New Horizons: From the UK to Liberia, Florida & the Dominican Republic | SL 3.9 (Sept 2022)
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Our team from TLI and Tennent with the students at GraceLife College and Seminary in Liberia
Work & Ministry Update
- Dear friends, I submitted my PhD dissertation! Looking back at the last newsletter, I asked for you all to pray that I would get it finished by August 31—and I did. I submitted on Wednesday at about 3:00 PM. The last three days before submitting took about everything we had in us. Thank you for all your prayers! It is finished. I feel immensely grateful for and enriched by the opportunity. The next step—before I am totally finished—is an oral exam called a “viva voce,” which will be held on October 11th at 2:00 PM. Please continue to pray for minimal corrections and an encouraging exam.
- I had an excellent time teaching the Gospel of Mark in Liberia from August 15–19 with Training Leaders International and William Tennent School of Theology—see more below. This was another answer to prayer as our UK visas came through with plenty of time to spare so I could leave the country to go teach. Again, thank you for praying.
- As I write this I am sitting in Port Orange, Florida! If you’re in the Daytona Beach area, I’ll be preaching on Deut 6:4–5 at Christ Community Church this Sunday (Sept 4). We’ll be around town till September 30th. We would love to see you. On Sunday, September 25th Jeff and Rebecca Kiel will host an open house for us at their place from about 4PM to 8PM—swing by as you’re able (2457 Spruce View Way, Port Orange, 32128). There’s plenty of space and fun stuff for kids to play on. Please bring a snack and/or drink to share.
- While we are based in Florida, I am looking forward to heading down to the Dominican Republic from September 10–19 with Training Leaders International to launch a new site for expatriated Haitian pastors. We’re partnering with my beloved former colleague, Pastor Jean Garry Auguste, on this new initiative. We’ll be teaching the first course in TLI’s three-year training program. It’s called “Knowing God, Scripture, and Ourselves” and it is an introduction to theological education that will set the tone and lay crucial doctrinal groundwork for all that follows.
Thank you. Your prayers and support empower everything we do.
Michael Morgan, the founder and dean of William Tennent School of Theology speaking in chapel to start the day in Liberia.
Servant Leadership: Reading Mark in Liberia
My recent trip to Liberia, may have been the best overall experience teaching overseas I have ever had. The students were sharp and highly engaged, the team was excellent, the exegetical principles we focused on connected, and the Gospel of Mark is incredibly powerful. I can’t do a better job hitting the high points than my student, Francis Alie George, does in his own words in this video:
The students in the photo below were in my class for the week. From left to right, top to bottom: Christine, Dickson, Diah-William, Boaka, Francis, William, Harrison, Moses, Massa, Bill, and Abraham.
As a whole this class was sharp and engaged—they were a pleasure. But the ministry context they face is radically different than North America or the UK. They are all up against the health, wealth, and prosperity gospel. They are all up against aspects of African culture that prize a kind of big-man ethos and authoritarian rule by force. The fabric of their life is filled with physical challenges and trauma that relatively few Americans have faced. The students range in age from 20s to 40s, but they all lived through the decade + civil war in the 90s–00s. On Thursday, Francis approached me to tell me that Harrison was running late to class because the people of his village “had killed a criminal last night” and dumped the body in front of his house. Harrison had to wait for the authorities to come remove the body. Francis told me this like it was a common, understandable reason someone might be late to class.
One great pleasure of the trip was bringing, Anders Snyder, Robbie Halleen, and Tim Eakins, three students from William Tennent School of Theology. When Michael Morgan had a vision for a new kind of seminary in the mountain west, he wanted to build in a global perspective on theological education from the beginning. So these guys, all in their final semester, were asked to teach a course for under-resourced pastors as part of their degree requirements. Not only does this give them a chance to experience the church in another place, it actively supports “theological famine relief” by supplying TLI with a stream of qualified teachers. The desire is that they would catch the vision for the need and continue to invest in such efforts throughout their lives. Above, Robbie Halleen is pictured doing an excellent job connecting with his students. The guys from Tennent really knocked it out of the park—some of the best volunteer teachers I have ever had on a TLI trip. They made me proud to be their teacher.
The course we taught was on the Gospel of Mark. Our goal was not simply to teach the Gospel of Mark, but to teach how to study the gospels by using Mark as an example. Over the course of ten lessons, we dug into ten different passages from across the book to get at both key theological teaching and at crucial exegetical techniques. Overall, our goal was simply to get the students to look closely at the text, so they could draw out the main point. (This is one of the things Francis highlights in the video above.) So in lesson after lesson, text after text, we hammered away at the structure of the gospel of Mark and the big ideas it communicates. Jesus is the sovereign son of God (his identity, chapters 1–8), who comes to suffer, serve, and save (his mission, chapters 9–16). Many of the students come from contexts where the prosperity gospel is a strong influence and dynamic leaders build power and influence for themselves. So the idea that Jesus would use his power to suffer for his followers can be as revolutionary for them as it was for Peter (Mark 8:32). By pushing in on these issues and on the text, especially in Mark 8–12, we helped to show them both the revolutionary perspective of the gospel and the importance of reading the text carefully and closely to hear what our LORD is teaching and showing us.
In the video above, Francis mentions that he is part of the church-planter residency at GraceLife Seminary. Here he is standing in front of a poster he made as part of a biographical project. This poster gives an eye-opening view on the testimony of many of our students. I find the trajectory of his life deeply encouraging—I’ll let the poster speak for itself.
This is the whiteboard from the last morning of class, when we worked on applying the message of the crucifixion in Mark 15–16 to our modern contexts. Doing application well is challenging. And it was, perhaps, the thing that this group of students struggled with the most. However, as Francis also highlighted in the video, using the paradigm of “thinking,” “feeling,” and “doing” to help think through application was eye-opening for them. As such, I am proud of this whiteboard. We worked on it for over an hour, and, by the end, we had come up with some faithful and genuinely powerful applications. We saw clearly that Jesus’s death and resurrection puts to shame our human models of leadership. Jesus is calling his followers to suffer and serve like him. The profound portrait of our LORD moved us.
Pray With Us
- Praise the LORD that he has provided all things needed for me to finish the dissertation “on schedule” by August 31. Meghan and I feel this is an overwhelming picture of his faithfulness to us. Praise God.
- Praise the LORD that the teaching in Liberia went so well. May the students there continue to grow in their faithfulness and understanding. May they serve him and bring him honor.
- Pray for my time in the Dominican Republic, that it too would be deeply encouraging, both to the students and to those of us teaching. May the LORD give this work a strong beginning that sets a high bar for the learning to come.
- Pray for the Kirk family (and maybe particularly for me) as we attempt to rest, recuperate, and decompress in Florida this month. Despite having a bit of work on the docket, may we be rejuvenated and restored. I am praying the work is truly encouraging and that there would be plenty of deep rest in between.
- Finally, pray for my oral exam, aka “viva” on October 11th at 2:00PM. I’m sure I will pass, but there are a few different ways it could go, and the process—though exciting—is not without its unknown and its pressures. Pray that I could really enjoy it and pass with minimal corrections.
