Classes started today! Yeah!

I have finally experienced my first moments of graduate school today. And it felt pretty nice! I had two of my three classes today. The third will be happening in a month as a two week intensive course. It was really nice to finally get started after all the waiting I have been doing since moving a month and a half ago. I also realize how much work it will actually be. I'm expected to do about 150 pages of reading a week for each class, which might not sound like a lot until you realize that some of it is some pretty dense theoretical stuff. Even with all of that, I am super excited for it to be beginning.

I want to tell you about my two classes that have begun now. The first one is called Church in Mission. The title comes from the modern thought of how the Church fits in with the missional agenda of the Bible. Previous to the modernity movement, many churches viewed themselves as a "fortress church." Their focus was on themselves and missions was viewed to be performed by outside agencies. Now, more and more churches are seeing that God intended for the Church to be intimately involved in missions. A huge part of the class will be a group project that will be focused on researching a particular racial/ethnic group within the North American church. My group has decided to research the Latino Evangelical church in North America. Some of the things we might be researching will be undocumented immigrants in the Church and how the Churches should view the laws of the country in regards to the Bible. We will be creating a wiki that will be accessible to anyone; and especially as a resource to the Church. We will also be creating a youtube video about our research. I will be sharing those with you all when the become available.

The other class is called Intercultural Attachment. It is based on a theory called Attachment Theory that deals with building relationships across cultures. I am just now learning about what Attachment Theory says, so I can't really explain it yet. I have been reading for the class the last few weeks and read a book called Why You Do the Things You Do. It has been a really interesting look at how our past relationships, especially with our parents, shapes how we relate to people in our lives now. The authors recognize that there are basically four types of relationship styles that are present in people. Most of us have a combination of parts of a few. The four are Aviodant, Ambivalent, Disorganized, and Secure. Avoidant people are secure in themselves and often will rely too much on what they feel they can offer. When in distress, they will only internalize their feelings and now seek others or God in those times. Ambivalent people do not feel secure in their abilities and will run to people around them and find security in them. Often they will be extremely clingy and uncomfortable alone. Disorganized people will have a sporatic mixture of avoidant and ambivalent styles. Often disorganized people will have some form of major trauma in their past that has created this style. Secure people will relate to people and God in a healthy way. When distress happens in their lives they have hope that a solution will be found. Obviously, this is a very simplistic explaination, but hopefully you can get the point.

The two week intensive course is called Poverty and Development and is taught by Dr. Bryant Myers, who worked for World Vision for 30+ years in development work all over the world. I am super excited about that class. I will explain more about it as it gets closer to starting.

I hope this gives you an idea about what is going on now in my life.

Today was the first day of orientation at Fuller and I loved it! I absolutely love that people pray there! That might seem like a strange statement, but I have never been to a school in my life that people prayed at. Like all the people pray there; professors, presidents, student. I am so loving that right now!

And besides all that, I get to learn about how to better communicate the Gospel to people across the world will people from all over the world. Today, I met people from Norway, Australia, Malaysia, Korea, China, Japan, India, Nigeria, Kenya, Holland, and some others I can't remember right now. Pretty cool though!

More to come soon! School starts Monday!

New Monasticism

So, I mentioned yesterday I am part of a monastic community here in LA. If you are not familiar with the concept of monastic community, I will try to shed light on it. In the last two weeks, we have read through and discussed a book describing the new monastic movement using a variety of authors with differing experiences with monastic communities. The book is entitled School(s) for Conversion: 12 Marks of a New Monasticism

The gist of the book is that groups of Christians intentionally live together in an area and reach out to their community and address their needs. The people living in the house share what they have and live as a community resembling the community of believers in Acts 2. This passage is set just after Pentecost and thousands of people are becoming followers of Christ. It says in verses 42-47:

"They were continually devoting themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone kept feeling a sense of awe; and many wonders and signs were taking place through the apostles. And all those who had believed were together and had all things in common; and they began selling their property and possessions and were sharing them with all, as anyone might have need. Day by day continuing with one mind in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they were taking their meals together with gladness and sincerity of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord was adding to their numbers day by day those who were being saved."

Monastic communities have been around in the Catholic and Orthodox traditions for a really long time. Some of the early communities were Franciscan and Benedictine. One quote in the book that stood out was "The Benedictines' submission to the church did not result in their being submerged in the much laxer practices of the wider church; it instead resulted in the wider church being transformed by the example and teaching of the monastic communities." (12 Marks 75)

The real heart is to reach out to our community in live and acceptance and share the love of Christ with them. And all the while, serve to larger body of Christ through the church and, just as the monks above, affect the greater church in a large way for the kingdom of God.

It has been really cool to see how this house has become a huge part of the community and people really feel welcome here and I'm excited to be a part of that in the next two years.

Some pics of the drive down to LA with my dad

Northern California mountains in fog

North of the bay area on the coast

Golden Gate bridge with the classic fog rolling in

Pops and I in San Fran

NEW STEPS IN LIFE Part one... (or some other dramatic title here)

Well, I've been in LA for a few weeks now. It is a strange feeling here for me. There are elements of comfortableness for me and then there are all the very strange things also. Due to my summers here, I know the city relatively well and am knowledgeable about the cultural elements. My living situation is one that will take some time to adjust to. I live in a house with four other young(er) people about my age and a family of four. The parents of the family run the house and have two small children. The house runs as a sort of New Monastic community that I will explain later. In sorts, the house is open most hours of the day to anyone from the community to stop by, we have dinner together as a community most nights and anyone from the community can join us, and we have community Bible study and prayer times. We try to make is a very open and welcoming place for anyone that enters. One of the difficulties that living this way brings is it is a challenge to find time and space for yourself away from others and distractions. Personal, alone space is practically unknown here.

As you know, LA is a pretty crazy place and there's always tons of traffic and people in a hurry everywhere you look. For some reason, I really love to craziness around me and the Lord has really put this place on my heart to want to serve and share His love around. I am excited and nervous all at the same time about these next few years of my life. Two years from now, I hopefully will have completed my Master's degree at Fuller Seminary and am preparing to serve to Lord in an urban setting here or across the world. In three weeks, I will be starting the next step in the process leading up to that by starting classes at Fuller. I have been looking into the classes that I have decided to take this fall and am getting a little nervous about them. Each course will require 1500-2000 pages of reading and this is in a ten week term, plus a 12-15 page research paper for each class. Whoa! Am I prepared? Not likely!

So, as all this is happening, I recognize that I need some prayer. Here's a few requests for anyone that is looking:

• Peace for me as I prepare to start school. I want to learn better to take my anxiety to the Lord as soon as it comes to me.
• Patience and love for the people I live with. I want to extend grace to those around me jsut as God did to me through Jesus.
• Compassion for the people around me that are lost in the eyes of the Lord. Just as Jesus wept for Jerusalem, I want to weep for this city and long for revival here.

Lord, thank you that you have called me into your kingdom and you have included me in your plan in this life. Thank you that you have chosen to use me to share your love in this city. Allow me to have sufficient grace and love in this place. Lord, come in power in this place.