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October 24, 2007 >> 12:01:18 PM
ATS Comic - Halloween Edition!
October 24, 2007 >> 11:55:51 AM
Dear Robbie
Dear Robbie,
My embarrassing problem is something that I believe that I share with many in my fellow male community here at Asbury. I cannot control the urge to blurt out “That’s what she said” in response to another’s comment whenever the opportunity arises. I have even unintentionally said it to a professor during a lecture on holiness (of all topics!). Everyone seems to speak cautiously around me now and I don’t want my professors to think I’m an idiot. What am I going to do??
-Blundered Blurter
It sounds to me that you are in a really sticky situation where you’re going to have to explore yourself deeper*. I overhear many guys joking around with this statement; however, it is nonetheless offensive. My best recommendation is to think about the people that are badly hurt or offended when the phrase is heard. Soon enough, you will develop an empathy that allows you to discontinue the offending remark. In this community, it is very important to say things that are non-offensive and accepted by everyone. I would hate to imagine that your chances of graduating from here are negated because of a continuing remark that upset people. I have faith that you will pick yourself up and move on with dignity and social acceptance.
-Robbie
* that’s what she said.
October 24, 2007 >> 1:12:17 AM
Koinonia International House-- Small World Parties
One of the great gifts given to our seminary in recent years is the Koinonia International House. Over the years, we have found that nothing like a home can help to make a vast world smaller.
One of the purposes of the Koinonia House is to provide a place where intercultural relationships can be developed and strengthened. One way this can be done is for international students to have an opportunity to share about who they are. As Christians attending a seminary, each person comes with a calling. Many international students were involved in powerful ministries that God is doing across the globe. However, these same students come here and get lost amongst the crowds, with many of the national students never knowing about the powerful ways God is using them in other places. The goal of Small World Desserts is to provide a time and place where international students can share about these ministries that God is doing through them. Hopefully in this way the international students will be celebrated, the international community will be strengthened, and a stronger intercultural community and understanding between national and international students will be developed.
Nahor Samaila shared at the first Small World Dessert, on Friday, September 28th. Nahor is a DMin student who is in the process of finishing his dissertation, and plans to then return to his family in Nigeria. Prior to coming to ATS, Nahor was the director for the missions branch of ECWA (Evangelical Church of West Africa). He shared about the ways that Nigerian missionaries are reaching Muslims, unreached groups, and urban settings in Nigeria, as well as some of the other countries that their missionaries are in. Nahor shared the challenges that the 1400+ missionaries face. It was a good time for each person present to learn more about the country of Nigeria, as well as the work that God is doing there through ECWA missionaries. Nahor's presentation also provided challenges about how we can support missionaries in Nigeria. We closed in a time of prayer for the things that Nahor told us, as well as for Nahor himself. There were approximately 29 people present.
Watch for future Small World Dessert Gatherings and join us.
October 12, 2007 >> 11:02:55 AM
Matthew 6
One of the things that we undertake at Asbury is the integration of scripture into our lives. In the chapel office we always talk about new ways to introduce community texts to the worshipping community during chapel. One of the ways that we do this is with the seasonal readers, you can stay up to date on the current reader at asburyreader.com.
Another way that we have just started using is the idea of "digital preludes" before worship in Estes. The first one takes a text from matthew chapter 6.
October 11, 2007 >> 10:54:20 PM
Will & Lisa Samson on Justice in the Burbs
Check out our friend and former student, Will Samson's latest. He and his wife have authored a provocative yet encouraging book called "Justice in the Burbs." See the short film here to get an idea of it.
October 11, 2007 >> 9:14:01 PM
What is Kingdom Conference?
In every fall semester since 1989, Asbury has set aside a week to give campus-wide, focused attention to concerns about missions, mercy, and justice in the world today. Combining chapel services and talkback sessions, forums and workshops, festive meals and special guests, the week helps to challenge our community to a deeper and fuller vision of God’s Kingdom. This year’s Kingdom Conference is October 22-26 and our guest speakers are Dr. Miriam Adeney and Dr. Robert Priest.
October 11, 2007 >> 9:11:30 PM
2007 Kingdom Conference
The 2007 Kingdom Conference theme is: "Short-Term Missions, Long Term Results." We will consider what transpires when ordinary Christians go out in teams from their churches or schools as groups focused on missions. The phenomena is occurring not just in North America but around the globe. Some may have missed the tipping point of world mission trends, when there was a huge shift in actual numbers of personnel sent and assets spent--and it was discovered, by numbers, the bulk of people doing ministry internationally from North America come from the ranks of short-termers, many returning time after time. But this trend has not been under the radar screen of denominational mission boards and agencies as tens of thousands of "ordinary Christians" [lay people] are led out each year from churches or schools on short term missions.
Some questions we will discuss during the week:
- What actually transpires on Short-Term Missions?
- Does this phenomena signal a missional era for the local church?
- Do students learn more when traveling the global and local Christian networks in mission service?
- What do they learn when they see how the Gospel is connecting and transforming communities in unexpected ways?
- What possibilities for transformation are there from such "hit-and-run" missions?
- Does our definition of mission need to change to accommodate short-term missions?
What will we learn at this year’s Kingdom Conference? Simply, that we can reach the world. Doing evangelism, compassion and justice are within the domain of every believer! While we cannot change the world, we can change a village…and we ourselves will be changed in the process!
October 11, 2007 >> 8:59:12 PM
The History of Kingdom Conference
Originating from a shared vision among students and faculty members of the ESJ School and the Department of Church and Society, the conference attempts to model an integration of commitments to mission, evangelism, compassion, and justice. It also provides an opportunity to celebrate the ways in which the wonderful diversity of the Kingdom has come to Wilmore in Asbury students and their families from around the world.
In some years we focus on a particular theme or issue, such as urban ministry, environmental concerns, or in the case of this year, short-term missions. Other years, we invite special speakers who provide the focus by sharing with us from their years of work in ministry and mission (e.g. Jackie Pullinger, Gary Haugen, Bill Pannell, Ajith Fernando, Sam Kamaleson, Dean Trulear, and Ray Rivera).
We’ve always taken time in the week to share a meal together—an enormous, international potluck dinner on Thursday night (October 25) that celebrates our life together and our opportunities to be part of God’s work in the world. International students host many of the tables and provide wonderful music.
There are opportunities to go deeper into certain issues—particularly ones where there are differing views or experiences among Christians—through the afternoon forums during the week. Also, through our rice and beans "solidarity" meal on Thursday, October 25, we are able to raise money for particular ministries by sharing from our personal resources. This year the donations will support scholarships for ATS students to attend SIFAT—Servants in Faith and Technology—training schools.
Every year we also invite representatives from 20+ mission, mercy and justice organizations to be on campus and to share about ministry opportunities next door and around the world. These representatives set up booths in the student center lobby and are available to meet with students throughout the week.
Other special events that mark Kingdom Conference are extended prayer on Tuesday night for various areas of the world, a soccer tournament on Monday evening, and talkbacks after the chapel sessions.
October 10, 2007 >> 8:42:45 AM
Dear Robbie,
Dear Circe,
It is up to you to decide how you want to handle his new love interest. My advice is to meet her at Winwin’s Tavern for some Viking coffee. Upon chatting, you could offer to trade some goods for her to leave him. Purchase the new Vera Bradley arrow quiver and offer it as a fair trade. Female elves cannot resist such an offer.
-Robbie
October 09, 2007 >> 6:13:55 PM
ATS Comic (click to expand)
October 05, 2007 >> 11:33:06 AM
At least she can do it...
Part of a seminary education ,if you are married, is learning how to incorporate being a student as well as being a spouse and parent. Ryan Strebeck, a good friend and an Mdiv student, has found a new way to cope with learning Greek this semester.
Ryan and his wife Amber are great bloggers. In the next month or so we will hear more out of them, they have an interesting blogging story to share with our community.
October 04, 2007 >> 9:16:17 PM
Heard in Chapel - Dr. Joe Dongell
Heard in Chapel: Dr. Joe Dongell (Part 1)
Last week was Holiness Week at Asbury. Dr. Joe Dongell challenged us with two rich sermons on the ‘robust hope’ of full Salvation. You can download both sermons through our Online Chapel. Here are a few highlights...
Apart from a living connection with the Living God, our only way of staying alive is to center in on ourselves and suck the life out of others. We cannot afford to do otherwise.
(Author Christopher) Booker puts it this way: "the Monster in storytelling represents everything in human nature which is somehow twisted and less than perfect." It is through the single character of the Monster that storytellers for millennia have, knowingly or not, been exposing the deep moral sickness of all humanity. Written deeply into the internal coding of every one of us is a suffocating self-centeredness that propels us into the self-protecting behavior which then leeks out into the many varied forms of violence we inflict upon each other.
Jesus does not settle for the non-hatred of our enemies. He does not settle for benign isolation or detachment from those who would cause us pain, but calls for positive love and active prayer for these persons. A disciplined neutrality or coolness toward those who threaten us is not yet the way of Jesus.
The real test of love is how we react to those who threaten us and the things we hold dear.
In calling us to love our enemies, Jesus calls us to imitate God’s own ways. God lavishes his cooling, refreshing, enlivening, invigorating, thirst-quenching rain even upon people who hate him, who abuse his name, who slander his character, who deny his existence, who spurn his truth, who reject his Christ, and even who actively campaign against his Gospel. Upon these very ones who so deeply grieve his heart the good rain falls, and the gentle sunlight glows. Jesus calls us to be like that to our own enemies.
Heard in Chapel: Dr. Joe Dongell (Part 2)
Last week was Holiness Week at Asbury. Dr. Joe Dongell challenged us with two rich sermons on the ‘robust hope’ of full Salvation. You can download both sermons through our Online Chapel. Here are a few highlights…
There are many Christians who have concluded, along with Luther, that there can be no release from this deep distortion and its power over us until we slip into the grave. God’s grace, in this view, is limited to the business of forgiving sin. What does the Gospel offer to fallen humanity? Essentially it offers us amnesty for our horrid behavior. We’ll call this option A.
Others are slightly more optimistic. We’ll call this option B. Yes, we remain inwardly distorted, but through the help of the Holy Spirit we can learn, little by little, how to edit our speech and actions so that we might become incrementally more pleasing to God. The deep inner disease of self-centeredness will always remain, but God’s grace can bring some meaningful (thought limited) success in restricting just how far our monster mentality acts itself out. So according to Option B, the Gospel offers to fallen humanity amnesty for our horrid behavior, along with some hope of managing the Monster Mentality.
But is there an Option C? Can God’s grace go further than forgiving our sins? Does the Good News of the Gospel offer more than the hope of merely managing our self-centeredness? Could it be that the saving work of God can run deep enough to reach right on down into the core of our character, down into our dispositions themselves, … to lay hold of that inward self-obsessed curvature and reverse it, transforming us into outward-flowing people, now liberated to live in love, and to live for others?
What about Option C?
Heard in Chapel: Dr. Joe Dongell (Part 3)
Last week was Holiness Week at Asbury. Dr. Joe Dongell challenged us with two rich sermons on the ‘robust hope’ of full Salvation. You can download both sermons through our Online Chapel. Here are a few highlights…
I’m guessing that the Holy Spirit who lives and moves throughout all human society, has somehow been inciting us all along to be inventing and telling stories with this lofty vision of moral transformation. It is amazing to me, that even apart from a particular knowledge of Scripture or the Gospel, human beings have been dreaming and fantasizing about being remade, about being reborn, about being inwardly changed from self-centered consumers of others to other-centered givers. May I ask this question? Is the Gospel we preach big enough and grand enough to match this extravagant human hope? Does the Salvation we offer include provision for change at the core, or… does it settle…basically…for offering forgiveness with modest behavior modification?
Let me put it this way. Show me a person in whom love has come to reign, show me a congregation that has been baptized in the self-giving love of Jesus, show me a people who have entered into this vision of the outward-turned life and I’ll show you what the world has been fantasizing and dreaming about for millennia…but could only speak of in the form of fiction! Show me a human heart, that has been turned from itself, turned outward for others, that has undergone the Great Reversal, and I’ll show you a miracle that defies all realistic expectation, a miracle that no sorcerer can duplicate, and no magician can approximate. Why? Because a people who are entering into this kind of love, are entering into that rare song of love echoing back and forth between the Father and the Son and the Spirit in the eternal fire of free self-giving and receiving. To sing this song is to be sharing in the very life of God.
October 04, 2007 >> 9:38:00 AM
Sacred Spaces Exhibit Opens at Asbury College This Week
“Sacred Spaces” photography exhibit opens Oct. 5
WILMORE, KY—The Asbury College Art Department announces “Sacred Spaces in Central Kentucky,” a photography exhibit exploring sites of spiritual transformation and challenge. The exhibit opens Friday, Oct. 5 in Asbury College’s Kinlaw Library Art Gallery.
The work of Asbury College faculty member, Keith Barker, displays a range of possible sacred spaces through the contemplative exploration of Kentucky hillsides, chapels, campuses, camp meeting grounds, slave trails and other sites of personal and societal encounter within the Bluegrass.
The show’s opening coincides with the inauguration of Asbury College’s seventeenth president, Dr. Sandra C. Gray, and will remain open through Dec. 14.
The exhibition was organized by Linda Stratford, Lilly Scholar and Asbury College art department chair, and made possible by a grant from the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU).
Kinlaw Library Art Gallery is open Monday through Thursday 7:30 a.m. to 11 p.m., Friday 7:30 a.m. to 5 pm. and Saturday 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. The library is closed Sundays and during weekday chapels. For weekday chapel closing times call (859) 838-3511, ext. 2265.
Admission to “Sacred Spaces in Central Kentucky” is free and open to the public.
Located 20 minutes south of Lexington, Asbury College is a private, residential, liberal arts institution committed to academic excellence and spiritual vitality. Founded in 1890, the College offers 46 undergraduate majors plus graduate programs in special education, teaching English as a second language and alternative teacher certification programs in several disciplines to approximately 1,300 students. For this release and more information about Asbury College, check out their website here.
October 04, 2007 >> 8:22:37 AM
Dear Robbie
Dear Robbie,
How
do I become a trendier, more relevant Christian?
Thanks!
Not with it
Dear Not With It,
So you want to become trendier, eh? I am not sure if this can be done with a step-by-step process. However, I have observed some general practices (some of which I just realized that I am involved) of trendy Christians that I can share. Try to adopt as many of these trends as possible to ensure your goal:
§ Get a brand new laptop. It must be pure white and have a fruit-logo, if you know what I mean.
§ Wear t-shirts that have hip designs all over the fabric. (*trendinicity is increased if a logo is in a random location on the shirt.)
§ Buy and listen to positive, cutting-edge music
§ Hang out in coffee shops as often as possible
§ Wear “Cause Awareness” bracelets
-Robbie
October 03, 2007 >> 11:14:02 PM
Heard in Chapel - Karen Bates
"Trees are a community because all their roots are entangled. We are a community because all our roots are entangled. . . . whether we like it or not."
Student Leadership Team (SLT) President, Karen Bates, in SLT Chapel message.
October 01, 2007 >> 8:03:32 AM
Methodist Bloggers Highlight Reel
For those interested, check out this weekly highlights reel of Methodist Bloggers. Hat tip to Florida Campus student, John the Methodist's great blog Locusts and Honey
