United around a robust but essentialist statement of faith, Christians with diverse personalities, backgrounds, racial identities, callings, and convictions on secondary issues rubbed elbows daily as we tried to discern what was true, how to love, and to what areas of service God was calling each of us. Author’s collection.Īnd simply living together is its own form of education. So my friends and I did-every day in the seminary cafeteria, where we all ate both lunch and dinner. As a graduate of Princeton, which has emphasized “precepts” (discussion sections) ever since Woodrow Wilson pioneered them there in the early twentieth century, I considered discussing the material essential to education. Hence larger intro courses could not break up into smaller discussion sections. That was definitely the only time.Įveryone at seminary is a graduate student, so seminaries aren’t rolling in graduate assistants. Campus was tucked away within a fairly wealthy neighborhood, but rent in my dorm was so cheap that I joked it was the one and only time in my life I could afford to live on the North Shore of Boston. A LOT of grass, specifically in hill form, which was glorious when it snowed.
I did all this training on a campus consisting of several buildings, beautiful trees and flowers, and a lot of grass. (I also recently, and for the first time, got to guest lecture in a seminary course-on women in church history-at Baylor’s Truett Theological Seminary!) In addition to reflecting on how my faith shaped my vocation as a historian, I intentionally trained myself to be a lay Bible teacher in the church, a role in which I have continued to serve ever since. I even received basic training in pastoral counseling. For two years I lived in community with hundreds of other broadly evangelical Christians diving into Scripture (including Greek!), theology, ethics, and church history. I have never regretted the decision to take on debt to earn an MA in Church History from Gordon-Conwell. I want therefore to offer a tribute as to what I gained from my residential experience on the South Hamilton campus:
The seminary is committed to maintaining “community” but has not specified, likely and fairly because it does not know, whether it will continue to provide communal housing for students. My intention was to set aside a couple years of my life for in-depth reflection, and physical environment affects me quite a lot, so this was no small consideration.īut that’s not to say that nothing is lost. This was also not true in the other location. This is RARE in a theological seminary, and was not true in the other location, which catered more to married men.