Academic Dean’s Blog

From Video Introduction:

Author Philip Yancey explores the influence of faith and spirit on his writing in this interview with Dean Nelson of Point Loma Nazarene University. Series: Writer’s Symposium By The Sea [4/2008]

This hot Sunday afternoon we were hiding from the heat of the sun in our room. In addition to fun of being around of 13 month old little boy we had another edifying entertainment. Eugene Peterson’s interview – a mixture of spiritual, educational and literary insights with good laughter – brought us refreshment and complemented Sunday morning message that was preached at Hope Church in Kyiv.

From introduction to video:

Author, poet, pastor and professor Eugene Peterson charms his audience as he recalls his effort to translate the Bible into The Message, an interpretation geared for modern readers. The book has such wide appeal that U2’s Bono began quoting from it at concerts. But when told of this, Peterson’s response was “Who is Bono?” Peterson is joined host Dean Nelson in Part 2 of the 2007 Writers Symposium by the Sea, sponsored by Point Loma Nazarene University. Series: “Writer’s Symposium By The Sea” [4/2007]

Enjoy.

First part in series of education and learning quotes collected on the Internet.

“Education costs money, but then so does ignorance.” – Sir Claus Moser

“Who dares to teach must never cease to learn.” – John Cotton Dana

“A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.” – Henry Brooks Adams

“An education isn’t how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It’s being able to differentiate between what you know and what you don’t.” – Anatole France

“Teachers open the door, but you must enter by yourself.” – Chinese Proverb

“The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts.” – C. S. Lewis

“I may have said the same thing before… But my explanation, I am sure, will always be different.” – Oscar Wilde

“The main part of intellectual education is not the acquisition of facts but learning how to make facts live.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes

“Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.” – Jim Rohn

“The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn and change.” — Carl Rogers

Sources:

• English Teachers Network, http://www.etni.org.il/quotes/education.htm

Theologian William Dyrness gives this description of biblical theology in his book Themes in Old Testament Theology (IVP, 1977, pp. 16,17).

All good theology is biblical to a greater or lesser extent, but biblical theology is that special discipline that seeks to study biblical themes on their own terms. In distinction from systematic theology, which seeks to understand interrelationship of biblical themes and their historical and philosophical implications, biblical theology studies the leitmotivs of Scriptures as they develop in the course of God’s dealings with people in the biblical period. It is historical and progressive. It centers on God’s saving self-revelation as it takes the shape of certain events in which God calls to himself a people who will reflect his character and further his loving purposes. It sees these developments against the background of a world which God created as a vehicle of his purposes and values. Finally, it sees how God refuses to abandon his purposes despite the unfaithfulness of his own people and works even in their unbelief to create a people more perfectly and completely his own.

Technorati Tags: theology, biblical theology, description, books, old testament, dyrness, quote, resource

The eyes of the LORD are toward the righteous and his ears toward their cry… When the righteous cry for help, the LORD hears and delivers them out of all their troubles.  The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the LORD delivers him out of them all. (Psalm 34:15, 17-19. ESV)

I am so glad I am not the One who runs the world. I am not God. Instead, I am his creation. My mission is to find out his will and submit myself to it. It may not be easy; in fact, it is never easy for me as for Adam’s descendant. But as for new creation in Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 5:17) I can enjoy being at the very center of God’s will. Living in time and space, watching for hours and days delighting in the particular moment of life may not seem possible. Pain, sorrow, sickness or another kind of tribulation or even dying may be serious reasons for feeling desperate. Yet the hope is out there. And the source of hope is not relies on us. I like how vividly Max Lucado in his book The Great House of God describes God’s attention to our needs and our prayers.

The phrase the friend of Lazarus used is worth noting. When he told Jesus of the illness he said, “Lord, the one you love is sick.” He doesn’t base his appeal on the imperfect love of the one in need, but on the perfect love of the Savior. He doesn’t say, “The one who loves you is sick.” He says, “The one you love is sick.” The power of the prayer, in other words, does not depend on the one who makes the prayer, but on the one who hears the prayer.

We can and must repeat the phrase in manifold ways. “The one you love is tired, sad, hungry, lonely, fearful, depressed.” The words of the prayer vary, but the response never changes. The Savior hears the prayer. He silences heaven, so he won’t miss a word. He hears the prayer. Remember the phrase from John’s gospel? “When Jesus heard this, he said, ‘This sickness will not end in death’ ” (John 11:4).

The Master heard the request. Jesus stopped whatever he was doing and took note of the man’s words. This anonymous courier was heard by God.

You and I live in a loud world. To get someone’s attention is no easy task. He must be willing to set everything aside to listen: turn down the radio, turn away from the monitor, turn the corner of the page and set down the book. When someone is willing to silence everything else so he can hear us clearly, it is a privilege. A rare privilege, indeed.

Lucado, M. The Great House of God : A Home for Your Heart. Dallas: Word Pub., 1997. Page 89.

Thus, may we stop taking this privilege of praying to God for granted. May we focus our attention on God’s truth. May we pray in our hearts while being in the crowd or in the meeting or even in class. May we pray with our mouth if we are along in a room, or driving our car, or walking through a park. Let’s stop relaying on ourselves, rather bring our own burden and another’s burden to the Maker of Universe who revealed himself in Jesus, the Jew from Nazareth. This Almighty Maker had shown he caring for us. May we be friends to someone else. Be friends to many Lazarus who are in need today. Let us, Christians, pray now to God who changes lives and circumstances. Our prayers and requests will bring God glory. Because his ears are open and his hands are ready to lead Lazarus out.

Technorati Tags: lucado, death, prayer, books, bible, meditation

I enjoy the writings of A. W. Tozer. His insights on failure and success are word of sober truth in today’s world of fast-grown results and lost souls. I think that integrity matters when we speak about success and failure. Does numbers matter much? Yes they do, but most important is to make sure that action is continuation of one’s integrity and foundational principles. Quality means matters more than quantity. You can produce big numbers hundreds of thousand items, but if the quality is low or fails you than you loose much more. It is just like with batteries for your Dell notebook, you spend your hundreds dollars or euros and use the laptop as you need or want but suddenly it brakes and it can not be undone. Frustration and loss of money, time, valuable data and company’s reputation. And what now? Lenovo recalls 205,000 ThinkPad batteries that is consequence and voluntary efforts of Lenovo company to save her reputation.

A. W. Tozer writes, “To God quality is vastly important and size matters little. When set in opposition to size, quality is everything and size nothing”. Quality matters not just in business but also in religion. Tozer continues:

Man’s moral fall has clouded his vision, confused his thinking and rendered him subject to delusion. One evidence of this is his all but incurable proneness to confuse values and put size before quality in his appraisal of things. The Christian faith reverses this order, but even Christians tend to judge things by the old Adamic rule. How big? How much? and How many? are the questions oftenest asked by religious persons when trying to evaluate Christian things….

The Church is dedicated to things that matter. Quality matters. Let’s not be led astray by the size of things.

(A. W. Tozer, Born After Midnight, 72-73,75.)

And He said to them, “You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. For what is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God” (Luke 16:15), aren’t these words powerful? Don’t they bring us to our senses? I pray to be found faithful. I am humbling myself before God and I am not trying to point fingers at others, but looking at modern life and reading of these examples and pondering over God’s word I come to Lord in prayer for timely grace to be provided and received by me when I need her most.

“Have we completely forgotten this, Lord, that ‘quality is everything and size nothing’? Encourage all those pastors who are discouraged today because they don’t match up to the ’success’ of the big churches. Amen.” (Source: recurring mailing dated October 14th from http://lmi.gospelcom.net/)

I appreciate this prayer and joining it I say ‘Amen’.

Technorati Tags: tozer, success, failure, books, meditation, dell, business, lenovo, thinkpad,

I am learning. Thus, please, be patient with me when you read this blog, visit the pages and read or see something that looks or reads imperfectly. Just like the previous sentence. Mastering sentences takes time and effort. And I will write better, just stay with me for a time. Add this blog to your bookmarks or to your del.icio.us pages or simply subscribe to my RSS feed.

I am about to enter formal education and sit again at the seminary desk. Thanks to the opportunity provided by Talbot School of Theology at Kyiv Theological Seminary I can go to my graduate studies. I hope and pray this study will be just a stepping stone for further study and research. I am not a profert but just a person who wants to be obedient to God’s commandments and one of them says, Love your God with all of your mind… I’ll wait for the Lord to lead me and see how I’ll do in classes for next three years. In the meantime I’ll immerse myself into more reading, thinking, questioning, exploring and researching.

I never took a class on how to be a dean for educational institution. I wish I could take it. Maybe one day. But I  google the web, read the reports, ponder over the books enjoy the sites dedicated to higher education and hold on to our handbooks and manuals in solving issues. Will our school policies change? I am sure they will for the better. And with the time as we face challenges our policies and procedures are put to the test and I can say in majority of cases they stood the test and prove themselves as good and sound. The Bible is a cornerstone for our philosophy of education and teaching and community life. We also take current research data in education and learning and look at our programs and methods through these lenses. But we also hold to the rich heritage of solid evangelical beliefs, read the authors of old and find them so freshly relevant to today’s world.
 
I learn how to run our meetings effectively. And today I’ve learned something new that brightened my day, thanks to our teachers Rick Perhai and Mark McDonnel. These two brothers (like any of our faculty) have a good custom to find time to talk and discuss theological and biblical issues. They rejoice over new books with joy of children who experience the moment of discovery. So today Mark suggested use the following type of language to address the faculty at our faculty meetings. I give the whole quotation here:

Magnificent Lord, Rector of the Academy;
Most Generous Lord, prefect of this town and surrounded area;
Most revered, learned, experienced and esteemed men;
Most excellent and most celebrated professors of all faculties;
Patrons of the college, united in your support;
and you, students, a select group with respect to your nobility of both virtue and family;
Most splendid and worthy audience of all faculties.

(Magister Johann Philipp Gabler On The Proper Distinction Between Biblical and Dogmatic Theology and Specific Objectives of Each. March 30, 1787 appearing in Old Testament Theology Flowering and Future, 2nd rev ed. by Ben C. Ollenburger, vol.1, p. 499).

The page scan can give you more food for thought:

You can read it yourself by viewing full-size picture of it.

This language is dated 18th century! I and curious how this language would be translated, adopted in the modern culture of youth? I am not trying to write it. Thankfully a lesson I learn, which goes beyond our faculty meetings. I enjoy this idea of treating other people higher than myself and making them but not myself feeling important and significant. They are the Lord’s creation and many of them are his children. If I disrespect my brother or sister I cannot claim I have proper respect for God, their Father. Just as St. John puts it: If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother. (1 John 4:20-21 ESV) So help me God.

Technorati Tags: books, ideas, learing, education, seminary, faculty, gabler

I recently finished reading a pocket sized book written by Henry Scougal, The Life of God in the Soul of Man, or the Nature and Excellency of the Christian religion. Originated as a personal letter this devotional treatise became  powerful book with influential thoughts and powerful exhortation to a holy Christian living.

My initial acquaintance with his writings happened when I read John Piper’s book The Pleasures of God. In the book Piper quotes Henry Scougal: “The worth and excellency of a soul is to be measured by the object of its love”. This quote stroked me as I read it. The more I meditated on it the more precious it became and more influence it has been making on my own soul. Intrigued I wanted to read more by Scougal. I found printed book and began to read it. I read it even when I was riding crowded city bus. The buses here in Kyiv are usually packed with people like tuna-fish, unless its noon hour and most of busy citizens are in their offices. The more I read it the more impressed I became by these simple but devoted writing. So I want to recommend this book to you if you want to deepen your spiritual walk with Jesus.

“The worth and excellency of a soul is to be measured by the object of its love” Henry Scougal

This journey with Jesus in the midst of our godless world or world filled with artificial gods who are not real but illusion is more precious and pleasurable when it seasoned by such wonderful readings like Scougal’s book.

Technorati Tags: books, scougal, spiritual, growth, reading

November 10

Spiritual Warfare and Sin: Preparation Is Vital

Moreover David said, “The Lord, who delivered me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear, He will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine.” –1 Samuel 17:37

The whole Bible and all past history unite to teach that battles are always won before the armies take the field. The critical moment for any army is not the day it engages the foe in actual combat; it is the day before or the month before or the year before….

Preparation is vital. The rule is, prepare or fail. Luck and bluster will do for a while, but the law will catch up with us sooner or later, usually sooner….

It did not take Moses long to lead the children of Israel out through the Red Sea to deliverance and freedom; but his fittedness
to lead them out was the result of years of hard discipline. It took David only a few minutes to dispose of Goliath; but he had
beaten the giant long before in the person of the lion and the bear….

Preparation is vital. Let this be noted by everyone. We can seek God today and get prepared to meet temptation tomorrow; but if we meet the enemy without first having met God, the outcome is not conjectural; the issue is already decided. We can only lose. The Next Chapter After the Last, 77-79.

“Lord, quiet my heart this morning and feed me from Your Word. I can’t enter the battle of today without this vital preparation.
Help me even in the busiest of days to maintain this discipline of preparation. Amen.”

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the daily Tozer devotionals from Literature Ministries International.

For more information about LMI: http://lmi.gospelcom.net/

Technorati Tags: tozer, spirituality, preparation, victory

Another very useful and timely insight from Tozer. Collaboration among Christians and local churches must be based on Jesus’ teaching of love and obedience to God’s will. The following excerpt identifies the issue very well.

October 24

Failure and Success: Co-workers, Not Competitors

And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence. –Colossians 1:18

It is too bad that anything so obvious should need to be said at this late date, but from all appearances, we Christians have about forgotten the lesson so carefully taught by Paul: God’s servants are not to be competitors, but co-workers….

A local church, as long as it is indwelt by the Holy Spirit, cannot entertain the psychology of competition. When it begins to compete with another church, it is a true church of God no longer; it has voided its character and gone down onto a lower level. The Spirit that indwells it is no longer divine; it is human merely, and its activities are pitched on the plane of the natural….

The Holy Spirit always cooperates with Himself in His members. The Spirit-directed body does not tear itself apart by competition. The ambitions of the various members are submerged in the glory of the Head, and whatever brings honor to the Head meets with the most eager approval of the members.

We should cultivate the idea that we are co-workers rather than competitors. We should ask God to give us the psychology of cooperation. We should learn to think of ourselves as being members in particular of one and the same body, and we should reject with indignation every suggestion of the enemy designed to divide our efforts. The Next Chapter After the Last, 56-57.

“Lord, forgive us for the sin of comparison and competition. Replace it in our hearts with a spirit of cooperation as co-workers. May the glory all go to the Head. Amen.”

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^{You are receiving this recurring mailing because you subscribed to the daily Tozer devotionals from Literature Ministries International.}

For more information about LMI: http://lmi.gospelcom.net/