One of my excursions, to see the Flower Carpet Brussels creates for three days once every two years. Click on the photo to see more pictures.

One thing I never thought about before was how much lecture preparation is necessary. Since this is my first time teaching these classes (Introduction to Theology and Christology/Soteriology), I have to start from the beginning and write lectures for 12 weeks of 3-hour classes. After reading textbooks for most of June and July and writing lectures for most of August and September, I have about 8 weeks of each class prepared—and I’m already done teaching the second week! And as soon as I’m done writing those, I have to start on next semester’s lectures. As I knew it would, my being a tourist has reduced quite a bit in favor of my being a teacher.

I have to say, it’s a rather magnificent job to have, getting to read and analyze theology books and write a couple hundred pages on theological subjects, with the goal of teaching them to people who may be complete neophytes to theology. But sometimes I have to force myself to do it and to focus on doing it. I could use your prayers for focus specifically.

My desk, where I do most of my studying and lecture-writing

The best part, after my two whole weeks of experience, is definitely the teaching. I rather adore it. When I was itinerating, I loved the part where I got to get up and tell people all about what God was doing in my life and calling and European missions. That love has transferred to the process of teaching, which is really quite similar. I stand in front of people and tell them wonderful things about God.

After my second day, as I was biking home from school, I realized to myself that the act of teaching doesn’t feel like a job, even a job that I enjoy (I loved library cataloging, but it was still a job). It feels like doing something I love. It causes the same emotional sensations in me that doing things I do just because I love them does, such as reading or bicycling or taking interesting photographs. It might perhaps be almost like the feeling I get when I write fiction (though nothing is quite like that in the world). And to think that once upon a time I declared to myself my intention of never becoming a teacher (that was a very long time ago).

My 7:30am bike commute to CTS.

I have two classes of a dozen students each (large class sizes, for CTS), and each one has a couple of Americans, a couple of Nigerians, a couple of Belgians, a couple of Dutch, and one English student (each), with the odd Italian and Pakistani and Ghanian thrown in for good measure. Most are college age, but a couple are a little older and have already been in full-time ministry. Some of them have amazingly good brains. Some of them know absolutely nothing and ask the most interesting (and difficult) questions (“Is God still faithful to Israel?” “If God is King of Kings, how is Jesus King of Kings?” “If there is natural revelation, what about people who see the existence of God through nature but never hear the gospel?”).

One of the classes told me they would never have imagined I hadn’t already been teaching for ages. I think this is because, for one, I’ve spent my whole life contemplating the topics I am teaching on (when I was about 9 years old, for instance, I would probably have told you that Christ’s incarnation, death, and resurrection for our benefit were only logical, given the nature of God—though not necessarily in those words); and for another, I’ve just spent two years doing public speaking almost every single week, which has helped me feel comfortable and natural being in front of people and speaking to them. Thank you, two years of itineration!

And, yes, I have cried in three out of four class periods. Once was when I was talking about the importance of John the Baptist to the life of Christ and read Isaiah 40, where Matthew and Mark get their prophecies which John fulfilled. (Go read it. Go, right now. And think about John the Baptist declaring this about Jesus before His baptism.) The second time was when I was talking about Jesus’ servanthood as revealed in the Last Supper and read Isaiah 53. (Go….you get the point.) The third time was today, in my Intro to Theology class, where I’ve been talking about the attributes of God (holiness, love, justice, and so forth), and in my section about faithfulness I told them about my own experience of God’s faithfulness. I don’t think I could not cry while discussing such wonderful subjects. But I warned them all ahead of time that it was entirely likely I would. And who knows, maybe now whenever they read the beginning of Mark and read about John the Baptist, they will remember about Isaiah 40 and remember that it is so lovely that their theology teacher cried about it in class. (I don’t think I’ve ever had a theology teacher cry in class, which makes me wonder what’s wrong with them.)

Most of my students have been mostly paying attention, which is perhaps as much as a teacher can ask for. (And of course those who don’t seem like they’re paying attention very well might be.) There’s often discussion and questions asked, and a couple of times students have kept talking about things we talked about in class as they put their things together and leave, which means they’re interested. Quite delicious, I must say.

I can’t wait to teach again on Monday.

Footnotes:
*I also got to watch the building next to my new apartment get completely torn down, observe a crane pull the demolition backhoe out of a hole it fell into (almost falling into my kitchen as it did so), and usher men through my apartment to look at the hole they accidentally drilled into my guest bedroom. That’s enough for a whole blog post itself.

My new friend Sigmund, chomping away at the building next door. This picture is taken from my bathroom window.

My memories of Advent from my childhood involve being given Advent calendars with chocolates behind each of the little doors by my Catholic relatives and being terribly excited about opening each day’s little door. That is the extent of my exposure to Advent for nearly thirty years. Though I was raised in a strong, Christian home, we were Pentecostal and didn’t celebrate the Christian Year, except for the normal Christmas and Easter. As an adult, I simply didn’t think of it, because it wasn’t part of my culture.

Until two years ago, that is, when I read a short editorial about it in the Religion section of the Sunday paper, and suddenly Advent took on a great deal of significance. The very theological concept of it intrigued and excited me, because theological concepts do intrigue and excite me. My soul is enlivened when my mind is stimulated by some lovely theological idea, and the idea of Advent certainly did that. But it’s also become significant over the last two years because of the current situation I find myself in, a kind of perpetual Advent.

Advent is a state of waiting. It’s a short amount of time that symbolizes the whole history of the Jews waiting for their Messiah, the whole longing of creation for a Redeemer. This is the time where we sit back and wait as if we were old Anna and old Simeon (Luke 2:22-38), recognizing God’s promises that He is going to change everything for the better and yet not seeing how or when. The Jews waited for thousands of years, and we Christians join them during Advent in waiting for Christ, the Messiah, to be born and turn the world right-side-up again.

Advent is a state of liminality, and that is where I find myself these days. Liminality is a term used in anthropology to describe a state of in-between-ness, and I have in a way reframed it to my own context. To me it means the state of waiting between the promise and the fulfillment, the period of time that stretches out for seemingly eternity while you wait for something to happen. It’s Christmas Eve night when you were a child and couldn’t sleep all night for anticipation of the next day. It’s sitting in the hospital waiting to find out whether your loved one is going to make it or not. It’s the time of numbness between a death and the funeral, of waiting backstage for your cue to go on, so nervous you think you’ll throw up, of the hundreds of years between Isaiah prophesying that the virgin would conceive a son and name him God With Us and the time when Jesus was actually born. It’s Christians for the last two thousand years saying, “Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus” and not yet seeing it. It’s me, stuck between a call to missions and that undefined, tantalizing time in the future when I will be financially in the position to go do it.

Tantalizing, aggravating, frustrating…just waiting. Waiting and hoping. It’s a time for hope, this liminality, and for trust. Liminality gives us room to learn a quiet trust in our Father, who is not slow in keeping His promises. Isaiah, the prophet we quote most when it comes to Christmas, says, “You shall triumph by stillness and quiet; your victory shall come about through calm and confidence” (Isaiah 30:15, Jewish Publication Society version). We’ve been given promises by the God whose nature we trust; I’ve been given a call to missions by a God who has never broken faith with me. I think of this little piece of Hebrews, in between two verses: “Yet at present we do not see everything subject to him. But we see Jesus…” (Hebrews 2:8c-9a). We see what God has already done, and that gives us room to grow in faith, hoping for a promised future we cannot yet see.

I am in a state of liminality, and Advent reminds me to hope that more is coming.

It was in Anaconda, Montana, a long, narrow town with which I have quite a few pleasant associations. My aunt and uncle used to live there, and they were always marvelous to visit. The AG church is pastored by a man who knows my grandparents and a dozen or so of my relatives, because he used to pastor my grandparents’ church and had all kinds of stories about my grandfather’s absurdities, because my grandfather was delightfully absurd. I also used to live in a house this pastor used to live in, which is just randomer and randomer.

It was a little church in a little town, and I love little churches in little towns. I grew up with them, and they feel so familiar and comfortable to go into. It being a Wednesday night just after the holidays, there were only ten or fifteen people there, but really, for my first service, that was a perfect number. I like small groups. They’re cozy. Also the ten or fifteen people who come to a Wednesday night missions service just after the holidays are going to be the ten or fifteen people who are the backbone of the church.

Missions table: international teacups, Greek study books, and Greek translation journal

I set up a little table, and it was beautiful. Until I had my multicultural teas back in November, I wasn’t sure what I would do for a missions table at services, because I’ve never been to Belgium, so I haven’t accumulated any neat Belgian things, and also I’m not really going to Belgium, as Belgium. I’m going to a multicultural setting. But the teas made me realize that I have loads of lovely items that represent a multitude of cultures: teapots and teacups. Also since I’m going as a Greek professor, I can use the large number of Greek study texts I own, including the beautiful leather journals of my own translations. I used a sari as a tablecloth, set out my most international teapots and foreign teacups, and neatly arranged a few books on it, and it was as representative of me and my ministry as you could wish.

There was a lovely, potluck sort of meal, and afterward I spoke for half an hour or forty-five minutes. I told them about what I’ll be doing in Belgium, how I was called into missions, and gave a mini-sermon on Peter and Paul and how God changed their lives but also used the talents and personalities He’d given them. They were a lovely audience. They laughed frequently.

We had a short hang-around-and-chat time afterward, and I went home with a remarkably generous contribution to my cash budget. Tiny church, great generosity. I left very encouraged.

I am at both an end and a beginning. I am at the beginning of the journey of being a missionary. It’s one I’ve been looking forward to for most of my life. But I’m at an end, too. This is the end of “normal life” (whatever that might be). This is the end of being a plain old American, a Montanan, a member of the workforce. I am already leaving my culture.

I am so excited.

My journey from “called to missions” to “itinerating as a missionary” has been a long one, 20 years in the making. I always thought I would be about 22 when I got here, not 32. I’m glad it didn’t happen when I was 22, because then I would be doing something entirely different than what I now feel called to do. It’s been a sort of gradual, gentle, meandering process of God sort of gently leading me here and there, giving me new ideas and dreams, and making me ready (I hope…*she says with some trepidation*) for the sudden fruition of my long-ago calling.

You can read about the initial development of my call here. I’ll write other posts about how my dreams have changed and grown over the last twenty years.

But here is the process I have been working through for the last few years:

Paying off loans.
“I’m in the ministry of paying off my loans so I can go into full-time missions.” I’ve said that often over the last couple of years.
To apply for AG missions, you have to not have above a certain amount of debt, because some of the money you raise in itineration will go to paying off your debt, and it’s not quite fair to ask all the hard-working people who support you to also support outrageous debt. I’ve spent the ten years since I graduated from college and the four years since I graduated from seminary paying as much of my school loans as possible, always paying more than the required amount in a bill. My college loans are almost paid off, and my seminary loans are cut down by half. God has always provided what I needed.

Being with my family.
I’ve known for twenty years that I’m going to spend the rest of my life far away from my family. After I moved away to college, I spent the next ten years not living in Montana, where most of my family lives. Soon after graduating from AGTS, I suddenly felt the need to move back to Montana and spend a few years with my family before the rest of my life happens.
I’ve been here longer than I anticipated, four years. I’ve worked with my mom, lived with my dad, seen my two sisters married, met my baby niece and two nephews soon after their births, visited with my younger brother on his return from Iraq and Afghanistan Army tours, gotten to know my other younger brother as an adult, hosted Christmas at my house for the first time, been involved in my younger sister’s in-laws’ ministry, and been present for three deaths and many weddings and births.

A portion of my family. Photo by Dan Hockensmith.

Getting my ministerial license.
A minister’s license, if not ordination, is usually a prerequisite for full-time missions.
This was a journey in and of itself. There was an application process, multiple references needed, a test to take, two interviews, and finally approval and the licensing service. In the interviews with local pastors and district leaders, I found that telling them why I wanted a license when I wasn’t going into pastoral ministry and describing my calling moved me deeply and made me cry. I tend to find this a little humiliating, but the fact was that the men I was talking to could see my passion for my unusual calling, and God gave me favor in their eyes.

Applying for Assemblies of God missions.
This was such a process that I’m going to write a whole blog post about it. The short version is that it took more than a year from the time I first asked for an application until the time I was officially approved by the World Missions Executive Committee on October 18, 2013. The long version is…it was ultimately a good process.