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.