Friday marked the finish of the three-week orientation session for new seminary students. We’ve begun to form as a community—but this Tuesday the Middlers and the Seniors will show up on campus, and we’ll have a whole new group of new faces to get to know! It will feel a little like starting all over again!

Last week I finished the Oral Interpretation of Scripture class, which ran for just six sessions. It was a great first experience at the seminary, and I felt sad that my first small group at seminary was ending so soon. We finished by reading in the chapel, and we each had the opportunity to read the Easter Story from Mathew—a powerful experience, we could imagine what it must be like to proclaim that story to the community at Easter.

We’ve had lots of orientation sessions, including Orientation to Learning Styles, Orientation to Field Education, Orientation to Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE), Orientation to Student Life, and Orientation to the Library. We should have started with an Orientation to Getting Oriented—we’re all a bit disoriented from all of the information that has been thrown at us! I think that most of us are pretty glad that we’re finally through this phase and ready to start the full school routine.

The Orientations to Field Education and to CPE were interesting, since these are going to be such important parts of seminary formation experience. Field Education is the hands-on experience of being in a congregation under supervision. It generally is for ten hours per week during the four semesters of the Middler and Senior years. The orientation discussed how to evaluate possible sites for Field Education, and how to conduct interviews for placement. We’ll be in the process of choosing our Field Education sites throughout the fall.

We will go through a similar process in choosing our CPE sites. CPE is for ten weeks during next summer. We’ll each be placed in situations (hospitals, prisons, nursing homes) where we will be ministering to people in need and crisis, and there will be extensive small group supervision to help form us. I’m looking forward to CPE, it sounds very intense. Stephen Ministry on steroids?

All of the new students spent a day together in a program called Building Respectful Christian Community. This was primarily small group activities to build awareness of and appreciation for the diversity in our class. Even though many of the students complained that they had been through “this stuff” before, I could still see how it worked as a tool to form and shape us as a community.

Heidi went one night to an event for the partners and spouses of seminarians, a dessert social. She met several people, and it sounds like there will be an ongoing program to bring this group together. We’ve observed that the student community has three circles: at the inmost, the students who live on campus, who are together nearly 24 hours a day for meals, classes, and study. Further out, the married students who live in off-campus housing, who form a neighborhood where the children play together and the adults barbeque on the weekend. And the third circle are the students who live independently off campus, coming from different directions and distances, and who really go away from the seminary when they go home at night. We’re glad that the seminary makes an effort to create events that bring all of these groups together, such as the Labor Day picnic and a monthly community Eucharist.

I’ve had several tests already in Greek, which I’m enjoying a lot. Even at the very beginning level, it’s exciting to be learning nuances of New Testament vocabulary and verbs. I’ll be continuing with that in the next semester. This week we’ll be registering for the rest of our fall classes, and getting started in them. I’m sure I’ll have plenty to tell about my classes when I next send an update.

Peace!

Charlie