Really sad to be missing out on this event. It's a great idea and would have been really fun. Unfortunately I already have two--count 'em TWO--church engagements that night. [sigh] Maybe next year. In the meantime I'll settle for all the scoop from the event's founder here.
For Christmas I bought Laura a gift certificate to the Brooklyn Academy of Music. She used it to buy tickets to Mozart's opera The Magic Flute. We went last night. The story was pretty lame but the music was terrific. Best of all though was the modern aesthetic added in the art direction. The show was designed and directed by South African artist William Kentridge. He evidently does a lot of drawing in charcoal. So for The Magic Flute he created hundreds of drawings with motifs from the story and then had them transposed into light projections on the stage. It made the opera much more filmic than any other stage presentation I've ever seen. It added another narrative layer to the opera and a more modern one at that. Truly beautiful. You can watch a short promotional video here.
I'm studying right now at my favorite coffee shop in Park Slope, Gorilla Coffee, and noticed that an artist rendered the front facade of the building for a recent New Yorker cover. Pretty cool.
To all the resident Brooklynites that read this blog I would like to extend an invitation to a Good Friday Service in Park Slope. The service will be Friday night at 7:00 pm at Greenwood Baptist (7th Ave & 6th St). It is a joint service between the congregations of Park Slope Presbyterian Church, Greenwood Baptist Church, and Old First Reformed Church. We would love for many of our neighbors in the community to join with us in commemorating Christ's death on our behalf.
Pax Christi!
As some of you may know, I am currently in the examination process toward becoming an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church in America. It has come to my attention that most ordinary persons have no idea what this entails; even after completing seminary I had only a very foggy idea myself. So I thought it might be educational, if not enjoyable, to hear what is required of ordinands—at least in the Presbyterian church. To complicate matters, there are at least two prerequisites that must be fulfilled before the ordination process can begin. The first is called candidacy, the second licensure. (Licensure can be folded into the ordination process, which is the route I have taken. So I won’t discuss that separately.) For candidacy a number of years ago I had to meet with the session (Pastors and Elders) of my local church and be examined as to my personal Christian experience and sense of call (both internal and external) to the ministry. After being approved, I was examined in front of the presbytery (Pastors and Elders from all the Presbyterian churches in a region) on the same subjects. Once they were satisfied regarding my character and call to ministry, I was given a charge by a Pastor in the presbytery, took vows, and came under a measure of financial and spiritual oversight from the presbytery. It was at this point that my wife and I moved to St. Louis to attend seminary. Candidacy and the completion of a Bachelor’s degree and a Master of Divinity are some of the first major prerequisites for ordination. My M.Div. was a 100-hour-plus degree that included subjects such as Greek and Hebrew, church history, theology, preaching, counseling, etc. A third prerequisite is the completion of a year-long approved internship that is meant to provide the candidate with broad pastoral experience, which I completed while in seminary.Now on to the ordination process that I find myself in the middle of. This can be broken down into three major steps, or hurdles, as the case may be. The first is written materials, the second an oral exam before a committee of the presbytery, the third an oral exam before the presbytery.
Written Materials- I had to submit the manuscript of a sermon to be preached before the presbytery, the terms of a pastoral call to a particular local church, a 4-page statement of my theological views as filtered through the Bible and the Westminster Confession of Faith (this consisted of paragraph answers to 42 topics dictated to me: creation, charismatic gifts, church & civil government, etc.), one-page histories relating my Christian experience and sense of call to the ministry, one 15-20 page paper on a topic of theology, one 15-20 page exegetical paper that demonstrated my felicity with the biblical languages, and, last but not least, five timed exams! These exams were in the areas of knowledge of English Bible, church history, sacraments, theology, and Presbyterian church government. I completed these five exams last week; they took me about 9 hours total. Committee- If my written materials are all approved then I will go before a small committee of Pastors and Elders on April 19th and sustain an oral exam on all of the above-mentioned subjects. This is meant to be the most thorough oral exam. Presbytery- If I am approved by the committee and recommended for ordination to the presbytery, then I will come before the presbytery of Metro New York on May 12th. I will be examined “on the floor” by all the Pastors and Elders present in all of the above-mentioned areas. Lastly, I will have to preach a sermon to all those present. Then the presbytery will take a vote. If I am approved then I will be ordained on May 27th, Pentecost Sunday, by the laying on of hands of a committee of presbyters, during a worship service at the church. Feel free to come celebrate with us on Pentecost Sunday...just don’t buy your plane tickets until after May 12th. I hope this has been illuminating—and a bit terrifying, too. At the very least, it may help you to forgive the lack of blogging and cause you to pray for my family during this time.
I submitted all of my written materials and exams for ordination last Friday. The most important exams remain in front of me, but it was nice to get a moment's rest and some kind congratulations from these little ones.
- I'm shookfoil
- From Brooklyn, New York
- Church-planting apprentice.
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