"Come with me for the journey is long." What a great song. The whole incoming class sang it during our first morning prayer session of orientation. The seminary music director broke us up into two and then four sections of the chapel. I never thought such a large group of strangers could sound so amazing. The director of music is nothing short of a genius! And, he's a very nice guy. We also sang some other selections with exceptional relevance to the beginning of our new journey. One could feel God's presence among us!
Passing the peace. This is something that, as Christians, we may have gotten so used to that we're kinda numb. Here at PTS though, we take it at what it really is--sharing the peace of Christ with each other and with the whole kingdom. One of my classmates actually showed us how to sign it (in ASL). It's really neat.
Bumping Icebergs. This was one of the funnier memories from Orientation. We were all required to go to a multicultural diversity lecture, which was a pretty good idea. It was just funny how they described possible conflict within such a diverse community. They used an analogy of an iceberg. One could only see a certain percentage of an iceberg above water (a very small percentage with respect to the whole), and then there is a large portion hidden beneath the surface. The message was that it is rarely the surface things that get us into conflict with one another; it is the things hiding beneath the surface of our personalities that clash--the core values and beliefs. They referred to this as, "bumping icebergs." It was a very informative lecture, but now every time some people have a difference of opinion on the simplest thing, we cite the "bumping icebergs" idea.
First world problems. Many students here at the seminary run into times of trouble. Some of these instances are serious while others are minor that just seem to ruin your day because of built up tension or stress. There is a website that many PTS students check out and even post on just to put things into perspectives. Our "problems" aren't really problems at all--at least relative to the rest of the world. It keeps us grateful and thankful. Check it out: http://www.reddit.com/r/firstworldproblems/
EXTREME rock-paper-scissors. I think this may be helpful if you are a youth pastor/leader. It is a lot of fun. Basically we had a room full of about 150 seminarians who had just spent the previous few days jamming our heads with information about the school and the like. And with all these wonderful people we played an extreme version of rock paper scissors. What you do is simply have everyone pair up. Each pair plays rock paper scissors. The winner then finds another winner to play against. The loser then cheers for the one who had defeated them. Then when the two winners are playing, the loser of that pair brings all of their followers along behind the winner of the second game and so on. This continues until there are two people remaining and a room full of cheering seminarians (or youth)--half cheering for each of the two finalists!
Quieting a crowd. This last one is something that was probably overlooked by many, but it struck me as something simple that may be useful in ministry. We were in a auditorium with about 150-200 people--all of them involved in their own conversations. The lecturer was ready to begin, but had no really graceful way of silencing the crowd without yelling. So what did he do? He began singing. He didn't just sing any old song, though. He sang Amazing Grace. The people in the front were encouraged to join him until the entire room was singing the song. After only the first verse, the lecturer stopped singing and now had a quiet room to begin his discussion. It was very clever.
As for week two: bring it on. It should be a lot of fun, and I definitely look forward to the new experiences and adventures.
Peace. =)
No comments:
Post a Comment