Theological Summit - Summer 2010

This past Tuesday was my final Theological Summit at seminary.  It's a one-day, one-credit class where we spend the day in times of worship, lecture, table discussion, and eating.  This is my 9th Summit, which is kind of hard to believe! Over the course of the past 3 years, I've attended 3 Summits on the topic of conversation, 3 Summits on discipleship, and now 3 Summits on the church.  Some have been amazingly great, some have been disappointing, and some have been just alright.  This was one of those just alright Summits.

The topic for the day was supposed to be the church of the future, since in the previous two Summits this year we discussed the church of the past and the church of the present. Apparently the general belief is that the church of the future will look like New Monasticism, as is the title of the book we all had to read for the day.  We had the author of the book, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, as our speaker for all three lecture sessions. Having the author as the speaker can be good or it can be bad; good if he is a good speaker and discusses materials that is more in depth or goes in a different direction than his book, and bad if he's a not so great speaker and just discusses what's in the book.  This time, it was a little of both. He is definitely a good speaker and I enjoyed that he was very casual and relaxed while speak, but as for content he basically just re-told stuff that was in the book. In my opinion it was very redundant, considering I had just read the book!  It seemed rather pointless to take notes because nearly everything he said is in his book, and I would have enjoyed the lectures a lot more had I not read the book beforehand (as is assigned to do).  It would have been better if he had gone more in depth on some topics that he wrote about, or brought in areas from other books he has written.  It kinda floored me that this guy is about a year older than me and has already published like 8 books!  Wow.

Other than that, the times of worship were not my preferred style but were still alright.  A few days before the Summit, an email was sent out asking for volunteers to be readers and leaders for the worship times, so I responded that I'd be a reader for one of them.  Well it turned out that hardly anyone had volunteered (guess I'm just a sucker?) so I ended up being a reader in all three worship times!  The worship sessions were very liturgical, which for me is ok every once and a while.  The main bummer about that is the overall the seminary community is not the most liturgical, so it seems like everyone doesn't really get into the worship as much if you know what I mean. It's so much more powerful when everyone is really 'into' it and focusing on worshiping God, rather than trying to follow a liturgical format which many people are unfamiliar with.

I think this was the first Summit I've been to where the speaker spoke for less than his scheduled amount of time! But like I said before, that was kind of ok with me since I wasn't exactly hearing anything new from him. The problem, though, is that left way too much time for table discussions in my opinion - at least half an hour each time. Those at my table seemed to run out of stuff to discuss.  The discussions we had were somewhat meaningful, but still seemed to be reiterating the same things we'd been hearing and such.

But, at least the food was awesome for this Summit - lunch was a Mexican buffet! It was pretty cool because my friend Kimberly was at the same table as me for Summit, and whenever we meet for lunch we usually go to a Mexican place. We had Mexican food for lunch together the previous week on Tuesday, and then last week on Tuesday at Summit. We're both in the same one-week intensive class this coming week, so we said we should definitely do Mexican for lunch on Tuesday again! :) The optional dinner after the Summit was pizza as usual, and it was good too.

So, once I get my 4-8 page Summit reflection paper written, I am officially done with Theological Summits!  I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not. I do enjoy being immersed in a topic for a day like that and being together with most of the seminary community, but it's also nice to know that I've accomplished my Summit requirement and all that. If I end up being able to go back for an occasional Summit after I graduate, it'll be nice not having to write the reflection paper! :)

And speaking of that paper, I'd better get working on it, because my goal is to have it done today...