It has been a while since I’ve done much with this blog of mine, and there are changes a coming. Every since finishing up my Masters of Divinity from seminary I knew that I was going to use this site to help further discussion on things church, tech, and art. So over the next week or two there will be some big changes coming. Though everything that is here will stay.
Archived
Finishing Seminary
I have finally finished my time at Bethel Seminary and walked out of my last class yesterday morning. This Saturday I will be walking across the stage and will receive my hood. It is a surreal experience to be here looking back on the last four years leading up to my Masters of Divinity.
There is more that I will write about this as I reflect on it over the coming weeks, but for now I just want to say that I am really excited to be done. There are a lot of things changing for Jordan and I right now – work is picking up, going on staff with Christian Associates, and getting more involved at Mill City Church.
Theological Musings of the Moment
Seminary is almost done! It has been an extremely enriching time for me as few are granted the opportunity to set much of life aside to look into theology, history, missiology, and the scriptures for three years. There has been a lot that I have learned about: contextual theology, evolutionary theology, preaching, contextual theology/indigenous churches, and much more.
This isn’t a note directly about those things, but about the things I am currently musing over. These are the three that I think of as I walk to and from work, drive to class, and just let percolate in my mind.
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Becoming a Bi-Vocational Pastor
The natural question one is asked as they graduate from Seminary is: What is next for you/Where is God calling you? With only 82 days between me and my Masters of Divinity this question is looming in the bushes (or shrubbery if you will). For my wife and I we will be bi-vocational pastors.
Choosing Bi-Vocational
This does not mean part-time pastors. This does not mean that don’t believe we could secure employment at a church full-time. We have chosen this because of the call we have on our life (to minister in France – more on this in the future). As we sat down 4 years ago looking into the fog of our future we were faced with one primary question – How will we go back to France?
Why SOPA/PIPA is the Nuclear Option (aka Overkill)
Today the web as become more politically active than ever. Many sites have self censored themselves to show their opposition to a bill that is currently working its way through congress (SOPA – Stop Online Piracy Act) and the senate (PIPA Protecting Intellectual Property Act). Our opposition is not to the need to protect IP, but to the approach taken to protecting work.
At the heart of this issue is the vast resources involved in searching for and punishing those who violate IP laws. This is only made more complex by the lack of national borders on the web. Sites like ThePirateBay.com (based out of Sweden) have pages dedicated to the take down requests sent to them, but due to their physical location lack any jurisdictional authority.
Following this the US Congress (after more than $91 million in lobby money from Hollywood, media establishments, and others) drafted a twin set of bills SOPA and PIPA that would effectively place the whole of the internet under the jurisdiction of the United States by allowing the US Government to censor any site on the web at a structural level – a nuclear options since it destroys the whole site in efforts to remove specific IP content (not through a take down request, but by taking over their domain name without the owners consent removing the entire site from the web).
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