May 2014
Bloy House News
The Episcopal Theological School at Claremont


Greetings from Bloy House, the Episcopal Theological School at Claremont, where another class has graduated and we're looking forward to the fall term. Thank you for considering Bloy House/ETSC for theological coursework and continuing education alike. For information, phone 909.621.2419 or email [email protected].

Faithfully in Christ, 
(The Very Rev.) Sylvia Sweeney, Ph.D.
Bloy House Dean and President

  Graduation
Bloy House graduates 2014
Bloy House graduates, 2014

On Saturday May 10, the class of 2014 graduated from Bloy House.  
  • Nathan Biornstad, Holy Trinity, Covina: Certificate of Anglican Studies
  • Allison Cornell, St. Luke's, Long Beach : Diploma of Theological Studies
  • Ann Dumolt, St. Luke's, Monrovia: Diploma of Theological Studies
  • Annie Engstrom, Trinity, Orange: Diploma of Theological Studies
  • Dennis Sheridan, St. Andrews, Ojai: Certificate of Anglican Studies
  • Holly Stauffer, St. Luke's in the Mountains, La Crescenta: Certificate of Anglican Studies
  • Diane Finnecy, Tierrasanta Lutheran Church, San Diego: Certificate of Special Studies.
  • Cari Anderson-Meadows, St. Timothy's, Apple Valley: Fresh Start for Lay Leaders Program.  
  • Johnna Dominguez, Episcopal Urban Intern with Seeds of Hope: Fresh Start for Lay Leaders 
Congratulations to all these graduates!

Awards
Several awards have been established over the years to recognize academic achievement and excellence.  The faculty in each of these fields has chosen the recipients, with confirmation by the Dean.  Each of these awards represents the faculty's acknowledgement of the recipients' many hours of study, a lively interest in the material, an ability to integrate and synthesize the content of different areas of learning, and an infectious zeal.

The Faculty Award for Excellence in the Study of Theology:
     Jennifer Pavia
The Faculty Award for Excellence in the Study of Christian Ethics:
     Norma Guerra
The Award for Excellence in the Study of the Old Testament:
     Jim Prothero     
The Award for Excellence in the Study of the New Testament:
     Allison Cornell
The Award for Academic Excellence in Liturgical Studies:
     Christopher Montella
The Preaching Award: Allison Cornell
The Award for Highest Academic Achievement in the four-year course of study: Allison Cornell
The Dean's Award for Service to the Bloy House, ETSC community:
    Guy Leemhuis
This year's recipient has graciously and extravagantly given of his time, his talents, and his financial resources to bring foot stomping, hand clapping, drum beating, arm waving joyous music into the life of our community.

The Jonathan R. Davis Scholarship: Guy Leemhuis
Jonathan R. Davis, a long-time trustee of this school, died in February, 2004.  He was a deputy attorney general of the State of California, a former member of the Standing Committee and the Commission on Ministry of the Diocese of Los Angeles, and a faithful communicant in several successive parishes. He read theology avidly and was devoted to service in a number of non-profit organizations.  This scholarship award was established by an anonymous donor to honor his memory and carry forward Mr. Davis' commitment to social justice.  This year's Jonathan R. Davis Memorial Scholarship is awarded in recognition of the recipient's passion for peace and justice and his commitment to serving the legal needs of the disabled, immigrants, and those who might otherwise never be able to afford to get help. 
                                               
The Geoffrey E. Guja Scholarship: Johnna Dominguez
Geoffrey E. Guja, cousin of  faculty member Dr. Ted Fisher, was a New York City firefighter who lost his life in the collapse of the second tower of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Dr. Fisher, along with members of Mr. Guja's family, established a scholarship fund in Geoffrey Guja's memory. This scholarship is awarded to a student who was or is currently a firefighter, a police officer, a member of the United States Armed Forces, or has otherwise shown a special dedication to self-sacrificing public service. This year's award is presented to a member of the community who has worked tirelessly in the last year to confront the issue of hunger through her ministry in the Episcopal Urban Internship Program.

 Looking towards Fall    
Applications for Fall 2014 being accepted
One of the great joys of life in an academic setting is that every ending also brings a new beginning, not just for those who are graduating but also for the classmates, faculty, and staff who will be continuing on in the academic institution.  Even as we are saying goodby to our beloved graduates, here at Bloy House we are busy welcoming those who will be joining us in the fall term.  Bloy House is currently accepting applications for those who are interested in pursuing Diplomas of Theological Studies, Certificates of Diaconal Studies or Certificates of Anglican Studies, or those who are interested in taking classes through our Education for Episcopal Leadership track as a part of their ministerial formation or personal spiritual enrichment.

The Bloy House website has answers to almost any question you might have about studying at Bloy House.  It can be found at www.bloyhouse.org. The calendar of dates for classes for the new academic year is included on the website, along with our full academic catalog and all the information one needs to apply to Bloy House.  Most of the application information is found in the Prospective Student section of the website.  Or if you have questions you are also most welcome to call the Bloy House office.

______________________________

Bloy House Faculty
Bloy House Faculty 2014

The Fall 2014 Class Schedule


Friday afternoon, 2 to 5 p.m.
Wisdom and the Prophets
Dr. Jim Sanders will be teaching this class designed to help students develop a deeper appreciation for the ways in which the wisdom tradition of Judaism help to structure and inform the writings of the major and minor prophets. This course is open to anyone who has done undergraduate, graduate, or EfM work in scripture. For those who have never taken a scripture class before, we recommend you begin your scripture studies with Old Testament I, as this class provides keystone information for further study.

Friday evening, 7 to 10 p.m.
Introduction to Episcopal Worship
Dean Sylvia Sweeney will introduce students in this class to the world of liturgical history and liturgical theology. Students will have the opportunity to learn about the meanings and history of the two primary sacraments of the church, baptism and eucharist. They will also have the opportunity to develop hands-on skills in liturgical design and leading worship as a deacon, a priest, or a lay person.

Religious Education
Dr. Sheryl Kujawa-Holbrook, dean of Claremont School of Theology and professor of Anglican Studies at Bloy House, will once again  teach this class, which is designed to help congregation leaders understand the nature of Christian formation in the age after Sunday School. This class will provide access to both educational theory in faith formation and practical resources and skills needed to encourage lifelong learning and formation in a 21st century context.

Major Christian Doctrines
Dr. Michael McGrath will initiate students in the world of systematic theology through this foundational class that both explores the meaning and nuances of our major Christian doctrines and also teaches seminarians how to begin to think theologically about the world around them.  If you have always wanted to truly understand the beliefs of your faith but had no idea where or how to begin, this class will open the door for those studies.

Saturday Morning 8 to 11 a.m.
Old Testament I
Dr. James Sanders will teach this introductory-level Old Testament class, helping students to understand the sometimes-opaque language of ancient Judaism in a way that allows students to know and understand the history of those scriptures within the context of the times and places in which they were written. If you have always wanted to learn to love the Old Testament, you will not be disappointed by Dr. Sanders.

New Testament I
Dr. Greg Riley will invite students in this introductory New Testament class to explore the Gospels and the Book of Acts, the foundation of Christian scripture and tradition.  The main focus is the historical Jesus and his teachings, and how he was understood and presented by his followers, the authors of the canonical Gospels and Acts.  The course includes readings from wide-ranging sources in the contemporary world of the early Christians.

Media and Ministry
Canon Bob Williams, Canon for Community Relations for the Diocese of Los Angeles, teaches this class, which has been specifically designed to help lay and ordained congregational leaders learn how to communicate and evangelize in a 21st-century media-savvy world. Participants in this class will learn the skills needed to analyze and improve the effectiveness of their websites and other tools for communicating both within the congregation and to the many who are now seeking to find a church home by using electronic media resources.

Anglicanism I
Dr. Sheryl Kujawa-Holbrook   As a living tradition, Anglicanism is undergoing constant change; as a religious culture, Anglicanism is adaptive to local contexts and is expressed in the vernacular. This course is an opportunity for students to take a pilgrimage into Anglican identity, to examine our own Anglican identities, to learn more about what it means to think, and to pray, and to live as Anglicans in a pluralistic world, and then to apply these insights to our formation and our ministries.

Saturday 1-4 p.m.
Greek 1
Dr. Ted Fisher will teach this introduction to Koine Greek for those who have always wanted to read the New Testament in its original language rather than through a translation. Dr. Jonathan Burke will be his teaching assistant. This class will not only offer the basic skills needed to begin to work with Greek language but will also provide ample opportunity for beginning to explore the Gospel according to St. Mark.

Mission and Ministry
Dr. Bob Honeychurch leads this seminar designed to help congregational leaders and those committed to missional outreach through the church understand the nature of mission in the 21st century.  This class explores how our understanding of mission has changed over the centuries and invites individuals to articulate both their own personal mission statements and to become skilled in helping faith communities craft and live into mission plans that effectively and creatively serve the world and spread the Gospel of Christ beyond the church doors. 

  Pilgrimage
Lindisfarne
Exploring the thin places
in search of God
For those of us who have been blessed with the opportunity to stand in holy places and listen for the voices of the saints speaking in our hearts and souls, we know what a gift pilgrimage can be to the whole of our lives. After a several-year hiatus, Bloy House will once again sponsor a spiritual pilgrimage, this time to the "thin places" of ancient Scotland, Lindisfarne and Iona. Led by spiritual director Teresa DiBiase and Bloy House Professor Emeritus Frank Shirbroun, this pilgrimage offers the opportunity for participants to be much more than just tourists and world travelers. For Anglicans there are fewer places more sacred than these coastlands and islands.  Their presence and the voices that developed from their wild beauty continue even to today to help to give Anglican spirituality its depth of beauty, poetry, and passion.  Some of the most profound music of the soul that we know as Anglicans grows out of notes that originate in this place of untamed beauty. If you are interested in learning more about this extraordinary pilgrimage opportunity, contact the Bloy House office at [email protected]. Cost for this 10-day experience from May 25 to June 5, 2015 is $3850.00 (airfare not included).

  Board of Trustees 
Bloy House Trustees
Janis RosebrookBloy House Board of Trustees, 2014

New member elected
to Bloy House board

At its annual meeting on Saturday, May 10 the Bloy House Board of Trustees elected Ms. Janis Rosebrook (pictured at left) as its newest trustee. This amazing group of leaders, led by our own Bishop Bruno as chair of the board and Dr. Steve Nishibayashi as vice-chair, is largely responsible for the rich and growing vision of ministry we witness in the Bloy House community. Made up of clergy and lay leaders from all orders of ministry and representing the many geographic boundaries of Southern California, board members devote time, energy, vision, wisdom, and financial resources to the long term success of the school. They provide both accountability and a commitment to creativity in the way they guide the direction of the school, and we are delighted to add Janis to that team. Janis is a parishioner and Eucharistic minister at St. Mark's, Altadena, and has just concluded a long and successful ministry on the board of Holy Family Services.  At the same meeting the Rev. Carolyn Estrada of St. Matthias, Whittier; Mr. Steve James of St. Clement's, San Clemente; Ms. Carol Mitchell, Esq. of St. Matthew's, Pacific Palisades; and Ms. Rebecca Welch of St. Michael's, Corona del Mar were elected to second terms on the Board of Trustees. Thank you to all these people for their willingness to serve through this vitally important ministry.
  News 
Diana Butler Bass Diana Butler Bass comes to
All Saints, Santa Barbara

Our friends at All Saints, Santa Barbara, have asked us to announce that Diana Butler Bass, esteemed Christian thinker whose latest book is Christianity After Religion: The End of Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening, will be leading a day-long workshop at All Saints on Saturday, June 14, from 8:45 a.m. to 3 p.m. The title of the workshop is "Christianity after Religion: What Does Meaningful Faith Look Like in the World Today?" In this workshop she will explore the nature of Christian faith in our contemporary, largely secular American cultural context. Cost of the workshop is $40 before June 9 and $50 after June 9. This cost includes a catered box lunch. For more details or to make a reservation contact All Saints Church at www.asbts.org.  
 
Save the date: On Saturday, Sept. 27,
CDSP will visit Bloy House

We are delighted to announce that on Saturday, Sept. 27, Dr. Mark Richardson, president of Church Divinity School of the Pacific, and Dr. Ruth Meyers, academic dean of CDSP, will be guest presider and preacher at our Bloy House Community Eucharist. There will also be a lunch time informational meeting about CDSP's new online and summer and winter intensive coursework options. We look forward to formally signing a new Memorandum of Understanding between Bloy House and CDSP at that visit. Some of you who have been in the diocese for decades may remember that when Bloy House was first begun in the 1960s, it was a working relationship with CDSP that made it possible. In the earliest years of Bloy House, CDSP faculty taught at Bloy House on weekends, making it possible for Bloy House seminarians to keep their jobs and homes while attaining a theological education. We are delighted that now, some 55 years later, we are entering into a new era of relationship as both schools seek to serve the needs of 21st-century seminarians in a 21st-century church. For more information about this new relationship, see the Summer 2014 Bloy House News.

Bloy House to welcome Historical Society
of the Episcopal Church

Bloy House is pleased to welcome the board of trustees of the Historical Society of the Episcopal Church for their annual board of trustees meeting on June 20 and 21. For more than a century the Historical Society of the Episcopal Church (HSEC) has been dedicated to preserving and disseminating information about the history of the Episcopal Church. Founded in Philadelphia in 1910 as the Church Historical Society, its members include scholars, writers, teachers, ministers (lay and ordained) and many others who have an interest in the objectives and activities of the Historical Society. We will be honored to have the opportunity to offer some of our wonderful Bloy House hospitality to the society and to give them an opportunity to learn more about the history and mission of Bloy House during their time with us. Dean Sweeney serves as a member of the HSEC board of trustees.

Anglican and Episcopal history journal publishes article on the future of ministry formation
The June issue of Anglican and Episcopal History will focus on the 40th anniversary of the ordination of the Philadelphia Eleven, the group of 11 women first ordained as priests in  the Episcopal Church just prior to the legalization of the ordination of women to the priesthood.  As a part of this issue there will be an article written by Dean Sweeney titled "The Feminization of the Episcopal Priesthood: Changing Models of Church Leadership." This article discusses the ways in which the church has been changed by the presence of women in the priesthood and the ways in which theological education must re-imagine itself to accommodate the new trajectory that has grown out of a more relational, less hierarchical and institutional, and less professionally focused model of what it means to lead the people of God.  This issue will also include fascinating articles by Bishop Barbara Harris, the Rev. Dr. Carter Heyward (one of the Philadelphia Eleven and professor Emeritus of Episcopal Divinity School), and the Rev. Dr. Renee McKenzie-Hayward, an esteemed womanist theologian in the church.

Bloy House receives Buffum bequest
We are honored to announce that Bloy House has been the recipient of a $16,000 bequest from the estate of Dr. Robert Buffum. Dr. Buffum, who died in 2001, left deferred bequests to a number of non-profit and educational institutions, including Bloy House. Born in 1913, Dr. Buffum served for almost twenty years in medical practice in Long Beach with his father.  He was an active member of the Episcopal Church up until his death, and we are honored and grateful to have been named a beneficiary in his will.  His bequest, like all gifts given to Bloy House, will be instrumental in allowing us both to offer scholarships to attend classes and allowing us to keep our tuition rates at a level markedly below those of most graduate level programs.

 

  From the Dean
Dean Sylvia SweeneyA tug at our sleeve

By Sylvia Sweeney

My 24-year-old daughter, Molly, just returned from a conference in Lebanon.  The purpose of the conference was to help young, engaged political scientists from across the world come together to better understand the political, social, and economic challenges facing Lebanon today, challenges directly related to the interminable conflict and strife that so defines the nature of life in the Middle East. While she was there she heard from politicians, bureaucrats, social scientists, and activists all seeking to communicate their particular viewpoints and garner support and understanding for their causes from this room full of handpicked young problem solvers.

Outside the doors of the comfortable western hotel where they met, Molly and her colleagues saw another side of the Middle East crisis.  While she had hoped to see life in a refugee camp while there, what she found was that was that the life of Syrian refugees surrounded them the minute they left the hotel. Thousands upon thousands of primarily women and children were crowded on the streets of Beirut, trying to survive by whatever means they could -- trying to hold on until life will get better and they can either return to their homeland or emigrate to some new home. Somehow in the midst of all the suffering, all the sorrow, all the need, the stark and painful contrast between the wealthy of Beirut and those living near starvation ... somehow this picture of life in the Middle East also had to become part of the equation for these young scholars as well. All of the depths of contemporary western political theory could not, in truth, teach the lessons that could be learned by simply walking out into life on the streets. Amid this sea of suffering, one child stood out for Molly; a little girl about nine years old with a long dark braid down her back who tugged at Molly's sleeve and said simply "I am from Syria."

I am reminded in this story of the woman with the hemorrhage who touched Jesus' cloak. In a sea full of human suffering with so many asking for help, with so many in need, more need than even he had the capacity to meet, he felt her touch. He was compelled to stop and see her face, to find one particular face in a sea of faces needing to be seen. Somehow someone also often tugs at our sleeves, helping us to break through our own impotence, helping us to claim our own humanity and see and know someone as we both stand present to one another in the depths of our humanness.

There is a homeless man with a sign I pass every day on my way to work. He often wears a red football jersey and I noticed when I passed him one day recently that he had on a brand new, spotlessly clean pair of red canvas shoes, perfectly matched to his jersey. I wondered when I saw them if he'd bought them for himself with the gifts given him by strangers, or if someone with eyes to see saw a need in his life and responded in a way that was ingeniously wise, allowing this man to express himself with dignity and self-possession.

In a world filled with suffering, it is easy to give up in defeat.  It is nearly impossible to keep caring when we are confronted with an ocean of despair. But something about this particular woman touched Jesus in a way that forced him to respond -- not automatically or mechanically or even philosophically, but from the heart. Human to human. Person to person. Face to face. That day, assuredly, he could not respond to all who begged for his help, but he could respond to this one woman, person to person, face to face.  
We, too, are surrounded by a sea of need. The poor, the hungry, the homeless, the unemployed. Those who suffer from inadequate educational opportunities, those who live in the midst of violent homes and communities, those who live with addictions. Hungry children, exhausted parents working multiple jobs just to eat.  Immigrants in need of welcome. Elders in need of companionship. Victims of war and famine and disaster. We are surrounded by need, and the temptation is to turn away and say, "The problems are too great. I can't fix everything." But perhaps today Christ is not asking you to fix everything ... perhaps today Christ is asking you to pay attention, pay attention to that tiny tug at your sleeve, and reach out to one child with a long brown braid down her back, or an old woman with a hemorrhage, or a homeless man in need of new shoes and a cold drink.

 Your support is appreciated 
Financial contributions to support the work of Bloy House are appreciated year-round. Thank you for your consideration and generosity. Gifts may be mailed to Bloy House, the Episcopal Theological School at Claremont, 1325 N. College Avenue, Claremont, CA 91711.
In this issue: Please scroll down for more on upcoming courses and student and faculty activities.

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  Reminders
Save the date:
Bishop's Guild Garden Party is Oct. 4
The Bishop's Guild of the Diocese of Los Angeles will celebrate its 100th year of ministry at a Centennial Garden Party on Saturday, Oct. 4, 2 - 4 p.m. at the home of Bishop J. Jon Bruno and Mary Bruno, 3435 E. California Blvd, Pasadena 91107. As part of the centennial celebration, the Bishop's Guild is looking for stories from clergy who were assisted by the scholarship program, or from congregations that assisted seminarians. Let the Bishop's Guild know about the experience; contact Donna Keller, president, at [email protected] or 951.545.4218.

 Amazon
A new and easy way to support Bloy House, ETSC
Support Bloy House by shopping at Amazon!  It is very easy.  Just go through this link, or go through Amazon smile. Log in using your existing Amazon account and then search "The Episcopal Theological School at Claremont" as your charity of choice.  Bloy House gets 5% of all proceeds!

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