Merry Christmas, happy new year, blessed Hanukkah, and congratulations on surviving the Mayan apocalypse. After a very eventful semester, and a very eventful Christmas vacation, I am once again in Vancouver beginning what I hope will be my last regular semester of classes at Regent. I must say, I am quite ready to be done with school so I can resume my education; however, it is certainly great to be back home in the Menno Simons Centre, and it’s hard to feel too negative when Vancouver is showing its most brilliant and sunny face.

I’m sorry for being such a poor communicator this past semester. I had several excuses. The first one was that there were simply not a lot of interesting things to say. I’m typically inclined to write in times of great joy or great frustration, and this semester generally saw little of either (except for the last week or so, in which I crankily tried to pound out two term papers while not changing out of my bathrobe for several days and subsisting on a diet of free bread; however, in this period, I wasn’t really inclined to write anything that I didn’t absolutely have to). Basically, once my semester got started, my routine was fairly stable, and, until the very end, my workload was as well. The result was that weeks came and went without my being able to say much more than “Well, another week came and went,” which I seriously doubted would be of interest to anyone.

The second reason was that this routine, though prosaic, was quite full; although I generally enjoyed all of my activities, there were simply a LOT of activities to keep me busy. In terms of coursework, I was working on four very different kinds of studies. My one traditional class (i.e. one that actually obligated me to show up to lectures at preset times) was Biblical exegesis. Additionally, I was working on a proposal for my master’s thesis, which will occupy a good part of this next semester, on African theological education (more on that later). Also, I was  enrolled in a “distance” class in systematic theology, which is basically just a regular course, except you get recordings of the lectures and complete them on your own time (as long as “your own time” is within six months of beginning the course). Also, I was doing a “ministry internship” at the Menno Simons Centre, which involves leading Bible studies every two weeks, and going to a kind of student peer support group to debrief about experiences every two weeks, as well as reading several books and doing several book reports. Also, I was working two days a week at the Regent writing centre helping students edit papers. Also, I was doing some independent research for another professor. And trying to teach Hebrew to a fellow resident at the MSC. And I decided that that wasn’t quite enough, so I in spare time, I started writing a novel, worked on several songs on piano, took up calligraphy again, and gave a few fleeting attempts to learn French. Shockingly enough, I was exhausted and in a generally foul mood after [American] Thanksgiving.

This year has been in many ways a humbling one, as I’ve been reminded of the limits of my abilities and my tendency to overreach myself. For my ministry internship, I had to meet with a supervisor, who is an older member of my church, about every two weeks. At one point, he said that he was impressed with the work that I had done and was trying to do, but he felt that it wasn’t sustainable; that they were good endeavors coming from an unhealthy place. He asked me what it would be like if I could be satisfied with less than perfection. Strangely enough, I didn’t know what to say. So much of the identity and self-worth that I’ve built up over the years hinges on my ability to accomplish things and perform functions that I’m not entirely sure who I would be without that. Given this, this last year has been a time of uncomfortable grace, as I’ve been divested of some of the idols around which I’d built my self-worth. I have struggled to find my place at Regent; I have had to recognize that I don’t know what or how much I should attempt to do; I have seen again how unpleasant I quickly become when placed in circumstances that I don’t like; I have seen how little faith I have as soon as a blessing is, for a time, taken away. I have been forcibly reminded of my need for grace in the only way that I can be reminded: by finally getting to a point where I know that I can’t help myself.

At the same time, though, this year has been an exciting opportunity to see at least hints if not the full path of the way forward. As I mentioned earlier, I have been working on a thesis on theological education in Africa. This started last year when I heard a lecture on the future of global theological education. The lecturer said that he had been a member of the academy for nearly 60 years, and was in despair for the academy that he considered his home. The scholarly vocation had largely become obscured by the drive for career advancement, he said; but he hoped that renewal of the academy might come from an “unexpected quarter”: particularly, from Africa, where new educational initiatives unburdened with a thousand years of institutional baggage are being founded. That got me curious to see what these initiatives are, so for the past few months, I have been working on a thesis proposal to investigate how African initiatives in theological education make the gospel generally, and theological education specifically, relevant to the needs of Africans. Thus far it has involved a lot of reading and nit-picking, but the hope is that this coming April-May, I will actually get to go to Ghana to do some field research at the Akrofi-Christaller Institute for Theology, Mission, and Culture, in Ghana. Most of this next semester will be spent in preparation for that, doing background research and writing up preliminary findings.

After that, who knows? If I can manage to get my novel published, perhaps I will be able to devote myself to writing. If some opportunity opens up to get involved in teaching or educational reform—either in Africa or elsewhere—I would certainly be interested in that. If I got the opportunity to work with some church or parachurch organization, I would be open to that. In general, I’m quite surprised by how unworried I am. Though I have seldom understood at the time, in retrospect I can see that God has directed my paths; I can only hope and believe that He will continue to do so.