Nazarene Theological Seminary

The first week of May marks the end of another school year, which means there are plenty of loose ends to tie up: one being this blog, and the other being my supervised ministry experience (SME).  So I decided I'd use my final experiences with SME as something to write about here and share with you all. 

As I mentioned before, part of my SME this semester was helping organize our church's involvement with a Habitat for Humanity project called, “The House that Abraham Built.”  This interfaith project has just started construction about two weeks ago.  The walls are now up and the whole build should be done in about two months.  In the meantime, we are learning from our Catholic, Episcopal, Muslim, and Jewish friends as we work side by side with them in this act of generosity and love. 

The other part of my SME this semester was creating and implementing a marriage enrichment immersion for couples in our church who have been married for less than two years.  Now, as someone who has only been married for about 21 months myself, I must say that the task seemed a little daunting.  To construct and facilitate a marriage seminar for newly weds seemed a lot like leading a group of people down a dark cavern without a light or a map.  But I trusted the guidance of my professors, peers, ministry advisor, and pastors and put together two, four hour sessions that Jessie and I co-facilitated with my advisor and his wife over the past two Saturdays.  Since I don't want to bore you with all of the details, I'll just summarize by saying the time we all spent together was amazingly constructive and positive for both the participants and the facilitators.  Thanks be to God!

Reflecting on this experience, I am now convinced more than ever that our churches need to start taking a more active responsibility for the marriages—and commitments to singleness—that are within our communities.  Our relationships (biological, romantic, and friendly) have been radically redefined by the life, death, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ and our churches are to uphold these redefined relationships.  As this pertains to marriage, it is the body of Christ that recognizes the union between a man and a woman, and it is the body of Christ that also holds those two people to their marital commitments that they made well after that wonderful day.  For this reason, the starry-eyed couples that we counsel and unite in marriage need just as much (if not more) of our input and care after the ceremony as we rightfully gave them before the ceremony.  While we all will probably affirm these statements, I'm not always sure we intentionally reflect them in our actions.  

I can certainly say that this SME experience has been invaluable to me this semester and I can't wait for how God is going to continue to shape my education this next year both in the classroom and the church.  In the meantime, I've got a bookshelf full of unread books that I've been collecting over this year that are calling my name.