up where I left off with a lot of old friends. It feels like a really nice balance!
One of my favorite things has been walking into both of my in-person classes this semester, and realizing just how many people I know in each classroom. It really brings home the sense that I am a returning student this year, not a newbie, which is a very comfortable place to be! Plus, second year is nice because I don’t have to know what I’m doing with myself after graduation. I just get to dive back into an environment where I feel comfortable to learn and grow and enjoy my time in this place. I’m excited to see what the rest of this semester and year will bring, and to see how God is going to work on this campus and in my life.
