so close to home.

i read this article by brett mcckracken and so much of it hit home. and by hitting home i mean i can relate to it in many ways. first of all biola is where i received my undergraduate degree in christian education as well as my minor in biblical studies. not only did i study there but i lived there and i loved there. i bleed biola. about half way through my biola carreer a graduate program began called institute for spiritual formation. talbot was one of the first seminaries to begin offering graduate level work on spiritual formation. this became very much of interest to me towards the end of my degree. spiritual disciplines and spiritual formation was something that i sought to understand within the context of ministring to high school students (predominantly students who have grown up in the church and are subscribed to the prescription of christianity with out real relationship). spiritual formation offered more. it offered a type of transformation through developing personal relationship with God through engaging him. biola was leading the arena of higher education of training in this area and my experience there lead me to denver seminary to get a masters in christian formation and soul care. talbot and denver seminary have worked closely at developing similar programs.

that is how this article hits me at both levels. i love biola. thought the president and chaplain has changed since i have been there; i have great faith in the institution, the boards, the faculty, and the students. christian formation is a new movement among Jesus followers to develop a deeper, meeningful, contemplative relationship with our Savior. i resonate with brett’s article and can not believe the self destructive tendencies that christians (the student writing this article) and christian organizations (lighthouse trails and apprising ministries) do to damage an amazing organization and spiritual formation. probably a homeschooler and a homeschool organization.

Spiritual Formation Under Attack at Biola

October 27, 2008, 11:30 am » Brett McCracken

Last week, a long-running smear campaign against “spiritual formation” at Biola University kicked it up a notch. An organization called Lighthouse Trails teamed up with Apprising Ministries to unleash a torrent of criticism and insults about Biola, claiming that Biola is drifting from its strong biblical roots and embracing “apostate Roman Catholic mystical spiritual formation”…

I haven’t the energy to summarize the smears, but if you want to follow it thus far, read the following posts:

Biola University Now Drifting from Evangelical Protestant Roots? (Oct 20)

Biola University Student Reports on Contemplative Chapel Services – Warns Parents to Avoid Biola (Oct 20)

Biola University Contacts Lighthouse Trails – Accuses of Libel (Oct 21)

You’ll be shocked when you find out just what it is that these people are up in arms about… Contemplative prayer! That’s right, they are worried about Biola possibly being apostate because in chapel we dare to introduce students to ancient methods of contemplative, meditative prayer. We dare to engage the students in Lectio Divina, an ancient method inherited from the Desert Fathers of deeply reading and meditating upon a scripture. It’s not new-agey or mystical; it’s simple, quiet, and meaningful. The bible takes center stage. What is wrong with that?

Evidently these critics of Biola are worried that by having an entire chapel service of silent meditation, there is somehow a movement of apostasy being birthed in the students’ minds. It’s wrong, they suggest, to have a scripture read without a pastor or speaker there to unpack it and give it some context.

Todd Pickett, Associate Dean of Spiritual Development at Biola, has a different opinion. He believes that students today are “over-messaged” and need more time to just contemplate what they’ve already been hearing, learning, experiencing in Christ.

“I hear from students that they need more time for processing and reflection,” he told The Chimes, Biola’s student newspaper. “They feel overwhelmed sometimes by the amount of information that comes at them. That makes sense to me, [and] at the very least, we need to allow a little time and a little room to listen to what God is doing. [We need to] take some of the things we hear and talk to God about them. I am trying to build that into the rhythm of chapel.”

As someone who was a busy college student myself not too long ago, I resonate with every word of what Pickett is saying. Time for reflection is the number one need of students today.

Apparently the folks at Lighthouse Trails and Apprising Ministries don’t agree, however. To them, Pickett, along with people like Richard Foster (who they label “neo-Gnostic”), Henri Nouwen, and Dallas Willard (who, for the record, gave a very philosophical and helpful lecture at Biola’s Torrey Conference last Wednesday), represent an unbiblical mysticism that masquerades as “spiritual formation.”

It baffles me that “spiritual formation,” which to me looks like a positive, healthy thing from every angle, is being so aggressively criticized. Even more baffled that Biola is being singled out and smeared for their commitment to it. But then again, Christians tend to be the most critical of all people, unfortunately. So I guess it shouldn’t surprise me.

heaven hell and the russian soul.

so i am sitting here writing my own last final. i am dreading to write. i do not know if it is because i am disgusted with the subject or rather that i am becoming nastolgic that it is my last final. it is technically not my last but it is basicly my last. go figure the last final i take is one where i have to make up my own questions for it and answer them. that is rediculous. do not take russian literature your last semester at biola. it is the thorn in your side kind of class. rediculously long strenuous and the work load is close to unmanageable. the only thing that doestoevsky, zamyatin, and tolstoy really have in common is that the medium is the message. they all wrote because they could not express their views against communism any other way. that is what happens when you live in a society where you are oppressed. thank goodness we live in america…land of the free. we are not forced into being someone we are not. thank goodness society does not have presupositions on how you are to dress look and what we are to spend our money on. thank goodness we live in a society where we have freedoms to be capitalistic. freedom to protest. freedom to fair trials. freedom to believe whatever we want yet the majority of us believe what we are told. how come we do not question our society like the great philosophical inquisitors known as russian literaries. i hate writing essays. i hate russian literature. but more than ever i hate that i am done with school and that my mind is filled with unbelievable doubt.

past and path.

“life is hard, ministry is tough, but you have to look how god has consistantly been faithful through the past”

this has definately been something that i have heard tremendously a lot recently. i just returned from nation youth workers convention where the countless speakers talk about hanging in there and not burning out. i think the thing for me right now that life is just busy. this idea of time consumption creates a dilema of choice where ones decisions of time usage either creates problems or eases tensions. i am not in a place where i am feeling burnt out on ministry but rather burnt out of school. rather i want to be in a place where i can give more to ministry. life does not have to be a hard thing. ministry does not have to be tough. i just want to live. to relax. to not care. and through that nature i want to be walking the the faithful present.

“in all your ways acknowledge him and he will direct your path”

worry. after a seventeen year plan of going to school, thirteen mandatory and four that are expected, the system spits you out as its bi-product. based on production, society has a number of expectations to what you are suppose to do. from graduate school to entry level jobs and base salaries. since we have learned how to ride the bike we are suppose to hop right on. well where the hell are the training wheels. worrying about how to actually ride a bike with out that initial help and support of those small dinking insignificant training wheels can leave you with some serious injuries. now i am not justifying graduating college, moving home, and not working. my appeal is to just live. to graduate school and follow god. i do not want to opperate under expectations but rather live freely with freedom to do and be what the lord is leading me to be in that exact moment. like i said, i was at a conferance this last weekend, and this is the verse that hit me the most. why i am worry about the future. why do i think that it is out of control. why do i need to know where i am going to live, who i will be with, what i will be doing. if i worry too much about the future i miss the now. i have to obey six words. if i just acknoledge him. if i make him the center of my life. if i make hime my now. then what? then he will direct my path. its on him. so i put him at the center of my life then i do not even have to worry about my path. its his path to worry about. so worry about this life of mine because i am not any more.

reflection. such a funny thing.

What did you learn from your SOS experience?
I have found that no matter how unwilling, and narrow minded the summer makes you, when you come back to serve on SOS you always tend to break and end up learning a lot. Friday, before we came back for fall training, I was coming back from leading a group of about eighty at a high school camp for my church. This camp was an incredible challenging time for me and my life and made me think about my future and where I want to be, and what I want to be doing. So we make our way back, and our bus brakes down. Stuck on the side of the road for four hours, I make my way home for a mere hour to pack before we are to be back at Biola for dinner.
So I arrive barely in time to hitch a ride to the dinner with the whole entire staff. Now I have done this ‘welcome back’ dinner a few times before. In fact, I have even been in charge of helping out with the dinner. So I knew how the majority of the people would be feeling. Because of the closeness of the SOS staff, everyone, upon returning, is in this state of euphoria. I on the other hand, was still trying to debrief and unpack the emotions and feelings that I experienced from leading students at a camp, and for the most part for the whole summer.
My attitude was challenged by two of my closer friends on staff. I was able to dialogue with two people who felt the same as myself. I felt that being back in the jumble of fifty-something excited friends was not the place I wanted to be. It was quite over whelming at first. The Lord was good, just like always. Through faithful service I was able to not only give to my students, but this was the first year that my students have truly been a blessing to me.
How did you grow?
I can not really say that I can pin point one area of growth that I have had on SOS, but I can tell you how it has reiterated a theme that is ever so present in my life. God has consistently been teaching me obedience; mainly how I am to be obedient to him and his will for my life. Coming back to SOS was a commitment that I made eight months before it had actually happened. A lot had changed in that eight months and if I had to choose out of free will, I probably would not have come back. But I made the commitment to serve the Lord by being on SOS, so I was going to fulfill it. I fulfilled it and it ended up being a blessing to my life. Nothing magical or life changing happened from my obedience, but there is something gratifying knowing that I was faithful and obeyed the Lord.

here we go again on our own.

going down the only road we have ever known. that is right. a new logo and two returning staff members later. we are back in business. though we were here over interterm the computer screens stayed black and this week at biola never changed. we are alive and kicking with the new title of advising secretaries. so we raise our piece of chocolate candy high and toast: to a new year, a new alias, a new job title, and a new attitude of making some serious copies. lets kick some toner butt.

frayed on all the ends.

just that time. you know the time where the rope is worn. there is about four days left in school. but these four days are probably going to be the longest four days ever. it is funny to think the percentage of your grade that you earn in the last two weeks of school. it is almost as though it is the pinacle. the culmination of everything that you have been searching for. speaking of searching i am currently searching for my planner. yeah i know some people can not function without their planner but i can. the problem is though that it is a therapeutical release when i can write down all the stuff that i have to do. right now i need that therapeutic release more than anything. school is finishing up so i am taking care of eighteen units. my internship is going well and that is continuelly a blessing to me even though it takes up a place on my time sheet. and then of course there are friends to which i want to say my december farewells to. many things are wrapping up with final meetings. like sos and smart stop. and i am finding that i have no time to complete projects such as my oral interpretation speech because i need to be at my fathers birthday dinner. and certainly i can not forget about my extraordinary girl friend who i want to spend the majority of my time with. i always want to be seeing her or being with her. and this is the overwhelming amount of responsibilities to which i am given to end the year with. bad? no. these are not bad things. the majority of them are all things i would extol when secluded from the whole. but rather the cullmination of the amount of ink that builds in my planner can be a little overwhelming at types. the rope to which i equate my life to is very active. used puposefully. but with the amount of use that it is given. it is frayed on all the ends.