I admit it.

I don’t feel so bad about this anymore…  lol!

Long obedience in the same direction

check out a good post by my friend Steve Lummer on why sometimes it takes a long obedience in the same direction!  Good stuff.

If you are going to survive your journey it will take a long obedience in the same direction.

We live in a in a world where we can have instant everything. Fast food, Microwaved meals and instant coffee.

That kind of living messes us up when we can’t have everything we want right now.

Sometimes a “wilderness experience” or a “trial” can make us  feel like we are never going to get to our destination.

You can have a wilderness experience anywhere: at a graveside, in a bed of sickness, during a divorce.

If I could do it again

I’d have dumped my biblical languages credits into an MA and made chaplaincy the focus of MDiv and then did a full year hospital residency (CPE) – why?

Because I think the training one gets for the chaplaincy is very pertinent to pastoral ministry.  Now, I am not saying pastors are to be chaplains (they must not) but I think the pastoral care and skill sets one learns in chaplaincy will make one a better pastor who is able to provide good pastoral care and spiritual direction to a congregation and to various individuals as well.

For example in the chaplaincy focus at AGTS – one can take a class learning about PTSD and how to work with those dealing with it (it’s not limited to military personnel); you take a class on interpersonal techniques in helping relationships so you learn what to do and what not to do in helping others; you can get a class on addictive behaviors in family systems and gain insight on pastoring those caught up in addictions; you can get a class on counseling diverse populations so you learn to deal with all sorts of different folks and learn to get out of one’s own ethnocentric mono-culturalism, :-); you can take a class on psychopathology so you don’t get confused and think every person who comes in the door “acting weird” might have a demon, or maybe they do…. or don’t.

These are, of course in addition to the normal MDiv requirement and most of these are electives so not all would be required, but you’d be surprised at their general usefulness.   In the three years we’ve been at the Canyon we’ve already encountered all of these issues and have more than once been left wondering what to do or how to handle it.

So, proably, if I could do it again, that is what I would do! 🙂