From the ruins...

Charles Church & Drake Circus Shopping Centre; Plymouth, England (2012)

During World War II, historic Charles Church in Plymouth, England, was devastated along with much of the rest of the city in the Plymouth Blitz, carried out by the Nazi Luftwaffe. Being a major port city on the southern coast, Plymouth had long been (and still is) an important military position, and so was a target.

In 2006, the Drake Circus Shopping Centre was erected just behind the ruins of the church, which had sat unmolested for decades. As the photo above illustrates, it was certainly no accident that the design of the mall's facade incorporates and frames in the ruins of the church, now an historic landmark in the city centre.

We visited Plymouth in 2012 and I took the photo above. I had first noticed this ruined-church/thriving-mall arrangement from the window of our hotel (on the left), and chuckled to myself. It certainly sends a message...

Following and Straying: The paths of my ancestors

"Foggy Morning Frolic" by Mike Gilchrist & his cat, Wink
(used w/ permission)

My grandfather, Dale Mullins, started his adult life as a farmer. This wasn't a "start" so much as it was a continuation of what he was born into on his family's farm outside of Monroe, Iowa. Born in 1915, his father passed away when Dale was only 24 years old, at which point he took over full control and care of the family farm. He was born and died in the same house and lived out and worked most of his 77 years on the same 80-acre piece of earth overlooking and rolling down into the South Skunk River bottom that meanders nearby.

My other grandfather, Max Gumm, started out much the same, having grown up on his family's farm about an hour northwest of Monroe near Jefferson, Iowa. Unlike my maternal grandfather, though, Max altered course a few years into farming. He felt, as us church folk say, "the call"...

The bi-vocational blues

Yep; we have that much | (c) Jeff Parker/Cagel Cartoons

Student loan debt has been a hot topic of conversation lately, at least in my social media circles. It's always a hot topic for my wife and I because, well, we have a ton of it. Like three-masters-degrees-at-a-private-university-all-subsidized-by-student-loans worth of it.

Six years ago, when we first told my family that we were moving to Virginia for grad school, they were not impressed. My brother kind of angrily told me that I was being irresponsible with my family's financial wellbeing. At the time I thought, "No I'm not!," but there are plenty of days this side of the transaction that I wonder...

Debt certainly has set constraints around my call to the ministry, particularly in my rural context. The number of Church of the Brethren congregations in my district that could afford to employ a pastor full-time are very few. So when we moved back to rural Iowa, it just so happened that my not feeling a particularly strong calling to pastoral ministry worked in my family's economic favor. Even if I'd wanted to be a full-time pastor, I likely couldn't do it around here; so I kept my technology job for Eastern Mennonite University, an arrangement that looks to continue for the foreseeable future.

...I just blog a lot

Since starting this blog for personal and academic reasons in the fall of 2009, I've managed to justify blogging as part of my professional work at EMU. My previous role at the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding had me acting as blog editor for Peacebuilder Online. In my new role as Distance Learning Technology Analyst in the Information Systems department, my work has included a high degree of research and development work around educational technologies and ed-tech trends in higher ed.

I take a social media-driven approach to R&D, which includes tweeting (@DistanceEd_EMU) and, as of last week, blogging: Ed-Tech at EMU.

It's the best of many worlds for me: Doing my tech nerdery for a Christian university ("like no other"), using media with which I feel comfortable and competent, and within which I can take a narrative approach to communicating for my work.

If this all sounds rather self-serving, let me situate it in the context of gratitude. These circumstances wouldn't be possible without the amazing leadership I've worked under/with at EMU these past few years. I've had leaders who 1) trust my skills and insights, and 2) have empowered me to be creative in carrying out my work. It's a gift to have such work.

Theological technologist?

Koru photo adapted from
Jonathon Colman via Flickr.

More transitions are afoot these days, in addition to what the last two posts have indicated. While my blogging here has frequently made reference to my academic work at EMU, I rarely talked about my professional work at the same institution. For almost as long as I was a graduate student, I was also the Web and Information Systems Coordinator for the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. This was a part-time job as CJP's "nerd in residence," primarily responsible for web and social media for the program. But as my past-tense speech indicates, I've moved on to something new.

As of Thursday of last week, I am now the Distance Learning Technology Analyst for EMU (@DistanceEd_EMU), which is housed in the Information Systems department. This is a short-term, full-time assignment that is designed to guide interested graduate programs at the school into cutting-edge educational technologies and a distinct pedagogical approach that, when combined, provide for a deeper level of relationality and connection in virtual learning spaces. This job is a new one at EMU, and was created as a result of my work with Howard Zehr and others at CJP in the design and implementation of the program's first ever online class, which I wrote about here: Elicitive Pedagogy in the Digital Age.

Another way to put the mission of this new position is: How can we do Anabaptist-influenced graduate education online? If EMU is, as its tagline states, "a Christian university like no other," then how can those distinctives be embodied in disembodied media? Those questions and their practical implications will be what I'm focusing heavily upon over this summer and into the fall.

Wringing Out Saturated Selves: Christian Education in a Secular Age

This morning I gave my senior capstone presentation at Eastern Mennonite Seminary, which was based on a paper I wrote with the same name as this post. I've embedded the paper below, but let me make a few comments about the concerns animating this paper/presentation, the paper's major flow and points, and where it leads from here. I take the upcoming #Occupy Empire conference I'm helping organize as one particular project within my broader process of ministerial-vocational discernment.

In some ways, this paper and presentation marks the "philosophical turn" in my graduate studies.  This turn was precipitated by the existential and intellectual angst of being the first dual degree student at EMU's seminary and its Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. Philosophy eventually became extremely helpful in trying to adjudicate - both in terms of overlap and difference - the distinct "embodied rationalities" in those two programs. This led me to the philosophy of Charles Taylor, James K.A. Smith, and most recently, Alasdair MacIntyre.

But I've also been compelled by the biblical hermeneutic of John Howard Yoder as a way to keep me grounded in the biblical narrative as the primary "script" for my life as a ministering Christian in the body of Christ.

In my ministerial-vocational discernment these past years at grad school, I've come sense the call to being an educator in/for the church, putting the intellectual gifts which God has imbued within me to work for the sake of God's reconciling mission in the world. In testing this, I've been able to teach the same class in two radically different cultural contexts. In this paper, I try to weave all these threads together in a very short space (12 pages, 20 minute presentation). No small task.

In responding to my presentation this morning, my advisor, Mark Thiessen Nation, quipped: "What you've really done here, Brian, is lay out a research agenda for yourself." Likewise, my district executive in the Church of the Brethren described this as the start of a life-long journey. I think those assessments exactly right. There are hints in this paper to most of the influential work I've picked up and how I've been starting to assemble that toward a constructive vision for my developing vocation as a ministerial educator.

#Occupying Empire: David Fitch eats and tweets at McDonald's

David Fitch,
ready for the mission field

[Note: The preface to this post's title, "#Occupying Empre" is signaling a series of posts I'll likely do this spring. More importantly it's a reference to a conference that I'm putting together with a seminary friend: #Occupy Empire: Anabaptism in God's Mission. Registration isn't open yet and speaker/schedule info is forthcoming. So this is kind of putting the cart before the horse, but stay tuned in the next two weeks for more info on the conference...]

I came across David Fitch's blog - Reclaiming the Mission - last year and began casually following his posts and his tweets. Partly by his own admissions, but also by my own assessment, Fitch seems like a postmodern evangelical whose been bit by the "new traditionalism" bug (which means he's taken folks like MacIntyre, Hauerwas, and Yoder seriously). "Neo-Anabaptist evangelical" might be another way to describe Fitch. He is a bi-vocational professor and pastor in the Chicago area. He's also not afraid to talk about Marx and Zizek, and has a provocatively-titled book, The End of Evangelicalism?, which I haven't read yet but appears in my favorite Wipf & Stock series, Theopolitical Visions. Taken together, all this makes Fitch quite an interesting person to me. Lucky for me, he's visting EMU later this month!

But one thing in particular strikes me about Fitch: He's at McDonald's a lot. I know this from his tweets. Just this morning he reported, "Gathering early at McD' s w/ triad in the back to read, pray, check in and ask the questions - ahhh discipleship :-) #fb." What's the deal?

The stumbling journey onward

With two of my students in Ethiopia

Before coming to EMU three years ago for graduate studies, I could hardly imagine that someday soon I would sense God calling me to be a teacher. The development of this sense has oftentimes been painful, but just as often, it has been exhilarating. My call to the set-aside ministry in the church, which preceded our coming to Virginia, has always been strong, but the steps along the way and the direction it’s heading are often frustratingly elusive.

I suppose this is consistent with the experience of the beloved community in Scripture. The progenitors of it all, Abram & Sarai, were compelled by a god, Yahweh, that they did not yet know into a journey they could not fathom, into lands that God would show them. That Israel, Jesus its Messiah, and his Church should follow in that tradition is a testament to trust and faithfulness, particularly from God’s end of the covenant.

So after stumbling along as a first-time teacher to ministers in Ethiopia, I returned home marveling at the joy I experience while teaching. Encouragement to continue on is met with excitement and frustration as I continue to discern what shape this may take after graduation in the spring.

Riffing on David Brooks: Sociality, virtue, and vocation

David Brooks;
Photo: Josh Haner/The New York Times

David Brooks intrigues me. He is considered a social and political conservative but he speaks in such a way as to set himself apart from most commentators of that ilk. He published a book this year - The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement (also see his TED talk) - that uses contemporary neuroscience to make the case that humans are not primarily rational beings. We are thinking, feeling, yearning, and always-already social creatures. Promoting such a perspective puts him at odds with pretty much the entire post-Enlightenment Western world in its social-political manifestations, which all assume a very individualistic and overly rational view on human nature. (Encapsulated in Descarte's dictum, "I think, therefore I am.")

One of my favorite Christian thinkers - philosopher, James K.A. Smith - has taken note of Brooks' recent work, going so far as to defend Brooks from those who seem to be missing his point. Plus, Brooks' work comports well with Smith's own, especially his book, Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation. One of Smith's biggest beefs with American evangelicals is that they've been duped into the individualist-rationalist view of human nature and so only seem to explicitly care about Christians' beliefs. To counter this Smith dusts off pre-modern, classical views of human nature and virtue that account for the whole being and restore a sense of work or vocation to the Christian life.

For Christian formation to do its work, it needs to operate on our (the Church's) entire personal and collective body as well as our desires...as in desiring the kingdom of God. Smith argues that we are shaped and pointed toward certain ends (such as the fulfillment of the kingdom) by liturgies - worship, work, or just simply practices. Smith contrasts sacred liturgies (Christian worship) and secular liturgies (eg. going to the mall). To not allow the former to operate in a holistic sense allows the latter to swoop in to fill in the gap, and eventually take over as the primary formational liturgy. So well-meaning evangelicals can (and do) become functional consumerist atheists with their bodies while purporting to be Christian in terms of their beliefs. Such split-being as we've inherited from the Enlightenment is ridiculous because, after all, the mind is part of the body and knowledge also exists outside the brain, even outside our corporeal bodies (eg. social consciousness).

[This post was subsequently picked up by the Mennonite Weekly Review blog: David Brooks, John Howard Yoder, and the sociality of virtue. Thanks again to Sheldon C. Good for his editorial work!]

Restorative or transformative theology?

Howard Zehr

For the past few years I've had the joy of assisting Howard Zehr in the administration of his restorative justice blog. As I mentioned in my very first post back in October 2009, the name of this blog - Restorative Theology - takes its cue from the field that Howard helped shape over 30 years ago, a field in which I've studied and done a small amount of work. So in addition to simply helping administer, I also look at Howard's blog as a conversation partner to this one.

Howard's posts tend to be be reflective inquiries into the state of restorative justice as it's presently understood and practiced. Perhaps the primary concern in his work at this stage of his career is helping practitioners in various arenas keep true to what he sees as the values and principles of restorative justice. He's just put up an interesting post with the following query:

Restorative or transformative justice?

Read on for some of the ways in which I think a theological conversation shifts the concerns underlying such a question. I'll also make a case for restorative, transformative, and theopolitical Christian practices...

Santa's on MY naughty list

Had two stories of Santas being naughty this week. One from a friend, and one that I experienced w/ my daughter. The first one is simple: my friend in Iowa saw Santa taking a smoke break in plain view of everyone (at Jolly Holiday Lights for ye DSM-dwellers).  My daughter, who is 9, and I went and saw Santa in this little plywood cabin yesterday at the public library in Harrisonburg. Breaking Santa protocol, Santa asked my daughter what she wanted to be when she grew up. Being a good sport, she told him she wanted to be a teacher.

Santa then proceeded to criticize this career move because teachers "don't make very much money." So he asked her again. Still being a good sport, she suggested a desire to perhaps be an artist. Santa grumbled and suggested she come up with "something better," suggesting being a scientist because they make a lot of money (itself a dubious claim).

As someone who recently left a relatively lucrative career in Information Technology to go to grad school and study theology and peacebulding, I was aghast at the nerve of this guy in the Santa suit, but was polite while we were in his presence. As soon as we were in the car, though, we had a discussion about why that encounter was a load of crap. She agreed, even commenting later in the day that she really didn't like that Santa.  I assured her that despite what Santa said, she could choose to be whatever the heck her heart, spirit, and mind are telling her to become. A teacher, or an artist, or an art teacher, or a teacher who is artistic, or whatever. Mid-stream changes are okay, too.

Heidi Miller Yoder: Gotta serve somebody

My first encounter with Heidi here at EMU came in my second semester last year while writing a term paper on the theologies of baptism for John Calvin and a somewhat recently-discovered 16th century Anabaptist figure, Pilgram Marpeck. Heidi's dissertation covers Marpeck, so a classmate and I sat down with her to get some help with sources for our papers. Her sharp intellect and clear articulation of theological concepts quickly struck me.  Later that spring, EMU hosted popular Christian thinker, writer, and speaker, Brian McLaren, and Heidi was coordinating the events for his time on campus, and I was asked to play guitar for a few songs during an evening speaking event.

When I sat down with Heidi for this interview in late October, I knew it was going to be a great conversation, and it was. What particularly stood out in this interview is how she immediately named her family and life in the church as pivotal starting points for her faith and spiritual formation. At the end of the interview, when talking about theology in a conceptual sense, she tied it all together with her early childhood experiences, bringing us full circle in the discussion. This was in the midst of talking about Anabaptist particulars in theology, and what it can offer the broader church (something she works at). Here's a video that offers some of her reflections:


There were other themes not explored in the video that were significant, such as the strong tie of theology to an education and early vocation that wasn't primarily theological (largely social work in various forms), but to which Heidi quite intentionally brought her faith and practical theology to bear. At various points through the interview Heidi named bridge-building as something she's been doing in various ways and to varying degrees much of her life. This is where I really level with her, as I see much of what I'm doing here at EMU, studying in both the CJP and Seminary, working toward those two degrees, as a theological experiment in bridge/peace-building.

Thanks, Heidi!

Mark Thiessen Nation: Revival

The following video is the edited form of an interview I conducted with my theology professor at EMS, Mark Thiessen Nation. Mark is one of the leading scholars of John Howard Yoder, an influential theologian-ethicist from the latter third of the last century, who was also Mennonite. The first time I had Mark in class at seminary was one of my very first classes, "Christian Tradition," which he co-taught with two other wonderful professors. I was immediately drawn to Mark's sharp intellect and his clear articulation of theological concepts. As I've gotten to know him better, I've also come to appreciate his sense of humor.  He's a smart alec like me.

In this 15 min. video, Mark is essentially telling the story of his spiritual formation, which has led him to where he is now, vocationally: a theology professor at a seminary.



I enjoyed having this conversation with Mark. We laughed frequently and it felt very natural, even though there was a camera sitting there, pointed at his face the whole time.  I also enjoyed analyzing it. One thing that I came to appreciate is the centrality of the church in Mark's journey. Doing a simple word frequency analysis of the transcript showed that the word "church" came up more than anything else. Despite his vocational situation in the academy, Mark is still very much involved in the life of the church, and it continues to be where he situates his work. This is important for me to consider, as I'm in the midst of constantly discerning where my spiritual journey will take me next, vocationally.

Don't read into this deeply, but I laughed out loud when I saw this little statistic from the word frequency analysis of the transcript: the word "Jesus" and "Yoder" were mentioned the same number of times in our conversation. Again, I'm not trying to make any sort of critical statement by pointing this out, but my fellow students - or anyone familiar with Mark - will get a chuckle out of this. He is, as I said, a Yoder scholar. (e.g. a new book of Yoder essays he helped edit: The War of the Lamb: The Ethics of Nonviolence and Peacemaking)

Mark is also my neighbor. Last year, he and his wife, Mary, invited my family over for supper. I was immediately struck by how many books this man has. We entertained my daughter during discussion after supper by having her go through his shelves of biblical commentaries in the adjacent room and find ones that were out of order.  When she found one, she'd show it to Mark and he would reshelf it correctly.  So here's a picture to show you just one corner of his office and the bookshelves. But there are two other walls that you don't see...

I also get a kick out of the pictures hanging above his computer monitor. There are other family and personal pictures in his office, but these are the folks that are looking at him from the wall as he's working on his computer. I recognize John M. Perkins, Stanley Hauerwas (with whom Mark shares a friendship with), and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

I really like Mark, and I hope that came through in this post. He's a neat guy and I'm thrilled to be studying under his tutilege and it's a bummer that he's on sabbatical this year (although I'm sure he doesn't asses it this way). You might see some footage from the interview repeated in subsequent posts, as I'll be working with material from all four interviews I conducted with EMU faculty in a more collage-like fashion, exploring the similarities and differences in how these conversations went with more or less the same line of questioning.

"Riding the waves of an elusive reality"

Just got back from lunch with a CJP-Seminary dual-degree prospective student, who was on a campus visit to EMU from Ohio.  I love the opportunity to meet with prospective students in the two programs.  First, it hopefully helps them in discerning a very significant, life-changing decision.  Second, it helps me figure out why I'm here in these programs, studying for four or five years, with no strong sense for what/where comes next.  Last, and perhaps most important: the lunch is free (to me).  Through stimulating discussion that went by in a flash, my discussion with him helped me see some of the things that are really great about living in two academic worlds simultaneously, and what's not so great.  So after the jump, there's a quick three-each list:

What is "restorative theology," anyway?

Hello friends and strangers, and welcome to my attempt at articulating and bringing clarity (for myself, hopefully others) to a few threads of study that I find myself immersed in as a grad student at Eastern Mennonite University (EMU) in lovely Harrisonburg, Virginia. Those two threads are theology and peacebuilding, and they represent the two graduate divisions I am studying in at EMU: the Seminary and the Center for Justice & Peacebuilding (CJP). In the process of discerning a call to ministry and learning all this wild and crazy stuff, I'm actively seeking how these threads will converge and shape my vocation after grad school. That won't be until at least 2013, so I have plenty of time to think and write about it here. You're welcome.

So why "restorative theology?" Well, my emphasis in study at the CJP is restorative justice, a field pioneered around 30 years ago by folks like Howard Zehr, who is now my professor and academic adviser (and friend; he's a great guy) at the CJP. Restorative justice saw the criminal justice system in the West as being almost exclusively focused on crimes against the state (violations of law) and punishing the people who violated those laws, while simultaneously leaving the needs of the victims of wrongdoing going unmet. Restorative justice practitioners came along to restore (get it?) balance to the responses to wrongdoing and address the needs of all parties involved: victims, offenders, families, the community, and even society at large. This is my off-the-cuff answer with no citations, but it will do for now. A seminal book in this field was written by Howard in 1990, called Changing Lenses: A New Focus for Crime and Justice. I've linked to his blog above, and it's also listed to the right in "The Well" section.

So that's "restorative"; now for "theology." Without going into excessive detail, I feel comfortable saying that I've loved theology since I was a little kid. I grew up in a rural Church of the Brethren congregation in central Iowa where there were tons of Protestants of many stripes, particularly Dutch Reformed and Methodists. I was best friends with a boy whose family was Catholic and we used to compare notes. I remember getting into a theological discussion with his dad on the way to Des Moines from our hometown of Prairie City, discussing the fine points of saying confession before death. My friend was bored out of his mind, but his dad and I were having a blast. So when I came to the seminary at EMU at the age of 29, I felt right at home.

In "The Well" section at the right, you'll see a link to a site called Peace Theology, which is written by Ted Grimsrud, a professor at EMU's undergraduate division of Bible & Religion. He and my seminary theology professor, Mark Thiessen Nation, are both pacifists in the Anabaptist and Mennonite tradition, which I also place myself in (a Brethren sojourning w/ Mennonites).
[Update: "The Well" is now called "In conversation" and Ted's and Howard's blogs have rotated out of that list which changes quite often. -bg 3/11/2011]

That's a bit of the historical context for this blog, "restorative theology." Now let's look forward. What am I going to do with it?

Well, one of the first things I have in mind is a very specific class project for a research methods class I'm taking this fall at the CJP (taught by Howard): Research as Art and Transformation. I'm planning on interviewing four EMU professors about theology and peacebuilding, taking a few photographs, editing the video, typing some words and posting the finished product here. If it's engaging to the people I interview and anyone I badger into reading it, hopefully, interesting dialog can take place in the comments sections. So that will be coming in the next two months (before the end of the semester!).

In addition to that, I have the hope of honing the craft of theological writing in various ways. My emphasis of study at the seminary is academics, and I will be focusing on theology and ethics. Theology is, among other things, an academic discipline with a loooooooooooooooong history, and one that I have yet to be initiated into (until next spring). But theology is also, more generally, a way (or ways) to think about God and the ultimate purpose for this life of ours, individually and collectively. So as I exercise both the general and formal practices of theology, I will use this blog for that adventure.