ABSW CONTEXTUAL EDUCATION

Celebrating our 2012-13 ABSW Student Interns

Beginning with summer 2012 and through the fall and spring semesters, Director of Contextual Education and Associate Professor of Ministry, Dr. Nancy Hall, has worked with ten student ministry interns during this academic year. Some have already completed their work; others will wrap up their assignments this month. These are students in both the Masters in Community Leadership and the Master of Divinity degree programs. All have done outstanding work in a wide variety of ministry sites, typical of ABSW’s commitment to diversity both in contextual education and throughout our curriculum.

Clanci Cochran completed her two–semester MCL internship last August at City Year Sacramento, working as Regional Admissions Manager West Coast under the supervision of Anton Taylor, Regional Director, Diversity Recruitment West Coast. City Year, a nation-wide program, is an education-focused, nonprofit organization that unites young people of all backgrounds for a year of fulltime service to keep students in school and on track to graduation. [www.cityyear.org/sacramento.aspx ](Photo: Dr. Nancy Hall, Clanci, and Anton).

 

Anita Latin focused her two-semester internship on the founding and building of her own non-profit organization in San Francisco, OVL Foundation. Initially, OVL will be reaching out via Abba House, providing transitional housing for single mothers ages 18 to 20. Other programs will be developed in the future. Anita’s internship supervisor was Rev. Dr. Brenda Goudeaux, co-founding pastor of Calvary Christian Center, Sacramento. Anita began her ABSW Doctor of Ministry program this past January. [www.ovlfoundation.org]

 

Byung-Hwoon Lee arrived from Korea in 2011 and completed his MCL internship in December 2012, serving at Oakland Korean United Methodist Church. He ministered to the young adult group and also worked on writing a centennial history of the congregation. Rev. Kang−Won Lee is the senior pastor of the church and served as Hwoon’s supervisor. Hwoon began ABSW Doctor of Ministry degree coursework this January.

 

Paulette Anthony undertook an extended unit of Clinical Pastoral Education from October to February at UCSF Medical Center in San Francisco for her MCL internship. She provided spiritual care to families, patients, and staff in adult intensive care, oncology, and general medicine. Her ACPE Associate Supervisor was Allison Kestenbaum.

 

 

 
Ron Cole served during the fall semester with Dr. Ronald Burris, pastor of Temple Baptist Church in Richmond. He has continued his MCL internship year this spring by ministering with the visitation team to sick and shut-ins at Allen Temple Baptist Church, working with supervisors Rev. Olu Bereola and Rev. Jessie Land.

 

 
Sandol Lee serves as an associate minister at Contra Costa Korean Presbyterian Church, conducting weekday early morning services, leading the singles ministry, and working with the praise band. He will complete his MCL internship this spring, under the supervision of Rev. Jason Jeon, senior pastor of the church.

 

Eun–Jeong Lee is enjoying the first semester of her MCL internship at Logos Church in Fremont by leading the music program and starting prayer groups. Her supervising pastor is Rev. Seung Ku Jung.

 

 

Three Master of Divinity students will complete their Middler Colloquium coursework and internships this month.
Photo: Elder Virgil Childs and ABSW Students Elder Loretta Belton (front), Rev. John Adams and Rev. Yvonne Adcock (back)

John Adams is the Supply Pastor at Elmhurst Presbyterian Church in Oakland, carrying out a full range of ministerial duties during his internship year. He is being supervised by Rev. Sonia Coleman (MDiv 2009).  As John began his pastorate he was also mentored by the late Rev. Dr. R. Thomas Coleman, who passed away in October.

Yvonne Adcock’s internship site has been Balsam House in Oakland, a non–profit residential home for women in transition that Yvonne founded and runs. Her supervisor this year has been Ms. Barbara McDavid of Parks Chapel AME, Oakland.

Loretta Belton, an elder in the Seventh Day Adventist Church, has served her internship this year at Market Street SDA Church in Oakland. Her supervisor is the pastor of the church, Elder Virgil Childs, who also serves as Coordinator of African American Ministries for the Northern California Conference of Seventh-Day Adventists.

Contextual education is at the heart of ABSW’s innovative curriculum. As one group of students completes their year of supervised internship, junior year students at ABSW are working with Dr. Hall this spring to finalize their MDiv and MCL placements for 2013–14.

2013 Mentor Exhibit

Advanced students in ABSW’s M.Div. program have been engaged this past year in researching, designing, and implementing major projects in specialized areas of ministry. On Monday, May 6th, 2013, these projects were on display in ABSW’s Crouch Classroom, and the project designers dialogued with visitors about their process and outcomes. A number of Faculty, staff, students, and guests spent the afternoon experiencing and discussing this wide variety of ministry initiatives that are building up the Body of Christ in our churches, neighborhoods, and communities.

Following the exhibit, the community gathered to bestow blessings through prayer upon the graduating class of 2013.  It was a special time, dedicated to remembering the journey that is seminary, and looking ahead toward the path that God is laying before each of the graduates.

At the close of the event, the ABSW family shared in the final community dinner of the semester, reflecting on the fun and fellowship over the last year.

Andrew Josey explains the work he did as a Chaplain Resident.

Loretta Dickerson-Smith displays her project on coping with loss.

Ron Dillingham shows his efforts to aid the homeless.

Dwayne Eason demonstrates the use of community media in social justice.

Tracy Freeman explains her project to fellow student, Cherri Murphy.

Michael Sumrall shares his project with President Paul Martin.

Brenda Dudley displays her project about ministering to people in their last days.

Cecil Richardson discusses his project with Adjunct Professor Corinna Guerrero.

  

 

 

 

 

 

The Prodigal Son

Newhall Fellow Khalia Jelks shares the story of the Prodigal Son through dance during a recent ABSW Community Chapel Service.

The Shape of Music in Worship

Rev. Dr. Nancy Hall, Associate Professor of Ministry and Director of Contextual Education

We are now well into the 2013 spring semester at ABSW and the seminary is filled with students taking an array of both core curriculum and elective classes. My course, “How Hymns Shape Worship and Faith,” has students from five GTU schools as well as ABSW. In this seminar-style course we are studying the history of hymnody in Christian worship, various forms and styles of hymns, current directions in new hymns, and how the texts of our congregational song serve as a foundation for Christian education and corporate theology. Among other assignments, each student will give a class presentation and paper of a teaching event built on hymns.

Students in my class are using as a textbook A Survey of Christian Hymnody, by David W. Music and Milburn Price, and Somebody’s Calling My Name, by Wyatt Tee Walker. The history of sacred music has always included some form of “the people’s song,” although there were eras when singing praise to God became more the domain of priests and professional musicians. Happily, the congregation’s voice has never been completely stilled, and the post-Reformation era saw a burgeoning of hymnody that has been flourishing for almost 500 years.

Questions continue to be raised about the style and content of texts and tunes — this is nothing new in the world of church music. In our class we’re reading and giving reviews of articles concerned with how music is shaping current worship practices and influencing people’s experience of the Divine. These articles give us the opportunity to hear what theologians, musicians, and church leaders are observing about trends in congregational song.

The heart of our time together, however, is the students’ weekly assignment to bring a hymn or song of their choosing to class and share a brief reflection about what the lyrics and the music mean to them, along with addressing these questions: “What is the theological message this hymn or song offers? How would you exegete this text?”

Over our semester together, we will sing dozens of hymns. Some will be hundreds of years old. Some will have been written very recently. My hope is that through our study and our sharing all of us — students and professor alike — will become more knowledgeable, more discerning, and more creative as leaders and planners of music in worship.

My friend Jacque B. Jones, president-elect of The Hymn Society in the United States and Canada (www.thehymnsociety.org) wrote a wonderful text that I see as descriptive of my course and my mission to teach seminary students about our rich and ever-evolving body of congregational song. Two lines from Jacque’s hymn:

God, whose song became creation, touch our lips with burning coals.

Free our hearts to sing your praises, while your music shapes our souls.

©2010 GIA Publications, Inc.

The “people’s song” is one of God’s great gifts to the church and to humanity. We are celebrating that gift this spring, at ABSW.

What About the “Common Good”?

If you have been watching the news this week you know that Congress is once again in a battle over the budget.  It seems Friday, March 1, 2013 is the deadline for a 2 percent budget cut across the board.  While the majority of our Congressional members might agree that budget cuts are needed, they can’t seem to agree on the “what” and “how” of it.  The general population is getting tired of hearing about these battles and has been pleading in various ways for Congress to get its act together and work on behalf of the common good.  Here in lies the problem.  Not everyone who represents this fine nation in Congress is concerned about the “common good.”  It has been made clear over the past year that our bipartisan Congress is off balance—leaning toward the right fiscally, with the result that 1% of the US population has experienced an inordinate and obscene increase in wealth over the past 30 years.

Our US forefathers understood this danger when they put together the plan for a self-governing democratic capitalistic society to be run by the people and for the people.  Having paid a dear price to be set free from a class based hegemonic monarchical social and political system the founding fathers of our nation envisioned a society where individuals could be, and would be, treated as equals and provided equal opportunity to strive and thrive.  However, it was clear from the start the pairings of democracy and capitalism could create debilitating tensions that needed to be addressed.

Fundamentally, democracy is based on the ideal of political equality.  Every citizen is to have the same potential to influence what government does regardless of their financial status.  In the marketplace, however, money matters very much.  Markets are directly related to “effective demand,” what consumers can and will purchase with real dollars.  The consequent result for the US democratic capitalistic structure is that while the rich and the poor are equal politically, they will not be equal economically.  This combination could lead to two undesirable extremes: 1) mob rule by asset-less democratic majorities; or 2) oligarchic rule by the affluent.  Thus, government’s role is to oversee the enterprise through the creation of regulatory policies that prevent runaway markets and taxation that assures a sustainable distribution of wealth and resources for the whole population.  In order to achieve these goals political theorists have created models that focus on the creation and sustaining of a strong middle class.  The theory being that the middle class vote will regulate what goes on in the economy, i.e., the median voter will correct rising inequality in wealth as well as poor economic performance.[1]

Unfortunately, this system has not worked well for the US over the past 30 years.  During this time we have experienced a constant shift toward highly conservative tax policies and market deregulation.  While these phrases “conservative tax policies” and  “deregulation” sound positive, and we have been trained to believe this is true, the reality is the constant movement toward more conservative policies has led to our current economic condition in which the rich (the top 1%) are getting richer and the middle class and the poor are losing ground.

Some key terms must be addressed here: conservative, progressive, and liberal.  These terms get used frequently in our world and are often applied to differing fields of study with varying results.  For example: if I say I am fiscally conservative with regard to US national economic policies I am throwing my hat into the camp of the wealthy and saying I will vote on their behalf so that they will have reduced taxes and experience fewer regulations for their market enterprises.  If, however, I say I am fiscally progressive I am announcing my commitment to regulated markets, i.e., markets that will have limits set on their growth potential, and a higher tax rate for the wealthy, i.e., incremental rate increases applied in a stair step fashion to higher income levels.  If I declare myself a fiscal liberal, then I am committed to the progressive agenda plus the creation of social programs that will care for the immobilized members of our society.

All of the national policies and decisions mentioned above are the responsibility of the US Congress and those of the State are ruled on by the State Legislature.  What has been happening nationally is the concern for this blog.  Our nation has experienced a constant conservative policy shift for 30 years that has resulted in runaway markets and an ever widening economic gap between the rich and the rest of us.

Should Congress allow the current plan for budget cuts to engage on March 1^st, we will see significant negative effects for our national infrastructure and for education.  Representative Bill Pascrell (Rep 9^th district of New Jersey) spoke well today (Feb 26, 2013) when interviewed in tandem with Trey Radel (Rep 19^th district of SW Florida and Tea Party supporter) on CNN.  Radel emphasized the need for efficient government; Pascrell agreed, but emphasized the concern for the “common good.”  In Pascrell’s words, “we believe in surgical cuts, not 2% across the board.”  In other words, Pascrell believes we need to cut the budget in strategic ways so as not to bring further harm to the middle and lower classes so as to work on behalf of the “common good” of the entire nation.

Fundamentally, we cannot cut our way out of deficit or recession, but must create a strategic balance between “surgical cuts” and increased revenue.  What can you and I do?  We are still a democracy.  Every US citizen has political equality.  We must exercise our political equality in every way imaginable.  Call and write your state Representatives and your Senators.  Flood their offices with appeals and requests.  Form grass roots groups that voice the need for equity and justice for ALL people.  There cannot be too many voices speaking at this time—there is power in numbers.

“Take Care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.”  (Luke 12:15)

 

LeAnn Snow Flesher, PhD

Academic Dean and Professor of Old Testament

American Baptist Seminary of the West

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[1] Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson, Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington made the Rich Richer-and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010), 74-78.

 

Reflection on Sankofa Journey

Dr. Sangyil (Sam) Park
Associate Professor of Preaching and Director of DMin Program

As I am writing this article, a fierce debate is occurring among people in Selma, Alabama, and online, over the effort that the City Council of Selma is making to rebuild the monument to Nathan Bedford Forrest, a noted Confederate general in the American Civil War and the founder of the Ku Klux Klan during the 1860s. Advocates are adamant that a new bust of Forrest, their “hero,” be built on city owned land because a former bust had been stolen from the local museum earlier this year. Opponents want the construction stopped, arguing that the city known as the launching ground of the Civil Rights Movement should not dishonor itself by allowing the construction of the monument to the “brutal racist.”

As someone who has just come back from a contemplative trip to the South, I feel like the stories of painful racial segregation and conflicts that I heard throughout the journey are never a thing of the past but the current reality that still divide people in this country. I feel more frustrated than ever by this and wonder what we should do as the church about these ongoing racial and political divisions among us.

In early August, I joined a group of sixteen Christian sojourners, clergy and laity from across the nation, to take a 1700 mile bus trip from Chicago to the southern cities of Birmingham, Montgomery, Selma, Jackson, and Memphis to experience the civil rights movement that changed the course of our nation’s history. Not to mention my age, but also as an immigrant to whom all the injustices of slavery and racial segregation before my time were never real, I had wanted to learn and feel what history was talking about with my own eyes and heart.

To name a few places we visited: the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, where four innocent black girls were killed during Sunday School by a bomb planted by a member of local KKK to stop a campaign to register African Americans to vote in Birmingham. We visited Equal Justice Initiative, a non-profit law organization in Montgomery, that provides legal assistance to condemned prisoners, especially juveniles who were sentenced to die in prison for the crimes they committed when they were thirteen or fourteen years of age. They said that in the United States, dozens of thirteen and fourteen year old children have been sentenced to life imprisonment with no possibility of parole after being prosecuted as adults.

We walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma where thousands marched to Montgomery, including Hosea Williams, John Lewis, and Martin Luther King Jr. This march eventually led to the approval of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. We visited a house in Jackson, Mississippi, where a local businessman named Jacob Burkle was believed to have used his house as a haven for slaves escaping to freedom on the underground railroad. We also went to Lorraine Motel in Memphis, now the National Civil Rights Museum, where Dr. King was assassinated while he was visiting to support the economic equality and social justice for garbage collectors.

I have gone on trips abroad to Europe and the Middle East to trace the footprints of those who have handed down the faith we have. But these three nights and four days in our own backyard, America, were more meaningful to me because everything we experienced and shared with one another was related to our lives and work here and now in our communities. It was a difficult journey not because we had to sleep two out of three nights on the bus while we were moving, but because some of the stories we heard from those places. While moving, we watched related videos, shared our feelings and thoughts, prayed, and laughed together. Being honest and vulnerable was a part of the covenant together. 
 
This trip was called Sankofa Journey and was organized by the Evangelical Covenant Church headquartered in Chicago. “Sankofa” in a West African language means “looking backward to move forward.” Throughout the trip, each of us were seated with a partner of a different race. My partner was BK, an African American pastor; BK and I shared stories of growing up, families, and pastoral experiences, as well as challenges and hopes in our lives. By the end of the journey, it was not just he and I who bonded, but all sixteen people who became an extended family.

Instruments of Light and Hope

 

Dear ABSW Community,

 

As fall semester and the year 2012 come to close I write to wish you and your loved ones a most blessed and happy holiday season.  Unfortunately, our holiday time has been disrupted by a senseless act of violence in Newtown Connecticut, one of several that we have experienced over the past several months.  May we be mindful this holiday season of our call to ministry and to minister.  As professors, preachers, pastors, ministers, social workers, community organizers, chaplains, youth leaders, etc. we are recognized and acknowledged as spiritual leaders in our communities.  As I pray for the friends and families of the Newtown victims, I pray for each member of our ABSW community—that we may be instruments used by God to bring word(s) and acts of light and hope to a hurting world. 

Please join me this holiday season in prayers for healing, peace, and wellness for our communities and our nation. 

 

LeAnn Snow Flesher, PhD

Academic Dean and Professor of Old Testament