Men men men men Men men men men

This morning, I experienced my first men-only ministry.

My father-in-law invited me to attend the early morning men’s group at his church. The meet weekly at 7 am. I was then told that there would be food. I said “I’ll be there.”

We drove up and I entered into the massive complex of buildings and was directed into a fellowship room. The breakfast was catered by a local restaurant. There was bacon, sausages, biscuits, gravy, eggs, pastries, pancakes, coffee, and orange juice. And it wasn’t half bad. I met a few of the men (I was the youngest guy there I think), sat down, and ate. It seems that the group has been working through a book about being a man but today was all about having some food and some fellowship. The conversation at the table my father-in-law and I sat at circled around food (I feel that some of those men are more weight conscious than me), gentle ribbing at each other’s expense, and when the head pastor sat down, we chatted about feet and minor surgeries. And by “we chatted”, I mean I kinda sat there and listened. I was asked some questions about seminary (they seemed to already know who I was) and I talked about the weather quite a bit. All in all, it was very normal.

After a very very very brief devotional, each table began a prayer circle. People shared prayer requests for healing, and then each man said a brief prayer. Then we ended the breakfast with a chat about Glen Beck and his Mormon faith. My favorite comment was “he seems so well read and researched – you think he would know better.”

It’s interesting finally seeing men’s ministry in action, to some degree. I know that the idea of men’s ministry is trendy right now – it seems quite a few churches are shocked that more women go to church than men and I can see how church traditions that emphasize male leadership would need to get men back into church – and I have never been a church where men’s ministry was actively promoted (again, if the church is androcentric then male ministry is always implicitly promoted). And I can see that this type of male ministry is designed to ground relationships into the community and it probably is working. They told me that it seemed, overnight, they tripled their active members in the group. But I would be curious to see how this male ministry tackles theological issues and questions and how/if the ministry brings the men into worship. Basically, how does this ministry integrate the men into the church community or is it really working on forming the men in their relationship with God? Basically, it would take me many more visits, time, and theological study to figure it out. Why theological study? Because I don’t speak their traditions language.

One thing that I did notice, however, was that – while I did not feel uncomfortable while there – if my father-in-law had not been there, I wouldn’t have know what to do. I never seen a prayer circle like that before. Was it because people just assumed I already spoke the language, was it because people just assumed my father-in-law would fill in that role, or is there a wider issue of connecting new folks into the ministries that already exist in the church? One thing I have learned while at my time is Advent is the power of intentionally including folks, pushing them into new ministries while at the same time not abandoning those people and letting them flail about. And that intentionality is something that is on my mind right now. I am wondering how to create that intentionality, or latch onto it, in a brand new ministry area. This is the type of thing they don’t teach you in Christian History sadly.

One More Day

I am sitting here, in the middle of the afternoon, with my study guide for my last final of the semester complete. My eyes are heavy, my mouth hurts, my entire body aches, and I need to memorize 130 terms. It is very weird to be sitting here without a paper to write. It is a new experience. I’m not sure how I will be able to handle it.

I am a child of 90s pop music and I cannot lie

I forgot to mention something about my final yesterday in History. It turns out that every topic I wrote about started, or involved, the letter M in some way. I did not mean to do that, it just happened. Someone recommended that I send my professor an email to give him a title for my piece. I was thinking either “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm: The Dummies of Purity” or either “MMM-Bop: The Exclusion Brothers”.

Sometimes my titles are better than my essays.

CLASSES ARE DONE

I just finished my last class of the semester by doing a short presentation on Paul’s use of the Hebrew Bible in Romans Chapter 10 and his exegetical work on Deuteronomy 30. I’m not gonna lie – it’s kinda wacky. And the class broke out laughing when I said “It’s the BUT that is important”. The sad part isn’t that they laughed – the sad part is that it took me a minute to realize why they were laughing. My brain is ready to be done.

I have my Hebrew final at 2. Time to pretend I know the paradigms for weak verbs.

So Much to Write, So Little Time

Oh boy.

It is finals time here at Chez LTSP which means my finals started before my last class begins. My first final was this afternoon for History of Christianity. It went fine – I wrote for 2.5 hours about whey the Lutheran church is doing a poor job with evangelicalism towards Mexican-Americans. The fact that the Spanish Language Worship resource released by the ELCA does not include Lady of Guadeloupe as a festival (I believe) was my whole theme. And I somehow connected that to the rise of Monasticism in the 200s CE, the Margburg Conference of 1529 between Luther and Zwingli, and the Missionary Conference of 1910. Why did I pick those 3 things to discuss? One of the requirements of the exam was to take one event in the “early”, “reformation”, and “modern” church period and write about it while reflecting on three different quotations. I also had fifteen minutes after receiving the question to look at my notes. After reading the entire 1.5 page question, the first three events I noticed in my notes for all three of those sections were the three I ended up writing about. How many people in that class wrote on the Marburg Conference? Yeah, that’s right – only me because I am that awesome. I just hope my argument in the exam was relatively plausible and made sense. I also decided to write in backward chronological order to try and be a little different. This is what I get for spending only 15 minutes studying for this exam. And I also just figured out that I misspelled Guadeloupe at least a dozen times in the exam. I am a terrible Mexican-American.

So why did I only spend 15 minutes studying for my history final? Well! I am glad you asked because I have been struggling with, and writing a paper, for my Old Testament course You think that writing 8000 words on 13.5 verses of Ruth would be hard but you would be wrong. I could have written more (because I am that long winded). I finished it and printed it out exactly 12 hours before it is due. And, while writing it, I realized that I do not understand how to use tenses correctly. This is something that I need to work on.

So the rest of my night will be devoted to learning hebrew verb paradigms, specifically 1-aleph weak verbs. And I might try to figure out imperatives as well. I really have no idea what those are. Eep.

Bus Olympics

Trying to effectively use the restroom on the bus, especially when someone is sitting right in front of the bathroom entrance with their laptop, during rapid-fire, ridiculous, stop-and-go-traffic, while being driven by a bus driver who does not believe in gradual acceleration or deceleration, should be an Olympic sport. 2012 National Team right here.