VOL . XIII, NO. 1
FALL 2021
A Semi-annual Report to Friends of Bethlehem College & Seminary
Aiming at Adulthood
An Education at Odds with Extended Adolescence
Also: Christian Hedonism, Christian Maturity, and the Aim of Education in the 21st Century
WOVEN TOGETHER: BY DR. JOE RIGNEY
From the President
Three Stories from My First Five Months as President of Bethlehem College & Seminary a donkey. Our God is in the heavens, and he does all that he pleases. No one is indispensable. A second lesson from these events: maturity matters. While we missed the key staff member for each one of these events, the rest of our team stepped in to fill the gap. No grumbling or complaining. Just steady adaptability, birthed from a deep confidence in God’s merciful providence and sovereign provision. He does not need us, but he is pleased to use us to accomplish his purposes. Which brings me to this Dr. Joe Rigney, President, Bethlehem College & Seminary edition of the Serious Joy newsletter. In this edition, we Story 1: Late June—June 30 is the end of the school’s celebrate maturity. We do so by highlighting one of fiscal year. This year, as we approach the end, we are the fundamental aims of our “Education in Serious close to a major milestone; for the first time in the Joy.” At our college, we aim to graduate mature school’s history, we are within shouting distance of leaders who are ready to witness for Christ with reaching 2.5 million dollars to fund The Serious Joy wisdom and wonder for the rest of their lives. At our Scholarship. As we enter the final week, we are close. seminary, we aim to graduate mature leaders who are Then, on June 27, Rick Segal, our Vice President of ready to shepherd God’s people with biblical clarity Advancement, has a serious heart attack. As we cross and Christ-exalting affection for the rest of their lives. the fiscal year finish line, the principal advocate We begin by showcasing the ways in which for The Serious Joy Scholarship is hospitalized and “Education in Serious Joy” is opposed to the extended preparing for quadruple bypass surgery (which, by adolescence that marks the modern world. We are God’s grace, was successful in early July). aiming at adulthood and all of the various marks of maturity embedded within it. The proof is in the Story 2: Orientation Week in mid-August—the week pudding, and the maturity of our graduates is one of before the start of fall classes, in which students the key evidences of God’s grace on this little school. arrive and are acclimated to our educational vision. This edition also showcases one of the faculty A crucial time in the life of our school, one which members most engaged in the cultivating this requires the intentional involvement of our faculty maturity among our students. Professor Zach and staff. In the middle of that week, Dr. Brian Tabb, Howard not only teaches widely in our college, but is our Academic Dean, is forced to quarantine at home the director of undergraduate programs. He and his due to COVID in his family. wife Betsy (along with their three girls) live blocks from campus, and pour themselves out in countless Story 3: Late September —We are wrapping up final ways for the good of our students. preparations for Inauguration Weekend: Trustees We’ve also featured a student paper exploring the meeting, Preview Day, the Inauguration Ceremony, Great Books in light of the Greatest Book for the sake and a conference called “Look at the Sacred Book.” of the Great Commission. Abigail Hogan explores I’m completing the various messages for each of grief in C.S. Lewis and its purpose in our lives. these events. Monday night, I come down with We’ve included pictures and stories from our staff a substantial enough cough that I get tested for and faculty retreat in early August. This was a pivotal COVID. Thursday morning, we receive the bad event in the life of the school, the first retreat that I news—positive. The weekend plans are about had the privilege to lead. We welcomed a number to change. of new staff to our team, rallied around the strategic vision of the school, and, perhaps most importantly, Here’s the fundamental lesson that I and our team gathered as families to fellowship and worship and took from these three events: no one is indispensable. build the thick bonds of community that are so Even without Rick Segal, the Lord provided for essential to our educational vision. our needs, and we hit our fundraising target for At this retreat, with the help of the apostle Paul the first time (and may the Lord be pleased to be and C.S. Lewis, I delivered a message on Christian faithful again this year). Even without Dr. Tabb, we Hedonism and Christian Maturity. In it, I explored launched a new school year with much eagerness and Lewis’s notion of “the Chest” from his masterful book excitement. And while we were forced to postpone on education, The Abolition of Man. Lewis helps us the Inauguration Ceremony (it’s difficult to install a to see the necessity of trained emotions and stable president via Zoom), the Trustees still met, Preview sentiments and righteous feelings which we cultivate Day was held, and “Look at the Sacred Book” was in order to govern our passions and appetites. a blessing to those in attendance, thanks to the Strengthening the Chest is the fundamental aim of last-minute substitution of our Dean of Admissions, education and is another way that we can speak of Jonathon Woodyard. Christian maturity. We’ve included a sampling from These three events, clustered in the first months of this address in this edition. my presidency, pressed home a truth that we confess Finally, I began this introductory essay by noting but frequently forget: God does not need us. He has that no one is indispensable. But that’s not quite true; no needs, period. He can raise up sons of Abraham Jesus is indispensable. In John 15, he insists that he is from stones. He can speak through the mouth of essential if we are to bear lasting, eternal fruit. “Apart from me,” Jesus says, “you can do nothing.” Thus, as God prunes Bethlehem College & Seminary, we labor to abide in Jesus and he in us, so that we bear fruit, and our fruit abides.
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BETHLEHEM COLLEGE & SEMINARY
NEWS & EVENTS
EVENTS
Serious Joy: The 34th Bethlehem Conference for Pastors February 7–9, 2022. Hilton Minneapolis.
GRAVITY AND GLADNESS IN A GROANING WORLD
The Inauguration of Dr. Joseph James Rigney Sunday, February 6, 2022, 7pm. Downtown Campus, Minneapolis.
The Inauguration Of Dr. Joseph James Rigney as the 2nd President of Bethlehem College & Seminary
Spring Preview Day Friday, April 1, 2022, 8am. Downtown Campus, Minneapolis.
LEADERSHIP UPDATES AND NEWS
Tom Dodds has been named to the Board of Trustees
Craig Howse has been named to the Board of Trustees
Amy Rabon has been named Events Manager
Brad Aust (M.Div. ’16) has been named Pastor at Heartland Community Church
Josh Koehn (M.Div. ’14) has been named Lead Pastor at Northfield Community Church
Americans 18 to 34 years old are, for the first time in our history, more likely to be living in their parents’s home than with a spouse in their own household.
In 1968, 56% of people in this age bracket were married or heads of households. Today, it is 23% and dropping. “Adolescence,” largely the conceptual creation of last-century social scientists, has become synonymous with erratic self-actualization, emotional frailty, resistance to commitment, and an incapacity for self-government. Even more alarming, in just the last 50 years, the number of college students who say they “never” attend any religious services has grown from ten percent to nearly a third.
Aiming at Adulthood
An Education at Odds with Extended Adolescence
Sixty-eight percent of Gen Z students (born after 1997) feel very or somewhat stressed about the future, a percentage perilously close to that of those who cite anxiety as their reason for seeking psychological counseling while in college. Now, we are not at all insensitive to the tolls that family dislocation, cultural confusion, economic discontinuities, and even terrorist attacks and pandemic viruses have taken on today’s young lives. We are pastorally leaned into that carnage and pain. But we are unapologetic in our profound desire to “un-coddle” at least the Christian American mind—to temper it to rise up, stand, and persevere joyfully, come what may, whether abased or abounding. Extended adolescence is a cultural crisis that threatens our institutions, economy, and social order, but it is also a spiritual crisis that can cause young people, and all those around them, to ignore, abandon, or otherwise become oblivious to the call of the Gospel of Jesus Christ on their lives. Marriages and families untethered from Scripture and church life, careers and vocations pursued without real purpose, personal and social conflicts engaged without the tempering of God-commanded obedience, all compel us toward an alternative prescription.
Our Rx is an “Education in Serious Joy,” a Bible-saturated, academically-rigorous approach to college education that seeks to stress-test the student through asking them to do hard things, engage with great texts—primarily God’s greatest text—bear intentionally weighty obligations, subject themselves to real-world adult pressures, and serve friends and neighbors in authentic distress, all as part of the life of a local church. For the church is the one human institution in which they, as Christians, will be constituent members until they die or Jesus returns to claim them. We want our students to be adults, quickly, but we want them to be good church men and women— desires by no means mutually exclusive. Bethlehem College & Seminary is still a young institution, just a little over a decade in existence. We do not yet have empirical data to objectify our progress in arresting adolescence, but we do have the testimony of some of our first decade’s graduates to indicate that—by God’s grace, and with your support of The Serious Joy Scholarship that permitted them to launch into adulthood without a burden of student loan debt—we are together moving the meter in the right direction. We thank God that we may share their perspectives with you in this edition of the newsletter. - The Editors FALL 2021
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Indices of Adulthood There are a variety of life passages that sociologists cite as defining the passage from adolescence to adulthood. A half-century ago, most people had cleared the secular six by age 27. Today, they are still scaling well into their mid-to-late 30s.
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Civic Activity and Leadership
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Parenthood
Completion of Education
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Church Membership and Service
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Marriage
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Gainful Employment
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Living Independently of Parents
David Larson
Patience Griswold
(Th.M. ’21) Pastoral Assistant, Emmaus Church Husband to Lauren. Father to Micah and Lydia.
(B.A. ’19) Writer, Program Coordinator for LEAD at Minnesota Family Council
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Nine years ago, I had my first class as a college freshman at Bethlehem College & Seminary. I had thought I was rather mature and knowledgeable, only to learn that was certainly not the case through a long and sometimes painful process. I was but a child. However, my professors were much more than teachers—they were godly mentors, aiming not only to make good teachers but also to cultivate godly men and women. Theological education is much more than filling the intellect with truth, though it is not less than that. It is the equipping and shaping of people to grow, mature, and be more like Jesus. And through the care, love, and grace of my professors, many years and multiple degrees later, they have led me on the path of maturity. From them, I have come to learn that, in part, being an adult is to enjoy the reality that I, in Jesus Christ, am first and foremost a child of God.
When I told people I was attending a small liberal arts college, the question I regularly received in response was, “What are you going to do with that?” Two years after graduation, I could easily point to my job as what I’m “doing” with my degree, and that would not be inaccurate. I regularly use the skills I gained and lessons I learned during my time at Bethlehem on the job, and my college years have played a significant role in shaping my pursuits since graduating. But while Bethlehem did play a significant role in what I do, it played a far greater role in shaping who I am and what I love. Bethlehem trained my affections and taught me not just to know truth, but to strive to love and pursue it, shaping the way that I approach not just my work, but family and community life in my local church.
Todd Fruehauf
Stefani Frank
(M.Div. ’16) Deployed, U.S. Naval Reserve, Middle East Husband to Tracy. Father to Liam, Jeremiah, Zachary, and Zoe.
(B.A. ’19) Wife to Nick. Mother to Andrew and Felicity.
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What do you think of when you hear the word “adulthood?” For me, one of the first words that comes to mind is independence. There is a sense in which God calls adults to be independent—we must provide for our families (1 Tim 5:8) and work with our hands in order to (1) walk properly before outsiders and (2) be dependent on no one (1 Thes 4:11-12). But he also calls us to something often lost in discussions about adulthood: dependence. Jesus exhorted his disciples to humble themselves like children to be great in his kingdom (Matt 18:1-4). Sadly, I have struggled with dependence since leaving seminary and continuing work with the military. Education and experience have their way of making one feel self-sufficient. I wake up most mornings with an attitude of “I got this.” The truth is we arrive at adulthood when we act more like a child—waking up and saying, “Father, I need you.”
How will my burgeoning vision for fruitfulness in Christ reach fruition amidst the often mundane, fluctuating, ordinary realities of the present? This is the dilemma of adulthood. Each day I hold little seeds, prayerfully planting them here and there with the hope of future fruit. These seeds take the shape of toy car races with my children, course work and lectures, conversations with neighbors, meditation on the Word while washing dishes, seasoning meat, and late night phone calls with friends in suffering. Adulthood is learning to hold the present in light of the future, knowing that both the simple and complex, the mundane and grandiose are fruitful when worked by faith in the Kingdom of God. When my duty and joys are watered by the King of the Kingdom, eternal fruit is born by the One who turns mustard seeds into trees of grandeur.
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Ken & Christine Williams Ken: (B.A. ’18); Christine: (B.A. ’19) Parents of David and Kathleen. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
(B.A. ’14) Director, School of Discipleship, Miracle Mountain Ranch Husband of Kara. Father of Gavin. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
In modern society, “adulthood” is seen as either a legal age or as a verb for when 13–35-year-olds are “adulting” (i.e., paying bills, doing laundry, getting married, having children, etc.). We believe adulthood is simpler. It is the acceptance and owning of responsibility. If you wait for adulthood to sneak up on you, you will perpetually be “adulting” instead of being an adult. Instead of worrying about your age or hitting certain milestones, you should focus on productively contributing to your spheres of community. Though we were both working and paying bills before we went to Bethlehem, college gave us the opportunity to intentionally initiate taking responsibility in school, work, church, friendships, and family. We saw adulthood exemplified in fellow students and professors at Bethlehem. Now we are trying not only to model adulthood, but to begin to pass that vision for responsibility onto our children and the youth around us.
Learning has kingly undertones in the Old Testament. Naming animals according to their nature was an aspect of Adam’s dominion over them (Genesis 2:19). Israel’s king was to write a copy of the book of the law and to “read in it all the days of his life” (Deuteronomy 18:19). The book of Proverbs is a book of kingly wisdom, written so that the king’s son would “receive instruction in wise dealing” (Proverbs 1:3). Coming to Bethlehem, I did not understand this. My understanding was that education was to merely equip me for a task. After four years at Bethlehem College & Seminary, however, I began to see the shape of things differently. I saw that life in Christ is as much about the pathos of the gospel minister as the logos of his ministry. What I received at Bethlehem College & Seminary was not just education, but preparation for a life of kingly (adult) wisdom.
Josiah Young
Austin Balken
(B.A. ’17) Attorney at Law Husband to Anya. Father to Elliot.
(B.A. ’18) Director of Events, The Gospel Coalition Husband to Mackenzie. Father to Lucy.
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Growing up, I often argued with my brothers over petty things. Our debates usually culminated in one brother accusing the other of a logical fallacy, such as “Ad hominem!”, which the other brother would hotly deny. These arguments left us angry at each other, and I began wishing for adulthood to escape my own immaturity. The growth came gradually. When I came to Bethlehem, I was encouraged to find so many young adults who were thoughtful, respectful, willing to listen, and eager to learn. I was in a community that could discuss and disagree healthily. As I begin my career in law, I recognize that the ability to disagree well is not only a mark of maturity but a way of showing love. Instead of demonizing those who hold a different view or avoiding contentious topics altogether, I aim to approach personal disagreements with thoughtfulness and respect.
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Dan Stanley
BETHLEHEM COLLEGE & SEMINARY
My time studying at Bethlehem was instrumental in preparing me to engage maturely with the world outside the classroom. As I have worked various tech-related jobs in an industry that is increasingly secular, I’ve spent much time engaging with non-believing coworkers, customers, and clients. While working at Apple, I’d study common arguments made in favor of abortion in Ethics and then go work alongside a passionate Planned Parenthood employee. And through mentoring UX students, Mackenzie and I befriended and are sharing the gospel with a nonbelieving couple longing for community and friendship. Time and again, since I began studying at Bethlehem, the Lord has given me opportunities to engage with others in gentleness and respect, and most often because of my employment in secular organizations. Working with diligence and integrity alongside others opens windows of opportunity to speak about the hope we have in Jesus (1 Peter 3:15).
Joshua Schmitter
(B.A. ’14) Consulting Firm Engineer Husband of Elise. Father of Clara, Leah, Boaz. And another due as we publish. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Cameron & Amanda Maveus Cameron: (B.A. ’15) Law Firm Assistant Amanda: (B.A. ’19) Licensed Real Estate Agent 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
As a Bethlehem College & Seminary student, I had my mind set on doing overseas ministry—probably some place unengaged and “out there.” Seven years after graduation, what do I make of life as a normal husband, father of four, and technologist? What eternal value is there in mowing the lawn and playing Go Fish? Yet all this is important to God—so important that to neglect one’s family makes you worse than an unbeliever (1 Tim. 5:8). Learning to care for “these little ones” has put greatness in a new light. “Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 18:4). None of this is to suggest full-time ministry is unimportant; it may well be in our future. Maybe it was necessary to first learn that God values a simple task done in humble worship more highly than a great task done for the wrong motives.
Arriving at adulthood means coming face-to-face with years of expectations—some conscious, others subconscious. A child’s perception of adulthood is shaped by many factors, and this perception is often partially divorced from reality. Some expectations hold up. We really can stay up as late as we want (if we have enough coffee)! We really can spend money on whatever we want (until we’re broke)! Other expectations tend to be shattered, either quickly or gradually. The freedom of adulthood is often terrifying—we have to find ourselves jobs, pay our bills, and accept the consequences of our actions. The best way to approach adulthood is with open hands. What will God do in and through you? How will he teach, admonish, and bless you? In the midst of unmet expectations, Christ will be your rock. He will work your adulthood for your good and shepherd you through hardship. He loves you.
Connor Wilson
Bennett Williamson
Connor: (B.A. ’17) Financial Management Analyst, Department of Defense; Leah: (A.A. ’18) Parents to George. And another due as we publish. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 What does it mean to be an “adult?” In many ways, I check the traditional boxes. I am married to a wonderful woman who loves Jesus. I have a beautiful son to pass on my knowledge to and another on the way to follow him. I have a career path with many opportunities. I am committed to being an active member of a godly church. But those boxes don’t make me any more an adult than anyone else. In many ways, I came to Bethlehem a 23-year-old child. But somewhere in those four years, during all the time spent with brothers and sisters in Christ, in the outpouring of my wonderful professors and the countless pages of great works read—somewhere in all of that, I became a man. Adulthood has never been about the things attained. Adulthood is the serious joy in Christ lived out in everything I do, whether it’s turning in a report to my boss or using funny voices when reading a story to my son. It was the people and the experiences at Bethlehem College & Seminary that brought me to that adulthood. And for that, I am immensely grateful.
(B.A. ’19) Photo and Video Specialist, The College of Idaho Husband to Karis. Father to Lewis. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 As I reflect on how I became an adult, I am profoundly grateful for the independence and responsibility that going to Bethlehem College & Seminary required. Finding housing, working, and living outside of a traditional college campus required all of us to be adults, and it provided us a community of brothers and sisters to do it with—a community where I was allowed to help new students, grow alongside my classmates, and be mentored by my professors. Those challenges of growing into an adult at Bethlehem were some of the most sanctifying growing periods in my life, and it was because of the people that God placed around me at school. My time at Bethlehem is something I have become increasingly grateful for as I now find myself seeking to be like Christ as a husband, a father, a member of the local church, and an employee of a secular college.
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Christian
Hedonism, Christian Maturity,
By Dr. Joe Rigney President, Bethlehem College & Seminary
and the Aim of Education in the 21st Century
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President Rigney gathered the faculty and staff—and their families—for an extended off-site retreat in August at Camp Victory in Zumbro Falls, Minnesota. Together they prayed for the work of Bethlehem College & Seminary in the current school year, dreamed of the years ahead, and lifted praise and worship to the God without whom all labor is in vain. Dr. Rigney shared this message about the distinctive task of Bethlehem’s “Education in Serious Joy.”
e are Christian Hedonists.
This provocative phrase is summarized in the statement “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.” It’s the connection between the glory of God and our satisfaction that is key. For example, let’s distinguish between three different ways of understanding the pursuit of God’s glory and the pursuit of happiness in the Christian life. (1) The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. (2) The chief end of man is to glorify God by enjoying him forever. (3) The chief end of man is to glorify God by enjoying him forever, and this truth (including the connection) is central to our understanding of worship, ethics, and teaching. In the history of the church, I suspect that we can find many who would self-consciously embrace 1, a smaller group that would embrace 2, and an even smaller group that would embrace 3. We are those who embrace 3. And we embrace 3 because it flows from who God is. We resonate with words like these from Jonathan Edwards:
Colossians 1:28–2:10 (ESV) [28] Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. [29] For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me. [1] For I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you and for those at Laodicea and for all who have not seen me face to face, [2] that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery, which is Christ, [3] in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. [4] I say this in order that no one may delude you with plausible arguments. [5] For though I am absent in body, yet I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good order and the firmness of your faith in Christ. [6] Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, [7] rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving. [8] See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ. [9] For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, [10] and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority.
448. END OF THE CREATION. God is glorified within Himself these two ways: (1) by appearing or being manifested to Himself in His own perfect idea, or, in His Son, who is the brightness of His glory; (2) by enjoying and delighting in Himself, by flowing forth in infinite love and delight towards Himself, or, in His Holy Spirit. So God glorifies Himself towards the creatures also two ways: (1) by appearing to them, being manifested to their understandings; (2) in communicating Himself to their hearts, and in their rejoicing and delighting in, and enjoying the manifestations which He makes of Himself….By one way [God’s glory] goes forth towards their understandings; by the other it goes forth towards their wills or hearts. God is glorified not only by His glory’s being seen, but by its being rejoiced in. When those that see it delight in it, God is more glorified than if they only see it; His glory is then received by the whole soul, both by the understanding and the heart. God made the world that He might communicate, and the creature receive, His glory, but that it might [be] received both by the mind and heart. He that testifies His having an idea of God’s glory don’t glorify God so much as he that testifies also His approbation of it and his delight in it. Both these ways of God’s glorifying Himself come from the same cause, viz. the overflowing of God’s internal glory, or an inclination in God to cause His internal glory to flow out ad extra. Understand and enjoy. See and savor. Head and heart. The centrality of both head and heart and the connection to the glory of God is what makes this a Christian Hedonist institution. It’s because we embrace Christian Hedonism that we accent the six habits of mind and heart that we believe are essential to education. We aim to enable and to motivate the student: ӹ
to observe his subject matter accurately and thoroughly,
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to understand clearly what he has observed,
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to evaluate fairly what he has understood by deciding what is true and valuable,
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to feel intensely according to the value of what he has evaluated,
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to apply wisely and helpfully in life what he understands and feels, and
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to express in speech and writing and deeds what he has seen, understood, felt and applied in such a way that its accuracy, clarity, truth, value, and helpfulness can be known and enjoyed by others.
Five of those habits will be found in many colleges, including many good Christian colleges. But the fourth— feeling intensely according to the value of what he has evaluated—is somewhat unique and flows from our commitment to Christian Hedonism. It’s why we offer an “Education in Serious Joy”. That’s what we mean by Christian Hedonism.
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Principles of Practical Reason
T
o set forth a vision of education, I’m going to lean on one of my heroes, C.S. Lewis. In The Abolition of Man, Lewis primarily focuses on the dangers of the modern vision of education. But in the process, we catch glimpses of his own vision. He regards that vision of education as an older, wiser, and truer vision of education. Fundamental to Lewis’s vision is the Tao, Lewis’s term for Natural Law or the Principles of Practical Reason. The Tao is universal, found in every human culture (before the modern one, and even in ours it reasserts itself). The Tao involves the relation between the objective absoluteness of reality and the human way of life that conforms to reality. According to Lewis, the doctrine of objective value is what is common to all manifestations of the Tao, whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Eastern, or Ancient.
Until quite modern times all teachers and even all men believed the universe to be such that certain emotional reactions on our part could be either congruous or incongruous to it—believed, in fact, that objects did not merely receive, but could merit our approval or disapproval, our reverence or our contempt (27–28). It is the doctrine of objective value, the belief that certain attitudes are really true, and others really false, to the kind of thing the universe is and the kind of things we are. Those who know the Tao can hold that to call children delightful or old men venerable is not simply to record a psychological fact about our own parental or filial emotions at the moment, but to recognize a quality which demands a certain response from us whether we make it or not… And because our approvals and disapprovals are thus recognitions of objective value or responses to an objective order, therefore emotional states can be in harmony with reason (when we feel liking for what ought to be approved) or out of harmony with reason (when we perceive that liking is due but cannot feel it) (31). In short, for Lewis, the objective “givenness” of the world means that when we are confronted with various aspects of reality, we are obligated to respond in certain rational and emotional ways, meaning, ways that fit or accord with reality. When our minds rightly respond (or correspond) to reality, we talk about truth. When our hearts or emotions rightly respond (or correspond or fit) the reality that our minds have apprehended, we talk about goodness. This is the principle of proportionate regard—the notion that we ought to value things according to their value. “Can you be righteous,” asks Traherne, “unless you be just in rendering to things their due esteem? All things were made to be yours and you were made to prize them according to their value?”...St. Augustine defines virtue as ordo amoris, the ordinate condition of the affections in which every object is accorded that kind and degree of love which is appropriate to it. Aristotle says that the aim of education is to make the pupil like and dislike what he ought (28–29). You can hear the same theme in our fourth habit of education—feel intensely according to the value of what he has evaluated. And this for Lewis is fundamental to education. The little human animal will not at first have the right responses. It must be trained to feel pleasure, liking, disgust, and hatred at those things which really are pleasant, likeable, disgusting, and hateful (29). For those within [the Tao], the task is to train in the pupil those responses which are themselves appropriate, whether anyone is making them or not, and in making which the very nature of man consists (32). Notice that last bit. The very nature of man consists in responding appropriately to reality. To this point, all of this sounds familiar, and very much in accord with our own theological convictions as Christian Hedonists. Notice that Lewis has been talking in terms of two elements (just like we do): Head and heart. See and savor. Think and feel. But then Lewis begins to talk in terms of three elements. Without the aid of trained emotions the intellect is powerless against the animal organism (35). We were told it all long ago by Plato. As the king governs by his executive, so Reason in man must rule the mere appetites by means of the spirited element. The head rules the belly through the chest…The Chest—Magnanimity— Sentiment—these are the indispensable liaison officers between cerebral man and visceral man (35-36). I’m interested in what Lewis means by “Chest” and how Chest differs from appetites, animal organism, and visceral man. And I’m interested because, according to Lewis, “it may even be said that it is by this middle element [the Chest] that man is man; for by his intellect he is mere spirit and by his appetite mere animal.” The Chest, according to Lewis, is “the seat of emotions organized by trained habit into stable sentiments.” So now, we’re not just talking about emotions; we’re talking about trained emotions. Not just sentiments, but stable sentiments. Not just feelings but just (as in right or righteous) feelings. And these trained emotions are the means by which our minds govern our appetites. So if I were to put the pieces together, I’d say something like this: We all have appetites, or basic desires. And older word for these might be passions. These are the almost instinctive, immediate, impulsive desires we experience every day. The Bible has quite a bit to say about the passions.
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BETHLEHEM COLLEGE & SEMINARY
We live in an age that is awash with feelings and with emotions. We are drowning in a sea of passions, both our own and those of others. Desire, anger, anxiety, pity, grief— these passions, stirred up and amplified by our technologies, lead the way and exercise a fearful tyranny in the world. Feelings are sovereign and unquestionable.
Sometimes passions can refer to good desires: “My desire is to depart and be with Christ” (Phil. 1:23). “I eagerly desire to see you face to face” (1 Thess. 2:17). But most often in the Bible, these passions or desires are negative and immoral. Here are a few features that show up repeatedly. They are associated with our bodies. “Let not sin reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions” (Rom. 6:12). “I urge you to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul” (1 Pet. 2:11). (Note that our passions and our soul can be at odds with one another.) (4) They are deceitful and lead us astray. “Put off the old man…which is corrupt through deceitful desires” (Eph. 4:22). We can be “burdened with sins and led astray by various passions” (2 Tim. 3:6). (5) We can follow these desires (2 Pet 3:3; Eph 2:3), be enslaved to these desires, and live for these desires. “We ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures” (Titus 3:3). We used to “live for human passions” rather than the will of God (1 Peter 4:1-2). (6) Passions are often included in lists with things like sensuality, sexual immorality, drunkenness, and coveting (1 Pet. 4:3).
We aim in the college to graduate mature leaders who are ready to witness for Christ with wisdom and wonder for the rest of their lives. We aim to graduate apprentices from the seminary who are ready to shepherd God’s people with biblical clarity and Christ-exalting affection for the rest of their lives.
So here is a helpful way to think about passions. Passions are the immediate impulses and movements of your appetites and your soul. They are almost automatic. They are the almost knee-jerk responses we make to various good and bad things. When you see something good, you immediately want it. When you see something bad, you immediately reject it. When you see something frightening, you immediately get anxious. Passions are the immediate and impulsive movements of our appetites, like desire, anger, pity, and fear. And those passions and desires have a direction and a trajectory. They want to take you somewhere. And if you go with them, if you follow your passions, then you have gratified or indulged those desires. “Make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires” (Rom 13:4). “Walk by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh” (Gal. 5:16). So these passions must be governed and guided. They are meant to follow our minds, not lead our minds. If our passions are in the driver’s seat, then we are conformed to the passions of our former ignorance (1 Pet. 1:14). Wherever our passions want to go, our minds follow, and we are enslaved to those passions, led astray by those passions. Back to Lewis’s three elements: What Lewis is saying is that the mind ought to govern the passions through the Chest, through trained emotions, stable sentiments, and righteous feelings. Or, to use a word that we use frequently around here, by the grace of God, our minds govern our passions through our affections. Affections are those stable, long-term inclinations of the will. We might say they are our long-standing habitual feelings, the persistent and stable acts of the will that flow from the fundamental orientation of the heart. And for Lewis, they are a crucial—perhaps even the crucial—object of education.
The Cultivation of Trained Emotions
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hat I want to suggest is that Lewis’s notion of the Chest—of trained emotions and stable sentiments by which our minds govern our appetites—is a fruitful way to think about maturity. We know that as long as we live in the body, we will have passions. Immediate and impulsive motions of our appetites will occur. And frequently, these passions will be at war with our souls. And so we must cultivate trained emotions—affections—to be the means by which our minds govern our appetites and our passions. And this is especially necessary in the 21st century. Christian Hedonism, we believe, is perennial. But expressions of it always take place in a particular context and against the backdrop of particular challenges. For example, John Piper’s articulation of Christian Hedonism is set against a latent twentieth-century duty-driven Stoicism, in which feelings were dismissed as unimportant or irrelevant. To seek one’s joy in performing a moral action is to ruin the moral worth of the action. Emotions are the caboose of the Christian life. Against that backdrop, the truth that God commands us to feel emotions like joy and gladness in him, and that deep feelings are essential to honoring God and loving people was like a bolt from the blue. In that context, Christian Hedonism elevated feelings and emotions from the ranks of the irrelevant and unimportant. But we live in the twenty-first century, and the challenges are not the same. We live in an age that is awash with feelings and with emotions. We are drowning in a sea of passions, both our own and those of others. Desire, anger, anxiety, pity, grief—these passions, stirred up and amplified by our technologies, lead the way and exercise a fearful tyranny in the world. Feelings are sovereign and unquestionable. And against that backdrop, Christian Hedonism also speaks, not to suppress or deny or minimize the importance of our feelings, but to insist that our passions be governed by what is true and what is good through the cultivation of trained emotions. Christian Hedonism insists that we feel intensely, but only according to the value of the object. In other words, our passions must be tethered to what is true and what is good, lest we be deceived and led astray by various passions. Or again, the task of education in the twenty-first century is to strengthen the Chest, the seat of trained emotions or affections, so that we like and dislike, love and hate, what we ought. And since the very nature of man consists in having appropriate and governed responses to reality, then to cultivate such trained affections is to grow up into maturity as human beings. Maturity simply is the ability to feel appropriately according to the value of reality. If you have no feelings, then you’re stunted. If your feelings run the show, then you’re like children tossed to and fro on a sea of passions. But if your feelings are both intense and appropriate, deep and tethered, then you are mature.
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Seeing and Savoring the Glory of Jesus
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ut what makes any of this Christian? Lewis’s notion of the Chest is a function of the Tao, which is universal and not specifically Christian. Confucius, Aristotle, Plato, Locke—all of these operate within the Tao and therefore seek to cultivate trained emotions that govern appetites. But we are Christian Hedonists. So what makes the Chest specifically Christian Hedonistic? 1) We don’t merely want trained emotions; we want holy emotions. This is where we press the doctrine of objective value and the principle of proportionate regard. If we are to value things according to their value, then we must value God supremely above all other things because he is the most valuable being in the universe. In fact, Edwards argues that God’s holiness (and our holiness) consists in rendering to God the regard due to him as the supreme and infinitely worthy being. So Christian Hedonists aren’t content with trained emotions; we’re after holy emotions. 2) Holy emotions flow from the new sense of the heart. God by his grace and through his word lays a new foundation in the soul in the new birth. He gives us a new heart, born of the Spirit and oriented by Christ. 3) This new sense of the heart sees and savors the glory of Christ. Christ is the ultimate ground behind the Tao; in him all things hold together. The worth of Jesus is the ultimate reality that our emotions are cultivated and trained to accord with. Therefore, this new fundamental orientation of the heart, seeing and savoring the glory of Jesus, is the fountain of holy affections, and is what enables us to overcome and guide and govern our passions. And a mature Christian is one whose affections are so strengthened and trained by grace that they are able to do that governing work such that we feel intensely according to the value of what we have evaluated. And this is what our education aims to do. We aim to graduate mature leaders who are ready to witness for Christ with wisdom and wonder for the rest of their lives. We aim to graduate apprentices who are ready to shepherd God’s people with biblical clarity and Christ-exalting affection for the rest of their lives. Now at this point, we could talk about how we do this—how we engage in what Lewis calls propagation—men transmitting manhood to men. Humans transmitting humanity to humans. We could talk about how teachers and texts together train our emotions by engaging the mind and the heart. But I want to close by noting how, as Christian Hedonists, the efforts to train these stable emotions or affections give glory to God. And to do that I want to return to Colossians 1-2. Paul notes that his aim in preaching Christ, warning and teaching with all wisdom, is to present everyone mature in Christ. For this he toils, struggling with the energy that Christ powerfully works in him. Christian maturity—the cultivation of trained emotions that accord with reality—glorifies God when it is cultivated in the strength that God supplies, with the energy that Christ works in us. In Colossians, Paul’s struggle is particularly a struggle in prayer. He notes that he is absent in body; he has not seen these people face-to-face. Therefore, the only kind of struggle he can do is a struggling in prayer on their behalf. That’s what Epaphras is doing in Colossians 4:12—always struggling in prayer on your behalf, that you may stand mature and fully assured in the will of God. Now in our case, we don’t merely struggle in prayer. We are present in body, and we do our labor face-to-face. In the room, not on Zoom. But the fact that we have the blessing and benefit of face-to-face, in-person education doesn’t mean that we neglect struggling in prayer. Not if we want to glorify God in our efforts to cultivate Christian Hedonistic maturity. We labor and we pray. We teach and we struggle in prayer. We toil and teach and preach and warn with all wisdom, and we pray. In all our ways, we acknowledge him. That’s one of the main ways that we avoid leaning on our own understanding, our own wisdom, our own resources. We use our understanding and wisdom and resources, and in using them, we acknowledge him. We acknowledge him in preaching. We acknowledge him in warning. We acknowledge him in teaching. We acknowledge him in toiling and laboring and education. In all our ways, we acknowledge him. And we do so because as Christian Hedonists, we know that apart from him we can do nothing (John 15:5). Apart from him, our observations are nothing. Apart from him, our understanding is futile. Apart from him, our evaluations are distorted. Apart from him, our feelings are disordered. Apart from him, our applications are folly. Apart from him, our expressions are impotent. And so, if we are to offer an “Education in Serious Joy” in which the connection between the glory of God and our joy is central, we must abide in Jesus. We are Christian Hedonists, and we are aiming at Christian maturity, in mind and in heart. May God help us.
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BETHLEHEM COLLEGE & SEMINARY
Strategic Priorities Get to Scale Consistently admit and retain 250 full-time residential students per year and consistently raise $2.5 million each year to fund The Serious Joy Scholarship. Strengthen the ChurchSchool Partnership Foster relationships of mutual trust and shared mission with Bethlehem Baptist Church and determine how to best utilize the downtown campus and vicinity as the hub of the school’s life. Broaden the Base Engage a wider circle of likeminded churches in the Twin Cities metro to invest in our students, faculty, and staff.
IN LIGHT OF THE GREATEST BOOK
Discarding the Defensive Armor
An Analysis of Grief in C.S. Lewis This section features some of the best writing by undergraduate students who are studying “Great Books in light of the Greatest Book for the sake of the Great Commission.” In Till We Have Faces, Lewis retells the Greek myth of Psyche and Cupid, giving his readers a new perspective—that of Orual, Psyche’s sister. The book begins with Orual’s utter enchantment with her younger sister, who brought vibrant color to an otherwise gray world. This enchanted happiness could not last, and—true to the myth—the gods demanded Psyche, shattering Orual’s perfect world. Through the retelling of the myth, and in his book The Four Loves, Lewis argues that the human desire to protect ourselves from loss often destroys our ability to love and keeps us from God. Lewis first shows the danger of this desire by describing the defensive armor Orual assumes to protect herself from grief. After losing Psyche to the gods, she concludes that she must love no one because, at any moment, the gods may just take them away. Rather than allowing herself to feel the pain of her loss, she numbs her grief by throwing herself into her duties as queen. Lewis gives us a glimpse into Orual’s internal dialogue, “It was so new and strange that I could not, that night, even feel my greatest sorrow. This astonished me. One part of me made to snatch that sorrow back; it said, ‘Orual dies if she ceases to love Psyche.’ But the other said, ‘Let Orual die. She would never have made a queen.’” To escape her great sorrow, she enthralls herself with queenly duties—leading, working, fighting, drinking—and shuts out anything or anyone who reminds her of her sister, her loss, or the gods who had inflicted it.
In The Four Loves, Lewis cautions his readers against the kind of defensive armor Orual puts up, writing, “If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one. . .Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglement; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.” This very truth is found in Till We Have Faces, as the Queen buries Orual deep within herself, refusing to love, to feel pain, and to acknowledge the gods. She says, “I locked Orual up or laid her asleep as best I could somewhere deep down inside me; she lay curled there. It was like being with child but reversed; the thing I carried in me grew slowly smaller and less alive.” And just as Lewis cautioned, in her casket, Orual shriveled up smaller and smaller with each day that passed. In the last part of the retelling, we find that it is not until the Queen lets down her defensive armor—when she has nothing left but her emptiness— that the Divine Surgeons can begin their work, finally bringing her
Once all the defensive armor is down, Orual finally comes face to face with the gods. Laying her complaints before them, she realizes how foolishly she has demanded the love of others and how stubbornly she has resisted the gods. Only when she releases her defensive armor against love and the gods is she able to enter their presence, and enter into joy. Lewis highlights this same truth in The Four Loves when he writes, “We draw nearer to God, not by trying to avoid the suffering inherent in all loves, but by accepting them and offering them to Him; throwing away all defensive armor. If our hearts need to be broken, and if he chooses this as the way in which they should break, so be it.” All the while that Orual pushed against the gods, they were beckoning her to come close, to trust that they knew what they were doing as her heart was breaking. After he wrote Till We Have Faces and The Four Loves, Lewis himself experienced the heart-shattering loss of his wife and wrote about it in his journal, which he later published as A Grief Observed. In the deepest part of his sorrow, Lewis writes, “Time after time, when he seemed most gracious, He was really preparing the next torture.” Just as Orual felt the cruelty of the gods, Lewis felt the seeming cruelty of God, who took away what he loved most. Later, he realized that through this pain, God was speaking to him, refining his faith, and drawing him close. And as Orual underwent the work of divine surgery, Lewis underwent his own divine surgery, yet with the knowledge that God’s intentions towards him were good, even if excruciatingly painful. He writes, “But suppose what you are up against is a surgeon whose intentions
In Hebrews 12, the author gives even greater strength for believers as we endure loss and suffering. Hebrews 12:9-11 says, “Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.” The author of Hebrews calls us to endure by reminding us why God disciplines (or, why he sometimes inflicts loss, suffering, or pain). He does so not to be cruel, spiteful, or sadistic but because we are his children and he is working in us. God is not only a wise Surgeon but also a loving Father, refining our faith, transforming us to His likeness, and drawing us ever closer to Himself. By Abigail Hogan, College Junior
Bibliography Lewis, C. S. A Grief Observed. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1961. Lewis, C. S. Till We Have Faces. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1956. Lewis, C. S. The Four Loves. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1960.
Knowing that even our most painful losses are part of God’s kind operations enables us to love fiercely, deeply, and vulnerably, as we trust ourselves to his perfect care. into joy. Though Orual maintains her defensive armor for a while, it all crashes down when Bardia, her constant companion and secret love, dies suddenly. His death cuts through her armor, awakening her to the feelings she so carefully suppressed. After a conversation with Bardia’s wife, she realizes how vast the emptiness she feels has been, saying, “And now those divine Surgeons had me tied down and were at work. My anger protected me only for a short time; anger wearies itself out and truth comes in... I had rejoiced when there was a press of work... Anything to put off the moment when he would go and leave me to my emptiness.” The moment had finally come when no work, pleasure, or valor could distract the Queen.
are wholly good. The kinder and more conscientious he is, the more inexorably he will go on cutting. If he yields to your entreaties, if he stopped before the operation was complete, all the pain up to that point would have been useless.” Knowing that even our most painful losses are part of God’s kind operations enables us to love fiercely, deeply, and vulnerably, as we trust ourselves to his perfect care.
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TO STUDY, PRACTICE, AND TEACH: FACULTY
Zachary Howard Whole and Undivided in Every Sphere
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he word “integrity” most commonly calls to mind thoughts of honesty and moral uprightness. But the word also means something in relationship to a structure’s, an institution’s, or even a person’s state or condition, that is, to be “whole and undivided.” Such wholeness and undivided-ness has captivated and shaped the life and imagination of Professor Zachary Howard and compels him today to demonstrate it in the ways he lives, works, worships, and serves in the neighborhood immediately surrounding Bethlehem College & Seminary in downtown Minneapolis where he and his wife, Betsy, live with their three young daughters. “The professors that most influenced me as a student were those who, of course, gave their whole being to the classroom,” says Howard. “But the lasting impressions that they made on me were those of my being able to see the values, ideas, and faith that they championed in the classroom on display in the other areas of their lives. This is the kind of teacher and living textbook that I’m praying to be,” he added. “Zach” Howard is Director of College Programs and Assistant Professor of Theology and
Humanities. Engagement with John Piper’s Don’t Waste Your Life while a sophomore at Hillsdale College turned him from a career path in think tank and public policy research to that of pastoral ministry and the M.Div. program at Bethlehem College & Seminary, from which he graduated in 2016. During his seminary years, Howard served as the school’s Director of Admissions and as a teaching assistant to two of the school’s then-emerging leaders, Dr.
new post-bachelor M.A.s, all referred to here as “Great Books in light of the Greatest Book for the sake of the Great Commission.” “We believe that we are now doing some of the best work in the world at rightly fusing biblical education with classical liberal education,” Howard said. “If approached in the wrong way, a classical liberal arts education can destroy faith, but in the right order, the Bible and the so-called great books are marvelously complementary. St. Augustine’s reading of Scripture disciplined his reading of the great books of his day, and so it does in ours. Our goal is wisdom. Wisdom is a person: Jesus Christ,” he emphasized. The pastoral calling remains on Howard’s heart. “I live, work, worship, and serve the neighborhood in a community of pastors in this urban-located, church-based college and seminary,” he said. “My pastoral calling remains both well-nurtured and -activated. There is a liturgical quality to all my classes with the students, beginning with either The Lord’s Prayer, The Apostle’s Creed, or Scripture memory and a student’s responsive prayer before we get started. I can say with confidence of myself and my faculty colleagues, ‘We are as concerned with our students’s souls as we are their academic performance.’ Yes, we care deeply about the students’s future vocational prospects, but more about the integrity with which they will live
Professor Zach Howard relates this recent exchange with his daughter. “My daughter, Vivian, told me the other day, ‘Daddy, when I grow up I want to live in the basement with the students, go to Bethlehem College & Seminary, and then get married.’
Joe Rigney (now president), and Dr. Brian Tabb (now academic dean). After seminary Howard joined the undergraduate faculty. The school’s leadership shortly thereafter asked him to co-lead a review and renovation of the entire undergraduate curriculum, from which there emerged a new, extended three-year academic core shared by all students and the addition of three
lifetimes before God and their fellow human beings.” “When I was a senior in high school, I was pretty set on another school.”, says Grace Evans, college junior. “But then I talked to the Howards! I still remember how Zach and Betsy graciously video called me all the way from Europe to share more about Bethlehem’s liberal
arts curriculum and student life in Minneapolis. Three years later, I’ve been blessed to take multiple classes with Zach—my favorite of which was a course on St. Augustine. Thanks to Zach’s passion for the good, true, and beautiful, I came to grow in appreciation for Augustine’s theology of rightly ordered loves.” Zach and Betsy Howard (also a Bethlehem College & Seminary faculty member) live with their three young daughters in a neighborhood located close to the school and relatively epicentral to Minneapolis’s notable recent challenges of civil unrest and rising criminal activity. They house students as “residents not tenants” in their own downtown home, as well as in several other nearby properties in which they have invested. “Bethlehem has a long history of sending people to the nations, but God has also sent the nations here,” said Howard. “This is a tremendously multi-ethnic city and one of the nation’s largest neighborhoods of immigrants and refugees. If we’re going to teach students of the hope of the nations and the joy of all peoples while in the classroom, we want them to see what it looks like while loving our neighbors outside the classroom. Call it ‘that wholeness thing.’ ” “We have lived our entire married life on the academic calendar; its cadences frame our family rhythms from the big plunge in September to the deep reading of deep winter to days of sweaty summer writing,” says Betsy Howard, Zach’s wife and Assistant Professor of Literature. Zach relates this recent exchange with his daughter. “My daughter, Vivian, told me the other day, ‘Daddy, when I grow up I want to live in the basement with the students, go to Bethlehem College & Seminary, and then get married.’ The sense of this place has already blessed Vivian, and it continues to bless our personal, church, and school families every day,” Howard concluded. By Rick Segal, Vice President of Advancement, Lecturer of History and Political Philosophy
New by Faculty Authors
Humbled: Welcoming the Uncomfortable Work of God
The Supremacy of God in Preaching (Revised and Expanded)
The Serpent Slayer and the Scroll of Riddles
Natural Law: A Brief Introduction and Biblical Defense
Without Excuse: Scripture, Reason, and Presuppositional Apologetics
DAVID MATHIS
JOHN PIPER
ANDREW DAVID NASELLI
DAVID HAINES
DAVID HAINES
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BETHLEHEM COLLEGE & SEMINARY
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The Serious Joy Scholarship A Personal Ministry for Jesus Christ
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Serious Joy IN THIS ISSUE From the President Three Stories from My First Five Months as President of Bethlehem College & Seminary Aiming at Adulthood: An Education at Odds with Extended Adolescence Christian Hedonism, Christian Maturity, and the Aim of Education in the 21st Century In Light of The Greatest Book Discarding the Defensive Armor: An analysis of Grief in C.S. Lewis To Study, Practice, and Teach Zachary Howard: Whole and Undivided in Every Sphere
FEBRUARY 7–9, 2022 MINNEAPOLIS, MINN.
GRAVITY AND GLADNESS
MARK DEVER
IN A GROANING WORLD
ST E V E N LEE
J O HN P IP ER
J O E R IG NEY
KENNY STO KES
BCSMN.EDU/ CONFERENCE
GRAVITY GRAVITYAND AND GLADNESS GLADNESS IN IN AA GROANING GROANING WORLD WORLD
We Thank God for You
Bethlehem College & Seminary has shaped me and equipped my ministry more than I ever imagined. The rigorous education challenged me to use my mind for the glory of God and prepared me for the rigors of ministry battles with the enemy. The relationships with students, faculty, and church staff and members continue to be a lifeline of Spirit-filled encouragement. God used the trials of my seminary season to make me more dependent upon the finished work of Christ to carry me forward to my “Well done, good and faithful servant.” And The Serious Joy Scholarship enabled me to dive right into planting a church with a vision of equipping personally, engaging locally, and sending globally without a heavy burden of debt keeping me from obediently stepping out in faith. With that freedom, we launched Redemption City Church over four years ago. We already sent out another church plant this last Easter named Grace City Church. This summer our church body purchased a former Methodist Church building to be the home of future ministry operations. And we’ve begun that future work already by launching this fall the Rochester Extension Site of Bethlehem College & Seminary. It all continues to require trust in God’s provision, but it never would have seemed possible without the confidence given to us by generous supporters in our early training at Bethlehem. We are abundantly thankful to God for using Bethlehem and its Serious Joy donors to shape, encourage, and support our ministry in Rochester, MN.
Adam Pohlman Pastor, Redemption City Church, Rochester, Minnesota Adam, Molly, Grace, Daisy, Titus, Olivia, Malachi, and Ethan