Every Woman Becomes Like Her Mother...That's Her Tragedy...

I just got done taking a course in Strategies in Mission Developing from my mother at Luther Seminary in St. Paul. I would have to say that being in this course has revitalized me even more so for potential service in the church. For some reason, as much as I love my courses and my community out in Berkeley, I often felt that the way that I looked at church was unique from a lot of my peers. I think that a constant dilemma that I have felt like I had was that I have often been looking at church worship rituals from the perspective of people who may not be familiar with the culture of church but a reverence for the faith and for church as a life long Christian. For some reason, I have had a hard time reconciling these two perspectives in my experience at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa and in my experiences as a seminary student out in Berkeley, California. I am going to be bold enough to say that these have been formulative experiences for me. I love the experiences that I had in college with academics, music, activism and traveling. Seminary has not been easy with some major disappointments and the obstacles that everyone has to jump through that are not easy (like Greek, CPE and a difficult teaching parish supervisor).

However I can say that I have probably been having the most fun in seminary than I have in my entire life as well. It has not always made sense to me, however lately I have realized that regardless of the choices that I would have made in life I would have always wound up at seminary by this point in my life, which gives me the goosebumps when I think about it.

Despite all of this, I think there has often been a point in which the perspective that I have about church and the world that is very different from a lot of people who identify as having grown up in the church. I have never been antigonistic towards other worldviews or the reasons why people do not go to church. In fact, I was always taught to really listen to the reasons why people do not go to church and not try to convert them, but listen to why they may not feel compelled to want to go to church and ask the church some challenging questions. In having this perspective in a lot of the faith circles that I have been a part of, however, I have often felt like such an outsider.

Maybe it suddenly makes sense to me now that I have dated a lot of men who are not Christians. Because intellectually, their questions and objections make so much sense to me on the way Christianity is portrayed and the way that things are done in the context of church. The tension has always been that in my heart, I will not give up my faith in Jesus Christ's love or my hope for the church. I really think that I legitimately did love these men as well. Yet intellectually I agree with their perceptions with the way Christianity tends to be portrayed. I think that something I have finally come to realize is the men that I have dated tend to be more of the type of people that I hope to do ministry for. And the seminary students that I have had (brief) dating type relationships with are more inclined for doing ministry to people who are already inclined to go to church. However since I have been in seminary I wanted to stop my Hosea approach to dating relationships because ministry is already hard. For those of you who may not know, Hosea was a prophet who married a prostitute an analogy for God's ultimate unconditional love for Israel despite their ways of turning away from God. This is what I think of when I think of dating a non Christian at this point in life. I want to do ministry for these people but because it is so tough I do not think I could truly date someone who did not share my sense of faith and my philosophy in ministry. This is because I think that ministry and romance are already hard on their own, why put them in conflict with each other?

In reflecting the way this mentality has made dating and ministry challenging, (as if they are not challenging already), I can not help but reflect over how unleashed I felt in the context of taking this mission developing course from my mother this past 2 weeks.

I have to say that I have felt like I have clicked a lot faster with people in this course than anyone else I have met in seminary. I also have to say that I was shocked to find that I was pretty talkative in this course as well, which has not always been the case for me either. I felt very comfortable there and like my perspective was finally one that would not be challenged, but welcomed in the context of this course. This is not speaking ill of anyone in my PLTS experience though. I really have felt like I have really good professors out in Berkeley. I love my PLTS classmates quite a bit, even though I am not always as good at showing it as I would like. However I have often felt like my perspective on being concerned about the reasons why people do not go to church has not been a very valid point. Sometimes I have felt like people understand me philosophically but are not willing to let go of something about church that makes them comfortable: whether its the way music is done, language is constructed, the comfort of the albs, etc.

I am not saying that anyone is free of something that they want to cling onto; I think that I just tend to cling onto my Lutheran theology more than I cling onto any particular practice of church at this point in my life. However I do have a wide sense of openness about not having a set way in which church should be done, with a preference toward more contemporary way of doing things than a traditional way of doing things. I think that it is easy to critique all this conservative theology that is more mainstream; however I often think that this is contextualized to the needs of our current culture a lot better than focus Lutheran theology tends to be. I think its easy to critique reasons people reject the church or Christianity; however I think that these perspectives need to be understood better for the church to be a more welcoming, accepting place.

However I really felt like I came to life in the context of this class in a way that maybe I had never fully come to life before. For some reason, for the first time I felt like a lot of my perspectives and opinions were valid, not just something that sounded like too unconventional of a way to go about church. I think that this was often a sense I had out in Berkeley.

I went and visited a new mission start, Spirit Garage in the Uptown area for a project for the class. I am really drawn to their ministries for some reason. Hearing the other churches people went to made me want to visit every one of these churches.

I read books that seemed to make sense to me in terms of the way I conceptualized church. One book was on starting a new church, another had a large emphasis on community, yet another talked about how 20s and 30s were shaping the future of the church.

I had another PLTS student with me in the class. I felt like he probably got a glimpse of me in this class that most people in Berkeley do not see. I felt lucky to get to know him better as well. I enjoy the friendship that we have developed.

The other people in the class were doing some amazing things on their own. Two people were already into doing more creative ministries on their own which was so cool to hear their perspectives.

My mother was my professor. I was initially nervous about this but it worked out quite nicely. Having not seen her much in a while, having this common ground was actually nice to work with. However living with my mother professor is what I joked to be the seminary version of sleeping with the professor. I just made arrangements for my work to be graded by the academic dean and made the rule that any friendships that I developed in the class I would never talk to her about. We were not good about not bringing work home though because we both love this stuff so much.

I am not sure if mission developing is something that I am ultimately called to do, but the framework that mission developers work with is one that just makes a lot of sense to me. I think that I have felt happier in this past few weeks than I have in a long time. Maybe it poises questions to me about the fact that maybe even if the theology in Berkeley is pretty liberal, the liturgical structure is pretty conservative. The question of if I am ultimately more at home in Minnesota than I ever was in California. If it would not be so bad to serve a church in the midwest if the midwest is more concerned about having more creative styles of worship. The question of what a mission start out in Berkeley would look like.

Maybe in a way there is a sense of wrestling with God if maybe some of the things I have always said about myself would really be truth as well. But I can not help but think of a quote that Oscar Wilde says in "Importance of Being Earnest.": "Every woman becomes like her mother, that's her tragedy. No man does that's his." Because it is my professor mother who has contributed to my feeling validated and feeling very revitalized about the idea of being in ministry. Maybe its scary because I know its not easy work. I think ultimately I do not like the idea of being a single well educated woman in a more rural area. No longer is it fear speaking, but a desire TO have mutual friendships, live in an urban area and be in a romantic relationship that is supportive of the life that I want. But one thing at a time seriously. For right now, I am at least feeling not only better but excited about being in ministry myself because of this class. While it is the philosophy my parents have worked from, I am not embarcing it because they did it. I am embracing it because it is the philosophy that makes sense to me. So if this is a step toward being more like my parents, so be it. While I have been saying that I do not want to marry a pastor or be a mission developer, I am at least wrestling with how I could prepare FOR a job that is related to the latter. Which is a step in the direction of God laughing at me a lot more at my own protestations...