Rebecca’s Journey-LSTC
This past summer has been one of transitions, as I returned to the United States at the beginning of August and left for seminary only three weeks later. I am currently attending the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, located in Hyde Park near the University of Chicago on the South Side. Some of my transitions have included going from living in a village of 400 to a city of 5 million (interestingly, the entire population of Slovakia), living in a predominantly white environment to a neighborhood where I am a minority, living in a host family environment to living with two other single women, and teaching the English language to learning a wealth of information about the Bible, the Church, and where ministry fits into all of that. After having one month to somewhat stabilize all the changing factors of my life, I feel I am becoming a part of my new community rather quickly. I have joined the LSTC Chapel Choir and CORE student government organization. I have found two very part-time jobs, one at a small, private after-school program nearby for children grades K-5, and one at our campus Learning Resource and Writing Center. My new friends include Hungarian, Burmese, and German exchange students, a roommate from Oregon, a senior MDiv major from Yale doing her “Lutheran” year, a Norwegian from Minnesota, and even my next-door neighbor’s sister from Omaha, which makes for a diverse, global community.
The diversity of this community leads me to questions of how one does ministry in our current context. How can I find commonalities in someone who looks nothing like me? How can I provide pastoral care to people who have life experiences much different from my own? How does one communicate the good news of Jesus Christ in a time where Christianity seems irrelevant?
I hope to find some answers, or at least find myself on the road towards improving the way I do ministry. I look forward to sharing my insights with you. In closing, I’d like to share with you a small story from my first Pentateuch class (a fancy term for the first five books of the Bible) with Dr. Ralph Klein. In the midst of our struggling with the beginning of Genesis, namely the creation stories and how life began itself, and as the questions came spinning and the classroom began buzzing, he stopped and said, “If I was to own a Christian bookstore, I would only sell one kind of pen. And those pens would say only this: ‘God is with you.’ That is why we are here.” I am at seminary to learn how to communicate this message that God is with you. I hope you are blessed by the many ways you are reminded of God’s presence in your life today.
