By Reed Metcalf “So what exactly do you do at seminary?” This is not an uncommon question from friends, family, and even your spouse when you are at seminary, and it’s an understandable question; seminary is a path that few take, so few know what it entails. The answer is that we train for ministry via practicums, papers, workshops, reflection groups, prayer, internships, language-learning, lectures, and, most notably, lots and lots of reading. For a 120 unit MDiv, we are... Read more
By Dr. Cameron Lee What was it like growing up in your family? Many people have specific defining moments or scenes that stand out in memory: episodes of warmth and connection, or perhaps coldness and distance. Or take your experience of local congregations. On the one hand, you may have had the privilege of worshipping among people who demonstrated a flawed but sincere pursuit of God. On the other hand, you may have been profoundly disillusioned by the cliquishness,... Read more
By David Moore When I rode my bike, nothing made me angrier than cars not giving me enough space on the road. I would silently curse drivers that did not look out for me. Among other reasons, safety was one of the reasons I quit riding and started driving. Now, nothing makes me angrier than cyclists in my way. “Share the road goes both ways!” I want to yell. Cars or cyclists, things are in my way all the time,... Read more
by Reed Metcalf When I was a child, I thought that Lent was about making a sacrifice for God. The kids in youth group would all come up with something to give up for forty days, from soda (which was tough) to broccoli (which was playing the system) to television (which was impossible). The thought that prevailed—though probably not taught to us—was that we were doing this as a sort of “see how much I love God?” thing. Many Lenten... Read more
by Dr. Dale S. Ryan Just about everyone who is actually working a twelve step program will tell you that recovery is fundamentally a spiritual process. As the steps themselves suggest, the outcome of the process is a “spiritual awakening”. A slogan you sometimes hear in A.A. expresses it well: “Talking about the spiritual part of the program is like talking about the wet part of the ocean”. As you might expect, this spiritual emphasis has been the focus of... Read more
By Dr. Tod Bolsinger “No one would live in Boston without owning a winter coat. But countless people think that they can exercise leadership without partners…” –Ronald Heifetz “I’m going to need new clothes,” my daughter warns me. “It’s just a weekend trip,” I remind her. “I mean, if I go to college there. If I do, then I’ll need a whole new winter wardrobe,” she says trying to demonstrate how reasonable she is being. I have to concede her... Read more
by Reed Metcalf I will never forget discovering that a dear friend of mine had walked away from the faith. Granted, there was still an intellectual assent to the claims of Christianity as true, a willingness to defend the Bible, Christ, and Church as weighty, relevant, and authoritative, but it was all just lip service. No more church attendance, no prayer life, no Bible study, no commitment to any sort of Christian ethic or activism. All the vital signs of... Read more
By Dr. Kara Powell This post is an authorized republication of a post that originally appearing on the Fuller Youth Institute’s blog. A special thank you to Kara Powell, Brad Griffin, and the FYI team. To see the original, click here. “Leadership begins with listening.” This mantra, provided by Dr. Scott Cormode here at Fuller Seminary, quickly becomes one of the backbones of our Sticky Faith Cohorts. In order to train congregations in building Sticky Faith changes, we help them... Read more
By Michael Wright I first learned about Thomas Merton when I skipped chapel at my Christian high school. I started to meet weekly with a kindhearted Bible teacher who looked through my cynicism and saw a desire for a deeper spiritual life. I’m grateful for those conversations—especially the day he told me about a book written by Merton called No Man Is An Island. As I started reading it, I was excited to find a monastic writer with piercing insights... Read more
By Dr. Brad Strawn After a period of angry complaining and deep grieving, my patient said to me, “Maybe God is not who I thought [he] was.” My patient had finally killed God and now was in the position to begin to know God in new and different ways. The British pediatrician, turned psychoanalyst, D. W. Winnicott is an important figure in contemporary psychodynamic psychotherapy. Winnicott believed that children initially come into the world utterly dependent on their caregivers and... Read more
The Fuller Blog
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In