It is shocking that to me that it is already the last day in February. One of the few major differences I notice about being a few degrees north of Oregon is how fast the light changes; just a month or two ago, it was dark by around 4:30, and now we have light until 6:00, and in just a few weeks, will be full-on into daylight savings time.
It’s strange too to consider that my time in Canada is rapidly drawing to a close. This semester will [God willing] be my last at Regent; on April 12, I will be flying to Akropong, Ghana, to do some research on initiatives in contextualizing African theological education. It’s a bit of a mouthful, but basically it means looking at how African Christians are trying to discern the ways that God has been at work in their pre-Christian heritage so that they can find ways to be both genuinely African and genuinely Christian, without feeling obligated to become European or American in order to come to Christ. Specifically, I’ll be looking at how these initiatives impact their approach to theological education. I’ll be there for about six weeks, doing interviews, focus groups, and direct observation, and then come back to North America to try and synthesize the findings into a ~130 page thesis.
I’m both excited and nervous about this. Africa (and particularly, African Christianity) have been growing in my heart for the past few years. At least from what I’ve heard, it sounds like an incredibly exciting place to go and see the active work the God is doing in the world. Several scholars that I’ve been reading up on, both Western and African, have concluded that the normative Christianity of the 21st century will be determined in Africa; I guess I just want to be where the action is. Even my cursory studies of African theology thus far have impacted my own understanding of who Christ is and how he works, and I would like to see and experience more of that. In a bit of a reversal of Paul’s famous vision of the Macedonian, I feel like I’m answering a call to “Come over and be helped.”
That said, there’s plenty to be nervous about. I’m still hurriedly trying to learn how to do qualitative research in such a way that the thesis supervisors will accept what I obtain. As far as the practical details of the process, I feel a bit helpless, like I don’t even know the questions to ask. I just mailed off payment for my plane ticket, so one way or another, it looks like I’m going, but I still don’t know exactly what I need to do in order to get there (Visas? Immunizations? Other questions that I’m not even thinking to ask?), or what things will look like when I am actually there. I will be staying at the school, so I don’t have to worry about trying to find lodging, but it’s a bit intimidating to think that I’m going to a continent where I know no one. I’m also not entirely sure how I’m going to pay for it; between savings and some support from my church up here, I’ve got most of the trip itself covered, but not all of it, and nothing left for the final credits I will need to get over the summer.
I suppose that the main reason that I haven’t been more nervous about this undertaking is that I haven’t had time to be. Contrary to my expectations, this semester has definitely been “going out with a bang” for my time at Regent. The biggest part of that has been the Drama of the Thesis Proposal: the 26-page paper from Purgatory. After a semester of working on it, I submitted it in early January…only to have it sent back for extensive revision. At this point, I seriously considered becoming a graduate school drop-out, and probably would have but for the wise counsel of cooler heads around me. However, convinced to keep plugging away, I became a kind of academic vampire for a few weeks, not seeing the light of day except through the window in my room and increasingly convinced that this whole thing was just one huge mistake. Last Thursday, I re-submitted. Then, I jumped right into my next big assignment: a 4000-word term paper due the following Monday. With that completed, I can breathe a bit easier, although I still have to prepare a 20-minute presentation on said paper to present next Monday, and finish four book reviews for other classes within the next two weeks.
And as to the looming question, “So then what?”: I have to admit, it’s a very good question. I kind of figured that there would be some sort of concrete direction waiting for me at the end of the tunnel, and perhaps there will be, but at the moment, I really don’t know. Getting back from Ghana, I will have to complete one additional summer course in addition to completing the thesis. And after that? I wish I could tell you. Honestly, at this point, just the thought of being done with school sounds amazing. If I could land a job working as a janitor from 8-5, I think I would be content. Still, I have no idea what I will be doing, or where I will be doing it, with Salem, Vancouver, Seattle, SoCal, Ghana, or who knows where else all seeming like equally plausible (or implausible, as the case may be) options.
I wish that I could say that I’m facing all this with a robust and unshakeable faith in Divine Providence, but honestly, my faith’s taken a bit of a beating over the past year or so. This season has been a dry one—one in which I feel like I have repeatedly been bumping up against my own limitations, whether intellectual, social, or physical. I guess that I’ve been reminded again of how easy it is to mistake faith in God for faith in blessing, and deprived of whatever blessing—material abundance, acclaim or honor, direction, the certainty of a consoling Presence—what I had mistakenly called “faith” withers like summer grass. I can affirm with my head and my mouth that everything will work out; that this is simply the cliff-hanger in a story far too grand for me to comprehend. I have seen this happen before, in my own life and the lives of others, and nothing has happened to change the fundamental facts of this truth. But even though I can say it, it’s a bit hard at the moment to believe it.