One of my former students, Kent Palmer, was once asked, \u201cWhat is your relationship with Scot?\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s rather complicated, actually.\u201d So, let me explain: One of my former students, Kent Palmer, was once asked, \u201cWhat is your relationship with Scot?\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s rather complicated, actually.\u201d So, let me explain:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":197,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[106,1740],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-pastoring-and-preaching"],"yoast_head":"\n
\nKent was a student of mine at Trinity, long ago, and the course I taught was called \u201cJesus and Discipleship.\u201d Teaching a course the first time and having a student who was convinced the subject was significant for pastoral life led Kent and I to a relationship that is now in its second decade. He has been my student and I have been his professor.
\nAnd he has been my pastor. And he has been a critic of my manuscripts and I a critic of his sermons. He has given me advice and I him. And he has been the father of a son who was playing baseball against my son \u2014 you could say we were rivals. And he has been a supporter of some of my ideas and a critic of others. And he has been a regular lunch companion.
\nAnd yesterday he was my golf partner, which means we were in a four hour conversation. The game of golf we played was table dressing. It was the first time I played this year. On the 10th hole I was imitating a Tiger Woods\u2019 move of looking at my swing to concentrate on the motion of the downswing so I could get my drive to fade and, bingo, something happened in my lower right back and I was sore the rest of the day. (As I sit here it aches, but nothing serious. Part of playing the first time.) We like to play early so we don\u2019t give up the stomach of a day.
\nMost importantly, though, governing all of our relationships these days is that we are friends. We sometimes talk about unimportant things; I call him occasionally and see if he can have lunch; sometimes he calls me. We chat over lunch about all kinds of things \u2014 his recent sabbatical and my upcoming one. My adult children\u2019s doings and the various moves of his three sons. I tell him his wife has a \u201cwicked funny\u201d sense of humor and he sometimes asks me about something psychological because he knows I\u2019ve absorbed some of that stuff from Kris.
\nKent\u2019s big question for me yesterday was this: \u201cHow did you get into the Anabaptist thing?\u201d Easy answer: In 1978 I read Ronald Sider, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger<\/em> when I was simultaneously working patiently through the Sermon on the Mount and Kris was in a Bible study with some ladies from the local Catholic Worker group, and I\u2019ve never been the same since. I\u2019ve seen nothing that makes me want to abandon that basic orientation to what it\u2019s all about.
\nNothing like playing golf with a friend.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"