Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago : 1999 Seminar
Narrative
Preparing M.Div. Students—Centrifugal Forces
Christine Underwood is a second career student at LSTC. Barbara Rossing is Assistant Professor of New Testament.
Christine: "Hi, Barbara. I tried to take three courses this quarter, and the many papers, teaching parish duties, and the kids' illness have really driven me crazy. I loved the courses, but the quarter system is such a grind and the harder I work the more I feel hollow inside. When I first decided to go to LSTC, I really felt depth in the faith. Randy and I had just gone through our divorce, and my pastor had been so supportive. My prayer life was real and . . ."
Barbara: "I gather that hasn't continued here."
Christine: "Not exactly. But I can't blame anyone. The professors do try to listen to questions in class, but I'm not the kind to speak up, and right after class they always seem to be rushing off to a committee meeting, a flight out of town, or whatever. If truth were told, half the time I need to split as well."
Barbara: "Have you worked with a study group or the Spiritual Friends program?"
Christine: "No, much as I'd like too. I need to work at least 30 hours a week at the hospital and about seven at my teaching parish—the latter without pay I might add. There just isn't time for extra curricular activity. Most days I don't even take time for chapel."
Barbara: "Yeah, I suppose you need to hit the library or . . ."
Christine: "Well, sometimes. Half the time Jill and I have a cup of coffee in the cafeteria. She's the best thing that's happened to me here. We both are single moms, though she commutes sixty miles each day and . . ."
Barbara: "What's it like when you do get to chapel?"
Christine: "Mixed. Everybody tries hard to be innovative, to use inclusive language, to be with it. Sometimes it feels a little PC to me, sometimes it's not PC enough!"
Barbara: "Do you find it different with courses on campus from those you took out at the ELCA building when you were a part-time student?"
Christine: "In a lot of ways those courses were great, but if the courses on campus seem disjointed from one another, those at ELCA are that way by definition. There's no possibility to worship together. I know a couple students would come early to class for a brown bag supper together, but I always got there at the last minute and had to head for home the minute class was over."
Barbara: "What about Junior Colloquy?"
Christine: "Sometimes Junior Colloquy just seems to be another set of agendas loaded on us—racism, sexism, sexual boundaries, reminders about field education deadlines. I thought seminary would be one spiritual high after another. Right now I'm in the pits."
Barbara: "The curriculum sometimes gets in the way of preparation for ministry."
Christine: "Oh, thanks for saying that. Twenty-seven of our thirty-six courses are required. That's way too many, although I mentioned on two class evaluation forms, in worship and pastoral care last year, that the school should require two quarters of each. So I suppose if I were in charge of the curriculum, it would get even worse. I'm also not good at languages. I can see where Greek and Hebrew are useful tools, but six weeks after the quarter was over, I couldn't tell the difference between an Aorist and a Hiphil."
Barbara: "I'd die for the semester system and a curriculum consisting of more area electives and fewer required courses. But then I remember that most seniors don't take any courses in Bible. I wish there were more opportunity to have team-taught courses in Bible and preaching."
Christine: "Should I take a leave of absence for a quarter? It's so good and so bad at the same time. The kids love it at Ray school, partly because ‘you know who' is no longer around. But I drag in from work late for supper, and just when the kids want quality time, I stick my nose in a book."
Barbara: "What would happen if you would look over the list of courses and forgot about meeting requirements? What would be the one course you would like to take?"
Christine: "Last night I browsed through the ACTS catalog and saw that Professor Brown of McCormick was teaching a course called ‘Faith Journeys Then and Now,' but it meets right during Junior Colloquy. Can't we avoid such snafues, especially when we're about to merge with McCormick anyway?"
Barbara: "Oops, President Echols really insists on calling our relationship with McCormick only a ‘closer collaborative partnership.' He says we aren't merging with McCormick and if anybody thought we were, all the money would dry up."
Christine: "What good will it do to have McCormick build on campus?"
Barbara: "Well, each seminary has formed a faculty committee to ask ourselves: What can we do together now? Five years from now? What will we continue to do separately? With all these committees I don't know when I'm going to edit my dissertation for publication."
Christine: "LSTC acts like one size fits all. Here I come in divorced, a lifelong Lutheran, with two kids, whereas Paul Kazanjian is 22 and was never inside a Lutheran church until two years ago. We students are diverse, but we all take the same curriculum. We can petition out of courses if we have the necessary background, but when I saw what I'd have to do to get out of Pastoral Care, it seemed easier just to take the course."
Barbara: "I'm frustrated too. I'd like more women on the faculty, especially women of color. But one of our next searches will be looking for a teacher of Christian Ed who will also run the D.Min. program. We want someone who can walk on water, work 60 hours a week, keep up with publishing, and start at a salary in the low 40s. Not much of a chance of getting an African-American woman for that position!"
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Richard Perry had just returned from visiting his critically-ill brother. He had a three-hour class in urban ministry in less than an hour and needed every second between now and then to get ready. Bart Richardson burst in and asked, "Got a second?"
Richard: "I'm pretty tight today, but OK."
Bart: "I just wanted to thank you for the way you take our urban context seriously. I grew up in Nebraska, went to Midland College, and was about to go to Wartburg Seminary when I thought: Dubuque is going to be just like my hometown. Why don't I push the borders a little bit and go to Chicago where there are Blacks and Koreans and Irish and Polish. No more Olie and Sven jokes! During my junior year I had taken a cross-cultural semester in Chicago, where I met Jody Kretzmann. He taught us about asset-based assessment of communities, not just toting up what's wrong with them."
Richard: "So one thing led to another and here you are."
Bart: "LSTC is an interesting mix of a traditional curriculum and courses like yours that take field trips to significant parishes and social agencies where we meet people who are putting their lives on the line for the sake of the gospel. And then we come back to class and you ask us about the relationship between justification and justice."
Richard stole a look at his watch and said: "I appreciate it when students ‘get it.' Not all do. There's so much going on inside this building that it's easy to forget what's going on outside. Chicago has one of the largest African-American populations in the U.S., with many congregations from the historic Black churches. Many of our Lutheran churches in the Black community are struggling to weave a connection between the Lutheran ethos and the Black religious heritage. If we don't ask questions about context when you're in seminary, you're not likely to ask them when you get out there."
Bart: "This quarter I'm taking the Reformation-Modem church history course, worship, and New Testament methods. Most of the professors try to open our minds to contemporary realities. The history textbook was written by Justo Gonzalez, and the Methods course stresses the social location of the biblical authors and of us interpreters. But there is so much other intellectual stuff to learn-form criticism, the ferment of the nineteenth century, not to mention the intricacies of the Western mass. I want to make more connections to life, also in class. The other day I had my trial liturgy before the video cameras and I almost froze when I said: ‘The grace of our Lord Jesus. . . be with you all.' Who will be the ‘you all' that will be standing in front of me in three years? Will they give a damn about what I've learned at LSTC?"
Richard' "We need to do theology out of our context here so that when you serve in Detroit or in East Overshoe, Nebraska, you will be doing theology out of your context there. Bart, you really need to excuse me."
Bart rose with a smile: "There's one resource that we're not taking advantage of here, namely the forty-five international doctoral students. I've talked to Eardley and Jensen who can't go home because of civil wars in their countries. Most of the international students are under pressure to finish their work and get home. I'd love to learn more from them. I don't want to idealize them because their churches say some pretty negative things about women and gays. It takes so much time to really get to know them. . . ."
Richard softly cleared his throat.
Bart: "Okay, I'm out of here. See you in class."
Richard's mind was spinning when Bart left. He kept thinking, how would I teach church history, worship, NT methods if I had gone into one of those fields? Is it easier to take the context seriously in my field?
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Dean Ralph Klein saw that his next appointment was with Louis Craig. Louis was an African-American who had graduated from St. Olaf College. He had toyed with going to Yale Divinity School, but had come for a Seminary Sampler weekend the previous April and got hooked on LSTC and its unique blend of high academic standards and the welcoming of diversity. Ralph had him in Pentateuch last fall, and some of his essays seemed better than the original lectures. It reminded him of the good old days when Ronald Thiemann, Gil Meilander, and Elna Solvang were in his courses.
Louis: "LSTC is pretty disappointing to me. I've had my share of great professors here, and I never imagined there were this many ways of being Lutheran! I hate to say this because it sounds so snobbish, but there are a lot of people in the classes who don't read the assignments. One professor started to give quizzes at the beginning of class to make sure students would read the assignments; another made us hand in one-page summaries of the readings. Is this really graduate school?"
Ralph: "Our former board chair used to lament to me how the pre-law and pre-med students in her college crammed for the entrance exams for grad school, but the pre-theos were always relaxed because they knew they would be accepted wherever they would apply. Ministry today needs the best and the brightest. But of course ministry requires faith, love, ability to lead and relate to people, and other ministerial capacities. Not just bright people. We all struggle with the things you mention."
Louis: "Vitor has me reading extra Segundo, and Kurt has encouraged me to take an independent study in the theology of Luther. I'm grateful for that, but most of the courses I'm in are not really challenging. I know people are coming from all sorts of backgrounds, and not everyone likes reading like I do. I'm single and have a full tuition scholarship. I only work ten hours a week. Everybody always tells me to consider graduate studies and seminary teaching. But in my heart of hearts I always wanted to be a scholar pastor, and I guess I don't think it would be all that much fun teaching if students aren't reading."
Ralph: "When I started teaching, the students knew more Hebrew and Greek than the average student today does, they read more and wrote better. They knew much more about the Bible than the students who sign up for my Pentateuch class. There were no commuters, no 50 year olds, no women, almost no part-time students. Teaching today is a lot more fun and a lot more work. We all die a little when we perceive that students aren't reading the assignments, but then we ask: How do we get students as excited about this stuff as we are? What teaching strategies help them to think more deeply? I guess I can force students to read by giving them quizzes, but I'd like them to read in their parish ministries when I'm not around to bug them. Just as pastors maintain disciplines of exercise, prayer, and days off, I hope to God they continue to read and think."
Louis: "That's what I hope for too. I can't believe that you and the faculty can be pleased with what students hand in and with what they don't read. I'd like to talk more, but I'm already late for my work in the library."
Ralph smiled to himself about Louis and about his resemblance to Ralph in the early 60s when he had gone to seminary. Ralph and his best friend Clark spent many a late evening over beers bitching about the same things.
In ten minutes Kadi Billman, the Dean-elect, would show up and they would talk about transition issues as his eleven-year term as Dean came to an end. These were good conversations, and he was glad she was coming in fresh, with similar passions for ministry, better patience with faculty process. Today they were going to talk about their own perceptions of what was good and what was not so good about the curriculum. He dreamed about how good it would be to be a "regular" professor again.
At precisely 8:00 a.m. the next morning, five of the six members of the Lexington team gathered for their monthly meeting: President James Kenneth Echols, Richard Bliese, Kadi, Richard Perry, and Ralph. At 8:05 Barbara burst through the door: "Why are you staring at me? I just figured out what we need to do in our new curriculum!" Ralph winked at Kadi. Everybody broke up laughing.
Preparing M.Div. Students—Centrifugal Forces
Christine Underwood is a second career student at LSTC. Barbara Rossing is Assistant Professor of New Testament.
Christine: "Hi, Barbara. I tried to take three courses this quarter, and the many papers, teaching parish duties, and the kids' illness have really driven me crazy. I loved the courses, but the quarter system is such a grind and the harder I work the more I feel hollow inside. When I first decided to go to LSTC, I really felt depth in the faith. Randy and I had just gone through our divorce, and my pastor had been so supportive. My prayer life was real and . . ."
Barbara: "I gather that hasn't continued here."
Christine: "Not exactly. But I can't blame anyone. The professors do try to listen to questions in class, but I'm not the kind to speak up, and right after class they always seem to be rushing off to a committee meeting, a flight out of town, or whatever. If truth were told, half the time I need to split as well."
Barbara: "Have you worked with a study group or the Spiritual Friends program?"
Christine: "No, much as I'd like too. I need to work at least 30 hours a week at the hospital and about seven at my teaching parish—the latter without pay I might add. There just isn't time for extra curricular activity. Most days I don't even take time for chapel."
Barbara: "Yeah, I suppose you need to hit the library or . . ."
Christine: "Well, sometimes. Half the time Jill and I have a cup of coffee in the cafeteria. She's the best thing that's happened to me here. We both are single moms, though she commutes sixty miles each day and . . ."
Barbara: "What's it like when you do get to chapel?"
Christine: "Mixed. Everybody tries hard to be innovative, to use inclusive language, to be with it. Sometimes it feels a little PC to me, sometimes it's not PC enough!"
Barbara: "Do you find it different with courses on campus from those you took out at the ELCA building when you were a part-time student?"
Christine: "In a lot of ways those courses were great, but if the courses on campus seem disjointed from one another, those at ELCA are that way by definition. There's no possibility to worship together. I know a couple students would come early to class for a brown bag supper together, but I always got there at the last minute and had to head for home the minute class was over."
Barbara: "What about Junior Colloquy?"
Christine: "Sometimes Junior Colloquy just seems to be another set of agendas loaded on us—racism, sexism, sexual boundaries, reminders about field education deadlines. I thought seminary would be one spiritual high after another. Right now I'm in the pits."
Barbara: "The curriculum sometimes gets in the way of preparation for ministry."
Christine: "Oh, thanks for saying that. Twenty-seven of our thirty-six courses are required. That's way too many, although I mentioned on two class evaluation forms, in worship and pastoral care last year, that the school should require two quarters of each. So I suppose if I were in charge of the curriculum, it would get even worse. I'm also not good at languages. I can see where Greek and Hebrew are useful tools, but six weeks after the quarter was over, I couldn't tell the difference between an Aorist and a Hiphil."
Barbara: "I'd die for the semester system and a curriculum consisting of more area electives and fewer required courses. But then I remember that most seniors don't take any courses in Bible. I wish there were more opportunity to have team-taught courses in Bible and preaching."
Christine: "Should I take a leave of absence for a quarter? It's so good and so bad at the same time. The kids love it at Ray school, partly because ‘you know who' is no longer around. But I drag in from work late for supper, and just when the kids want quality time, I stick my nose in a book."
Barbara: "What would happen if you would look over the list of courses and forgot about meeting requirements? What would be the one course you would like to take?"
Christine: "Last night I browsed through the ACTS catalog and saw that Professor Brown of McCormick was teaching a course called ‘Faith Journeys Then and Now,' but it meets right during Junior Colloquy. Can't we avoid such snafues, especially when we're about to merge with McCormick anyway?"
Barbara: "Oops, President Echols really insists on calling our relationship with McCormick only a ‘closer collaborative partnership.' He says we aren't merging with McCormick and if anybody thought we were, all the money would dry up."
Christine: "What good will it do to have McCormick build on campus?"
Barbara: "Well, each seminary has formed a faculty committee to ask ourselves: What can we do together now? Five years from now? What will we continue to do separately? With all these committees I don't know when I'm going to edit my dissertation for publication."
Christine: "LSTC acts like one size fits all. Here I come in divorced, a lifelong Lutheran, with two kids, whereas Paul Kazanjian is 22 and was never inside a Lutheran church until two years ago. We students are diverse, but we all take the same curriculum. We can petition out of courses if we have the necessary background, but when I saw what I'd have to do to get out of Pastoral Care, it seemed easier just to take the course."
Barbara: "I'm frustrated too. I'd like more women on the faculty, especially women of color. But one of our next searches will be looking for a teacher of Christian Ed who will also run the D.Min. program. We want someone who can walk on water, work 60 hours a week, keep up with publishing, and start at a salary in the low 40s. Not much of a chance of getting an African-American woman for that position!"
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Richard Perry had just returned from visiting his critically-ill brother. He had a three-hour class in urban ministry in less than an hour and needed every second between now and then to get ready. Bart Richardson burst in and asked, "Got a second?"
Richard: "I'm pretty tight today, but OK."
Bart: "I just wanted to thank you for the way you take our urban context seriously. I grew up in Nebraska, went to Midland College, and was about to go to Wartburg Seminary when I thought: Dubuque is going to be just like my hometown. Why don't I push the borders a little bit and go to Chicago where there are Blacks and Koreans and Irish and Polish. No more Olie and Sven jokes! During my junior year I had taken a cross-cultural semester in Chicago, where I met Jody Kretzmann. He taught us about asset-based assessment of communities, not just toting up what's wrong with them."
Richard: "So one thing led to another and here you are."
Bart: "LSTC is an interesting mix of a traditional curriculum and courses like yours that take field trips to significant parishes and social agencies where we meet people who are putting their lives on the line for the sake of the gospel. And then we come back to class and you ask us about the relationship between justification and justice."
Richard stole a look at his watch and said: "I appreciate it when students ‘get it.' Not all do. There's so much going on inside this building that it's easy to forget what's going on outside. Chicago has one of the largest African-American populations in the U.S., with many congregations from the historic Black churches. Many of our Lutheran churches in the Black community are struggling to weave a connection between the Lutheran ethos and the Black religious heritage. If we don't ask questions about context when you're in seminary, you're not likely to ask them when you get out there."
Bart: "This quarter I'm taking the Reformation-Modem church history course, worship, and New Testament methods. Most of the professors try to open our minds to contemporary realities. The history textbook was written by Justo Gonzalez, and the Methods course stresses the social location of the biblical authors and of us interpreters. But there is so much other intellectual stuff to learn-form criticism, the ferment of the nineteenth century, not to mention the intricacies of the Western mass. I want to make more connections to life, also in class. The other day I had my trial liturgy before the video cameras and I almost froze when I said: ‘The grace of our Lord Jesus. . . be with you all.' Who will be the ‘you all' that will be standing in front of me in three years? Will they give a damn about what I've learned at LSTC?"
Richard' "We need to do theology out of our context here so that when you serve in Detroit or in East Overshoe, Nebraska, you will be doing theology out of your context there. Bart, you really need to excuse me."
Bart rose with a smile: "There's one resource that we're not taking advantage of here, namely the forty-five international doctoral students. I've talked to Eardley and Jensen who can't go home because of civil wars in their countries. Most of the international students are under pressure to finish their work and get home. I'd love to learn more from them. I don't want to idealize them because their churches say some pretty negative things about women and gays. It takes so much time to really get to know them. . . ."
Richard softly cleared his throat.
Bart: "Okay, I'm out of here. See you in class."
Richard's mind was spinning when Bart left. He kept thinking, how would I teach church history, worship, NT methods if I had gone into one of those fields? Is it easier to take the context seriously in my field?
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Dean Ralph Klein saw that his next appointment was with Louis Craig. Louis was an African-American who had graduated from St. Olaf College. He had toyed with going to Yale Divinity School, but had come for a Seminary Sampler weekend the previous April and got hooked on LSTC and its unique blend of high academic standards and the welcoming of diversity. Ralph had him in Pentateuch last fall, and some of his essays seemed better than the original lectures. It reminded him of the good old days when Ronald Thiemann, Gil Meilander, and Elna Solvang were in his courses.
Louis: "LSTC is pretty disappointing to me. I've had my share of great professors here, and I never imagined there were this many ways of being Lutheran! I hate to say this because it sounds so snobbish, but there are a lot of people in the classes who don't read the assignments. One professor started to give quizzes at the beginning of class to make sure students would read the assignments; another made us hand in one-page summaries of the readings. Is this really graduate school?"
Ralph: "Our former board chair used to lament to me how the pre-law and pre-med students in her college crammed for the entrance exams for grad school, but the pre-theos were always relaxed because they knew they would be accepted wherever they would apply. Ministry today needs the best and the brightest. But of course ministry requires faith, love, ability to lead and relate to people, and other ministerial capacities. Not just bright people. We all struggle with the things you mention."
Louis: "Vitor has me reading extra Segundo, and Kurt has encouraged me to take an independent study in the theology of Luther. I'm grateful for that, but most of the courses I'm in are not really challenging. I know people are coming from all sorts of backgrounds, and not everyone likes reading like I do. I'm single and have a full tuition scholarship. I only work ten hours a week. Everybody always tells me to consider graduate studies and seminary teaching. But in my heart of hearts I always wanted to be a scholar pastor, and I guess I don't think it would be all that much fun teaching if students aren't reading."
Ralph: "When I started teaching, the students knew more Hebrew and Greek than the average student today does, they read more and wrote better. They knew much more about the Bible than the students who sign up for my Pentateuch class. There were no commuters, no 50 year olds, no women, almost no part-time students. Teaching today is a lot more fun and a lot more work. We all die a little when we perceive that students aren't reading the assignments, but then we ask: How do we get students as excited about this stuff as we are? What teaching strategies help them to think more deeply? I guess I can force students to read by giving them quizzes, but I'd like them to read in their parish ministries when I'm not around to bug them. Just as pastors maintain disciplines of exercise, prayer, and days off, I hope to God they continue to read and think."
Louis: "That's what I hope for too. I can't believe that you and the faculty can be pleased with what students hand in and with what they don't read. I'd like to talk more, but I'm already late for my work in the library."
Ralph smiled to himself about Louis and about his resemblance to Ralph in the early 60s when he had gone to seminary. Ralph and his best friend Clark spent many a late evening over beers bitching about the same things.
In ten minutes Kadi Billman, the Dean-elect, would show up and they would talk about transition issues as his eleven-year term as Dean came to an end. These were good conversations, and he was glad she was coming in fresh, with similar passions for ministry, better patience with faculty process. Today they were going to talk about their own perceptions of what was good and what was not so good about the curriculum. He dreamed about how good it would be to be a "regular" professor again.
At precisely 8:00 a.m. the next morning, five of the six members of the Lexington team gathered for their monthly meeting: President James Kenneth Echols, Richard Bliese, Kadi, Richard Perry, and Ralph. At 8:05 Barbara burst through the door: "Why are you staring at me? I just figured out what we need to do in our new curriculum!" Ralph winked at Kadi. Everybody broke up laughing.