November 2015
Bloy House News
The Episcopal Theological School at Claremont
Greetings!

Greetings from Bloy House, the Episcopal Theological School at Claremont, where we are nearing the end of our Fall 2015 session. 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

 News
Education for Episcopal Leadership:
Seminary is for everyone!


By Sylvia Sweeney

Christianity is not a spectator sport. To live the Christian life in all its richness, depth and breadth, Christians must make a commitment to informed disciplines that lead to life-long spiritual growth.   They must learn and grow in settings that will strengthen their faith and prepare them for the vital ministries that Christ has called each of us to. Until we have made that kind of commitment in our lives we can never quite know what it means to be in the game as a Christian rather than simply sitting on the sidelines. There are many ways to develop one's faith, and those of us in the Diocese of Los Angeles have the opportunity to learn, stretch, and grow through numerous means. Education for Ministry has been an exceptional tool of the church in forming mature Christian persons. Organizations like Stillpoint provide outstanding resources for helping people develop their interior lives and learn invaluable skills in meditation and contemplation. For decades many of us have participated in congregational Bible studies, prayer groups, and adult formation forums that have challenged us to keep growing in our faith. But sometimes the next step in our spiritual maturation requires us to engage with highly trained experts in their particular fields who can help us move to a deeper level of engagement with scripture, with our liturgical tradition, with theology, and even with the nuts and bolts of best practices in particular ministries. Sometimes the best place for lay persons and already ordained clergy to keep learning is at a seminary. We are blessed to have in our diocese an outstanding seminary offering top-drawer theological education not just to those preparing for ordained ministry, but to all who have a passion for faith based learning. Bloy House has committed itself to the mission of forming ministers of the church, a few of whom will be ordained and many of whom have no need of ordination in order to engage in vibrant, passionate, transformative ministry in our churches and in our communities.
Truthfully, it's a campaign I have been championing since I was in doctoral studies. Seminary is not and should not be just for clergy. It should not be so remote, so expensive, or so erudite that only an elite few can afford to attend. A vital 21st century seminary needs to be focused around God's mission to the world and finding every way possible to use the expansive resources of its faculty and institution to form as many people as possible for participation in that mission. To that end, much of the energy of Bloy House in this academic year is going to providing opportunities for lay persons to further develop their ministries and clergy to acquire new skills for ministry. Below is a list of the special courses and programs that are a part of this year's offerings especially designed for our not-for-credit Education for Episcopal Leadership track at Bloy House. In addition, all for-credit classes at Bloy House are open to EEL auditors with the permission of the dean and completion of the required prerequisites. Onsite classes are $400 and need-based scholarship help is available by contacting the dean. To register, fill out the Education for Episcopal Leadership admissions application, found on our website, www.bloyhouse.org, and contact [email protected] to reserve a seat in the class.

GREEK
For those who are eager to move their own personal scripture study to another level, this class will offer students the opportunity to develop a basic facility with the Koin� Greek of the New Testament. The class will offer hands-on learning built around the Gospel according to St. Mark, inviting learners into the complex, textured, poetic world of the New Testament. This class is taught from 1 to 4 this spring on Bloy House teaching Saturdays. See www.bloyhouse.org for the full semester schedule.
 
MEDIA AND MINISTRY
There are few ministries within the church with as much potential to change the world as electronic communication ministries. If your church wants to reach out to the electronic generations of our society. If you want to have a platform for sharing courses, sermons, prayer needs, and a host of other ministries, come be a part of a class designed to give you the keys to unlock the potential within your church's electronic footprint. Learn how to touch a world that is every day more digitally focused. Learn how to take the church to the far and away most frequented locale for people who are asking questions and seeking answers. If your church has something to say about love, friendship, hope, and resurrection, learn how to say it in a place where it will be heard! This class is taught from 1 to 4 p.m. this spring on Bloy House teaching Saturdays. See www.bloyhouse.org for the full semester schedule.

JESUS, JUDAISM, AND CHRISTIANITY
Theologically, what is it that links us to the Jewish part of our heritage? What was it about Jesus' Jewish background that gave him the vision for salvation that we so cherish? What can we learn from Jewish theology? Is our Christian theology in competition with Judaism or a complement to it? Where does antisemitism come from? Is the New Testament anti-semitic? Come study with one of the finest systematic theology professors in the country as Dr. Michael McGrath helps students ponder these and other important questions that can help us learn how to live with integrity and mutual respect in an interfaith society. This class is taught from 8 to 11 a.m. this spring on Bloy House teaching Saturdays. See www.bloyhouse.org for the full semester schedule.

FRESH START FOR LAY LEADERS
Lay leaders in the church often bear unique responsibility for the support and maintenance of churches during both times of crisis and times of transition. And yet, there are few places where lay leaders can go to receive the kind of education and training that they need for these important roles. Fresh Start for Lay Leaders is quite possibly the most effective program for lay leadership formation for organizational leadership roles that the church currently has available. Offering training in systems theory, in conflict management, in developing effective visioning processes, in conducting meetings, and in helping to prevent ministry burnout, this is a class that will greatly benefit every vestry member in every church. Meeting from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. in spring semester, Fresh Start will offer lay leaders the opportunity to learn these important skills in a setting that also allows them to participate in the worship and fellowship life of Bloy House. Cost of the program is $200, which includes Saturday lunches.

INTRODUCTION TO LAY PREACHING
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 4:30 - 6 p.m.
While preaching is historically viewed as a ministry of the ordained, there are a number of pastoral settings in which having a cadre of lay preachers can be a great resource to a congregation and to its outreach ministries. This workshop is the first in a three part series designed to help lay leaders learn basic approaches to reflecting on the scriptures from the role of preacher, designing and creating a sermon, and sermon delivery. This 90-minute session will focus on preparing to write a sermon. Cost is $15. To register, email to [email protected]

COMING IN LENT  - BLOY HOUSE ACADEMY:
THE FIRST BLOY HOUSE ONLINE CLASSES
Bloy House is well into its process of setting up Bloy House Academy, which will be the arm of Bloy House offering affordable online classes that can be taken from home on your own schedule. The first classes will be available beginning Ash Wednesday. Read the December and January Bloy House News for more details and to learn how to register.

 Celtic Pilgrimage
Celtic Pilgrimage Pilgrimage to Scotland
set for Sept. 11 - 23, 2016

Next fall Dr. Frank Shirbroun and Ms. Teresa De Biase will once again lead a 12-day pilgrimage to Iona, Lindisfarne and other parts of Scotland to explore thin places, to walk in the steps of saints, and to drink in the beauty and richness of our Anglican heritage.  Those who have participated in this pilgrimage have found it to be a deeply moving, enriching, and life changing experience.  Cost of the pilgrimage is $3,850 + airfare.  Meals and housing have been prearranged at comfortable inspiring locales.  See our December Bloy House News for deadlines for applying for this profoundly meaningful pilgrimage opportunity led by two inspirational Christian scholars and mentors.

 Diocesan Convention 
Look for us at Diocesan Convention
This year there will once again be many people walking around convention with Bloy House buttons on to show their support for our seminary.  We will also once again have a booth where one can learn about Bloy House, about specific classes and programs being offered, and about how our partnerships with other seminaries work.  And of course we will also have our traditional Bloy House M&Ms on the tables of convention!  If you are attending this important diocesan event, please drop by the booth and introduce yourself and pick up a Bloy House pin to wear while you're there!

  Save the Date
Applications open for Spring semester admission
For any individuals interested in attending Bloy House this spring in the M.Div, Diaconal Studies, Certificate of Anglican Studies, or Education for Episcopal Leadership track, the deadline for admission is fast approaching.  The application process should be begun by December 12 in order to insure admission in time for the spring semester.  Those wishing to apply should go to the prospective student section of the Bloy House website and download an application www.bloyhouse.org.  Those seeking to take classes for credit should apply through the long application version.  Those interested in taking not-for-credit course work can use the abbreviated Education for Episcopal Leadership Form. For students who have formerly been admitted to the EEL track, there is no need to reapply, but you must contact the office to update your information and to arrange to receive a registration form. The academic calendar for spring semester is posted on our website, and the course offerings for this spring along with registration forms should be requested at [email protected].  

  From the Dean
Sylvia Sweeney
Reading, marking,
learning and
digesting scripture  

By Sylvia Sweeney

A sermon preached on November 15 in the Diocese of San Diego.  

"Blessed Lord, who caused all Holy Scriptures to be written for our learning:  Grant us so to hear, read, mark, learn and inwardly digest them."

When I hear this collect I find myself saying to God.  What?  You want all that from me? This is like a home improvement project when all I wanted to do was replace the kitchen sink, and the next thing you know you're committed to a $20,000 kitchen remodel, a new breakfast nook, and six new appliances for your house.  
This is like ... this is like  ... if you try to give a moose a muffin!  Do you know that children's story?  If you give a moose a muffin he will want some jam to go with it and when he's finished eating it he'll want another and another and then he'll want you to make more and then he'll need to borrow a sweater to wear to the store and before he's done your whole house will be in shambles, you'll have a giant puppet mural in your living room, and your mom will be wondering what happened to her good white sheets!  Sometimes God seems to be a moose who wants a muffin from us!

Scripture - it is a beautiful gift for our lives and as Thomas Cranmer made clear in this 16th century collect, it is a complex gift. To fully receive it, asks much of us.  Cranmer wrote this prayer for the 1549 Prayer Book because he wanted to impress upon Anglicans of the Reformation era that Christianity is not a passive spectator sport.
As you all know, it is not enough to come to church and be fed and entertained by the people who stand up front, to let them do all the work on your behalf as was so much the case in the time at the cusp of the Reformation. No, if one is to truly live the Christian life as God has intended, one will roll up one's sleeves and get ready to work. Not to earn our salvation but so that, in time, through intention and diligence, we can come just a little closer to truly grasping and giving thanks for all that God has already done and is doing for us.

Scripture, when we hear, read, mark, learn and inwardly digest it compels us to a particular way of living, of praying, of loving.  Our indwelling within it has the power over and over again to change our world, our churches, our homes, and our lives. Scripture can give us a vision for the world that is greater than what we can see in the present.  Just as it could inspire Hannah to see with new eyes, and in turn Hannah would inspire Mary, so we too when our lives are steeped in scripture can find ourselves seeing with a vision and a wisdom beyond our current horizon.

Theological education in all its forms is about allowing this kind of transformation to take place within us, not just allowing it but pursuing this kind of transformation.  And despite what has sadly so often been communicated to lay people since the age of Thomas Cranmer, theological education in all its forms is not just for those preparing to be priests.  It is a necessity for all Christians in order to live out our Christian callings. 

Knowledge is power. Spiritual knowledge gives us the power to transform and be transformed.  But allowing that transformation to happen is demanding work.  We can't as is already clear to Cranmer and as is evidenced in this 350 year old prayer, we can't just take what we see at face value.  We can't be na�ve and myopic in relation to scripture.  We must hear it and read it and decipher it and find its meaning for our day and our time. We must meditate on it, dissect it, dance with it, and allow it to enter us in ways that everyday words rarely do.  We must inwardly digest it - break it apart to find its deepest kernels of truth and like that moose who wants a muffin, you cannot stop there.

To read scripture as Cranmer read it and implored Christians to read it inevitably then opens us up to theological reflection, to moral theology, to issues of understanding that call into question all that it means to be church.  It asks us to examine anew what it means to lead and what it means to serve. It invites us into an ever new way of being in the world.

This kind of Anglican reading of scripture will inevitably lead us to a new way of living and a new locus of authority for our lives.  To read thoughtfully pulls us deeper into the tradition and asks us to stretch our reasoning to make sense of scripture in our own day. 

A hundred years after Cranmer penned this prayer that teaches us how to read scripture, the great Anglican theologian Richard Hooker will write that if we are to understand the authority of scripture in our lives, we must see it as one leg of a three-legged stool.  We must understand that our lives lived in faith are shaped by scripture, by reason which informs our read of scripture and of the world around us, and by tradition which helps us to see our own revelations within the context of the historical church's revelations regarding these same questions.

Today's Gospel read in this light makes clear that we cannot live our lives in some na�ve belief that suffering will never touch us. Jesus looks at the world around him through the eyes with which scripture has given him to see.  Sometimes it will seem as if the world around us is collapsing. Calamities will come. Injustices will occur.  Life will not bring us what we hoped for or even what we believe we deserve.

But Christ is also clear that suffering is never the end of the story.  Not disappointment, not injustice, not calamity.  New life comes.  This too is a promise of scripture.  Past our current suffering, over and over again there is the promise of new life, new possibility, new hope, new visions and new dreams. 

As we stand here at the edge of one liturgical year looking back over what has been and looking forward to the coming of Christ, let us do so with knowledge, with courage and with hope - knowing as Hannah did that God will guard the feet of the faithful and the lowly will be raised up to make them sit with princes.  And knowing that as Christ has promised us in scripture, the birth pangs of this day will lead to new life, new hope, new beginnings. Amen.

  Book talk with the dean 
Radical Sending cover Radical Sending:
Go to Love and Serve

By Demi Prentiss and J. Fletcher Lowe
Morehouse Publishing

I've just read a book I wish every Episcopalian in the church would read.  Radical Sending: Go to Love and Serve is a newly published companion book to Stephanie Spellers' Radical Welcome.  Demi Prentiss and Fletcher Lowe are two Episcopal leaders who have spent decades of their lives learning about, teaching about, and living out a model of Christian faith they describe as "Radical Sending."  It is not enough, they say, to make our congregations more welcoming to the stranger.  It is not enough to add outreach to the laundry list of ministries Christians participate in within their churches.  What is truly called for is the recognition that all Christians are called to spend our entire lives beyond Sunday morning in a complete radical commitment to ministry, ministry lived out in whatever setting our lives are lived.  Who we are and what we do in our homes, our work, our neighborhoods says more about the efficacy of our faith proclamations than anything else we might assert.  What Prentiss and Lowe call the Episcopal Church to do is to reinvent itself in a full and whole hearted embrace of our baptismal identity, in a way of being church that impacts every moment of our lives in every setting. 

This books both offers us a vision for who and what the church can be in the 21st century and how to get there. Sometimes the focus is theological.  In other chapters there are nuts and bolts actions that churches can take to become radical sending churches filled with radical sent Christians.  Radical Sending is divided into chapters with discussion questions at the end of the chapter so that individuals and groups can move from theory to their own daily life.  Daily life in faith is precisely what this book is about, and the authors build a compelling argument for why this vision of radical sending is so critical to a post-Christendom church.  Along the way we hear from most of the central voices of the last four decades who have been championing this vision of the church; wise thinkers like Fredrica Thompsett, Diana Butler Bass, Dwight Tschiele, David Bosch, Tom Ray, Wayne Schwab, and a host of other voices, are quoted in the process of articulating this ancient and new way of being church.  To follow the path of the footnotes provided could lead congregations and all those interested in missional models for the church into rich and deep advanced study of what it means to be a Christian in this century.  Radical Sending would make an outstanding Lenten resource for congregations across the church, opening up new insights about ministry, mission, work, family, and daily life.  I heartily commend it to you all.

 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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An 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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Bloy Bling
Just a reminder that Bloy House polo shirts (in Bloy House Blue with the Bloy House seal) and Bloy House coffee mugs are still available through the Bloy House office. Cost of the polo shirts is $26 and mugs are $10. Bloy House tippet seals are available through the office for $20.

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