From there to here…. Sharing the stories, Celebrating the gifts …and to honor Michael King

Fall Convocation 2016 “After the boxes are packed” Lamentations 3:1-26.

Dr. Michael A. King, Eastern Mennonite Seminary Dean

Theme: Clinging to the Lord’s steadfast love and mercies when nothing else seems available and even the assurances that our hope is in God seem insubstantial.

Seminary Dean, Dr. Michael King, opens the EMS fall semester with his convocation address, “Spellbound: Present at the Big Bang.”

King writes:

In many ways, it seems to me, church is unraveling, whether at broad cultural or denominational levels or in the decline of our personal loyalties to faith communities or structures. Yet amazing weavings and reweavings unfold even within whatever is unraveling.

For example, any of us open to it are participating in the miracle of becoming ourselves as persons made in the image of God. This vision came to me as powerfully as it ever has through observing the process in my own granddaughter. She has been holding me spellbound as she teaches me that even the faintest gusts of love or laughter, of dismissal or devaluation, have amazing power to form or deform.

As I watch the formation of my granddaughter, I marvel at the miracle of weaving which unfolds as we’re formed by each other, God, and our growth in self-understanding. In light of that, I want to ask how, in both simple yet primal ways, theological/formational training and our lives in community with each other contribute to our being formed as the selves God
invites us to be. ]]> /now/podcast/2015/08/19/storytelling-facultystaff-conference-2/ Wed, 19 Aug 2015 15:28:58 +0000 http://emu.edu/now/podcast/?p=4216 During the 2015 Faculty/Staff Fall Conference, several EMU Faculty and Staff share stories:

April Fool’s Day! Drawing from the common lectionary texts for Palm Sunday (Mark 11:1-11 and Philippians 2:5-11) which include the “foolishness” of Jesus riding into Jerusalem on the colt of a donkey, reflects on the foolishness of the Holy Week narratives.
serves as Vice President and Seminary Dean. King has long been an editor and publisher, first through Herald Press (Scottdale, PA, 1989-1997) and then more recently as owner and publisher, Cascadia Publishing House LLC (Telford, PA, 1997-). He has been pastor in congregational settings ranging from Germantown Mennonite Church (Philadelphia, PA, 1982-1989), Spring Mount (PA) Mennonite Church (1997-2008), and more. He is married to Joan Kenerson King, of Olean, NY, a family therapist with offices in Devon and Telford, PA; and an advanced practice nurse who consults with public behavioral health systems. They are parents of three adult daughters.

received his B.A. from ��ݮ���� (1976), M.Div. from Eastern Baptist (now Palmer) Theological Seminary (1982), and Ph.D. in rhetoric and communication from Temple University (1997).

Seminary Dean, Dr. Michael King, opens the EMS fall semester with his convocation address, “Recognizing Jesus when Phone Booths Vanish.”��

King writes:

When I saw a PBS video on seminaries posted under a heading that asked if��what we teach is repairing phone booths, that caught my attention. Maybe��because I turn 60 next month, I remember phone booths! Are seminaries,��universities, congregations, denominations doing the equivalent of��teaching phone booth repairs even though cell phones long ago made them��obsolete?

I’ll ponder this at Eastern Mennonite Seminary convocation��Tuesday��morning, August 26, at��11:00��in Martin Chapel, seminary building second
floor.

I’ll ask whether pointers for moving beyond phone booth repairs might be��found in that memorable story of followers of Jesus ruminating on his
death with a stranger. They don’t realize they’re discussing with Jesus��the absence of Jesus.

Do we similarly fail to recognize Jesus? If so, are there fresh ways we��can live, theologize, educate, structure our churches to meet Jesus
precisely where we think he’s absent? As EMU discerns hiring policy for��persons in same-sex relationships, might we even gently help each other
learn to see Jesus across our divided understandings of right and wrong?

If you’re interested in exploring with us how through meeting Jesus anew��we might do more than repair phone booths, we warmly welcome you.
Blessings –Michael��A.��King, seminary dean

The entire campus community is invited to every chapel service on��campus. Eastern Mennonite Seminary hosts chapel gatherings in Martin��Chapel every Tuesday and Thursday morning at 11:00.��

, EMU Vice President and Dean of begins the Seminary’s�� Fall 2013 Spiritual Life Week with reflections on : “The Counter-Intuitive Miracle.” The theme of Spiritual Life Week is, “Let love be Genuine…A Discerning Journey.”

The entire campus community is invited to every chapel worship service on��campus. Eastern Mennonite Seminary hosts chapel gatherings in Martin��Chapel every Tuesday and Thursday;��EMU��Campus Ministries hosts chapel��gatherings every Wednesday and Friday in Lehman Auditorium. Specifics and��occasional changes are noted in individual chapel listings.

Seminary Dean reflects on how the helps us understand the difference between “I get it” and “being gotten.” “I get it” is a way of staying in control; it’s hard for us to imagine living differently. Our whole culture takes us in the direction of emphasizing the value of “I get it.” In contrast, “being gotten” is a way of allowing ourselves to be seized by something larger than us.

A key context for all of this is working toward highlighting EMS as a Discernment Training Center. defines discernment as “involving the community of believers gathered in Jesus’ name around Scripture in the presence of the Holy Spirit to let God show us the way through the urgent, complicated, and sometimes divisive issues of a given time and place.”

Dr King’s comments and reflections to close this chapel offer a helpful summary of his address:

“I know only in part—only as if through a mirror dimly.�� That means that anything I’ve shared with you is partly wrong, partly misguided.�� I have tried in what I’ve shared…to be fair to various points of view.�� But I’m sure you can read in my fallibilities that I am more connected with some ways of thinking Christ than others.�� I think it’s important…as we think about clenched fists…not to equate the passionate holding to our beliefs, with the problem.�� I don’t see that as a problem. I know that there are passionate views present here among our faculty, our staff, and our students.�� And my dream is not that those passions would cease being articulated, and even advocated for.�� My dream, rather, is that this could be a kind of demilitarized zone…a place where we don’t get shot, the moment we wade into points of disagreement and tension.�� So I do pray that’s a piece of what we can experience [at Eastern Mennonite Seminary in 2012] in a world that so badly needs this Seminary, this University—to be in the thick of it all, but in the thick of it all in a peace-giving way. And I share that as a prelude to the blessing, because I’m so deeply moved by the music we’ve just heard and its tremendous balm of peace, and I’m struck by how quickly we shatter that experience of peace, the moment we go from sitting here singing it, to actually engaging it.�� I pray there are ways to keep that peace, in the act of unclenching our fists and opening them up; but also being true to all our own beliefs.�� If we can’t find a way to be passionate about what we believe, and also at peace with each other in the midst of that, then I don’t know a way forward. But if we can, then the way we were moved by our worship, and by the Spirit, precisely through our gathering here in the presence of the Spirit we have named on the command of Jesus, then I think we can become Eastern Mennonite Seminary as we’re called to be. So in that dream–Go in peace and all the work required and all the blessings that it can give us in the name of the Lord.�� In that hope and in that prayer, I commend us to the new year.�� Blessings.”

The entire campus community is invited to every chapel worship service on campus. hosts chapel gatherings in Martin Chapel every Tuesday and Thursday; EMU Campus Ministries hosts chapel gatherings every Wednesday and Friday in Lehman Auditorium. Specifics and occasional changes are noted in individual chapel listings.

Michael King is the Search Committee for EMU’s next Vice President and Dean of the Seminary candidate of choice.

Cascadia Publishing House