You are a newly appointed Campus Staff Minister just beginning ministry with grad students and faculty when COVID-19 hit and brought a pause to all normal campus activities. For Julie Meissner, this pause came as an invitation from God. This is her story of what happened when she said “yes” to that invitation. _______________________________________ Pause. […]
listening
A Sower Went Out to Sow. . . . Again
By challenging the hearer as to whether they will “hear” and follow the teacher, the Parable of the Sower and the Soils (Matthew 13:1-9) offers a larger framework for considering parables as part of the Master Teacher’s toolkit.
People of Color, Outward Appearances, and Academia: Lessons from 80s Pop Culture
In the late 1980s, there was a popular television show called 21 Jump Street. Johnny Depp and friends portrayed cops in their twenties. Because they were too young looking to be taken seriously, they went undercover in high schools to take down drug dealers, gangs, etc.
Encountering God in the Liminality of Graduate School, Part 2
It was 1991, during the summer between my first and second years of medical school. I was in the basement of a Christian clinic in Times Square. The clinic provided free medical care for homeless people in New York City. I was filling up a tub with warm soapy water so one of our homeless clients could soak his feet.
Teaching Tips: Listening
Really listening to my students also challenges me to see course material with new eyes—their eyes. It forces me to approach the familiar grounds of knowledge using unfamiliar pathways. At its best moments, listening to my students equalizes us as we become collaborators in the project of learning.