I’ve been thinking a lot about teaching lately. For a lot of reasons.. the first of which being that I am entering a new phase of life. “In the end, the begining” as it were. What will this next season look like? And how does it fit into the vision and work that God has for the world.. and how does the gifiting and desires God has given me fit into that?

At our last gathering on thursday night, Tawd Bell took the time to ask our community: “What is it that you know you ought be doing and are not?” He also commented that we ought to “stop letting your fears keep you from doing what you know it is that you were created for.” He then later called me on the phone to say that in particular he wanted to know why I am not teaching. Later, Amy Palmer confirmed his sentiments in asking what she could do to support my forays into higher education.

So i want, and I think I ought, to teach. What I want to ask inside of that is “what does that look like in terms of what God is up to in the world?” That question in place of “What system can I be employed in, in order to teach?” Fortunately for me, I have begun asking those questions years ago, and the result was the underground seminary. But I would like to take those thoughts further. Lately I have been heavily influenced by my trips to Honduras and particpation in working with and for those who we would consider to be the poor, the marginalized, sick, etc. Specifically I have been thinking a lot about herminutics.. during my last few trips to Honduras I have noticed the profound difference in how I read and interprit when I have been displaced. Specifically I’ve been reading the epistle of James and trying to figure out how to avoid being implicated as “the rich” while among so many people who are obviously poor. I have found that it is often been easy to gloss over these implications or even inditements when reading them in the blinding comfort of my own home. As a result I have also spent a good amount of time trying to figure out ways to communicate to the american church the ways in which our wealth is specifically spoken to through scripture. For instance:

Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming upon you. Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. Look! The wages you failed to pay the workmen who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered innocent men, who were not opposing you.

My thinking on how to communicate has also been coupled with my desire to fullfill the calling of James which tells us to be doers of the word and not hearers only. But what can this look like for someone who takes up teaching as a profession? Isn’t it true that “Those who can’t, teach.”

I am begining to devise a plan that may be able to fullfill both the insights that I am gaining into the world of interpritation and communication and the desires I have to not only speak but to do. I want to be able to communicate in a way that helps folks have eyes to see and ears to hear by removing them from their present contexts of comfort and opening the scriptures to them in a place of need and poverty.

The way I am presently thinking about going about this is to engage in mission, first. Go to the places where I can begin to authethentically live christian mission.. A place where I can continuely go deeper. A place where I can feel some amount of integrity in asking folks to join me in this mission. Once engaged in that place, begin to reinvigorate life into the older concept of the underground seminary. My hope would be to be living a life of poverty with the poor, and in service and friendship with them, while at the same time creating a space for those who are not in that place to join in that work and in the midst of that work begin 2-4 week intensive studies on hermunitics and biblical studies with an emphisis on books and letters addressing social justice i.e. Amos, Habbakuk, James, Etc.

Ideally, it would not take much finacially for me to do this. Espescially if I take my commitment to be poor, with the poor, seriously. The few things needed in a venture such is this are:

1. Place (to work, and to teach)
2. People (to work for, and to teach)

Optionally I may need:

1. Connections with current institutions of higher learning who could possibly provide students
2. Personal education needed in order to legitmately sustain such a program of education.

Possibilies as starting places for optional and required needs:

1. I have started the application process for Duke Divinity
2. Join with doug and molly in their work in latin america and use their context as a way of avoiding a reinvention of the wheel, while working with friends and peers.
3. Join with the stetlers in franklinton for the same purpose
4. Begin this conversation with friends who are headed towards vocation in instituions of higher learning such as Kyle and Brandon.