SeedTRINITY SCHOOL& FORHarvest MINISTRY SPRING/SUMMER 2019 Building a Community of Hope Through Faith pg. 6 Critical Healing the Soul Summer Connections pg. 9 InterTerm 2019 pg. 8 pg. 14 IN THIS ISSUE Seed & Harvest VOLUME 45 | NUMBER 1 3 From the Dean and President PRODUCTION STAFF [email protected] 4 Deans’ Corner Executive Editor 5 Healing a Heart Through Hope The Very Rev. Dr. Henry L. Thompson III 6 Building a Community of Hope Through Faith [email protected] General Editor 8 Critical Connections Ms. Mary Lou Harju 9 Healing the Soul [email protected] 10 Hope on the Border Editing Ms. Deanna Hall 12 Trinity News Layout and Design 14 Summer InterTerm 2019 Ms. Alexandra Morra 18 Alumni News SOLI DEO GLORIA 20 From Our Bookshelf 22 Preaching as a Message of Hope 24 Online Degree is a Victory of Faith, Perseverance, and God’s Will 25 Translating the Gospel for the Body of Christ 26 Why Does Trinity Need Donations? Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from Dean and President The Very Rev. Dr. Henry L. Thompson III The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright [email protected] © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Academic Dean Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Dr. Erika Moore [email protected] Special thanks to The Rev. Christopher Klukas and The Rev. Dean of Administration Dn. Geoffrey Mackey for editing assistance on this issue. Ms. Karen Getz [email protected] Dean of Advancement and Church Relations The Rev. Aidan Smith [email protected] MISSION STATEMENT Trinity School for Ministry is an evangelical seminary in the Dean of Students and Director of Alumni Relations Anglican tradition. In this fractured world, we desire to be a The Rev. Dn. Geoffrey Mackey global center for Christian formation, producing outstanding [email protected] leaders who can plant, renew, and grow churches that make disciples of Jesus Christ. Seed & Harvest is published biannually by Trinity School for Ministry, www.tsm.edu. Free subscriptions are avail- able through Trinity’s Development Office. Quantity To this end we are forming Christian leaders for mission. orders of Seed & Harvest are usually available upon re- quest. Reprint permission: Where copyright is stated, you must contact the copyright holder. In most cases, Trini- ty will grant permission to reprint items published here provided that they are reprinted in their entirety, credit is given to the author and to Seed & Harvest, Trinity’s web address and telephone number are included, and a copy of your publication is sent to Mary Lou Harju at Trinity. All contents ©2019. 2 SEED & HARVEST From the Dean and President “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.” (Rom 15:13) Dear Trinity Family, of my own feeble wit and strength could save me from my enemies.’ Finally, desperate and nearly defeated, Churchill Recently one of my grand- turned for hope and help to the only source he had left: his daughters was preparing God.” (220) for surgery when one of the medical team informed her Hope is hard to manifest in our lives because the opposition that she has a genetic marker we face is real and our fears clamor to overwhelm and para- for a low clotting factor in her lyze us. When the prophet Jeremiah spoke to God’s people, blood. While the doctors reas- he did not minimize what they faced but instead described sured us that we need not be the suffering awaiting them in great detail. His gloomy as- unduly alarmed, it got me thinking about markers, and even sessments became known as jeremiads, and yet his promises spiritual markers. Are there characteristics that predispose of hope and of a new heart for the people (see chapters 29 one to unbelief? and 31 especially) gave hope that was substantial. Ultimate- ly, he invited the people of God to hope for the future if they In my almost forty years as an ordained clergyman, and humbled themselves before God and embraced his promise forty-eight years as an intentional follower of Christ, I to them. would say there is one definite marker: the absence of hope. Hope is listed as one the three greatest virtues at the end of Trinity School for Ministry is a seminary that recruits and 1 Corinthians 13:13 when the apostle says “So now faith, trains leaders who will bring real and substantial hope to hope and love abide….” We frequently hear sermons on love a world that is discouraged due to corrupt moral leaders, as the greatest virtue. Likewise, we hear many instructive greedy politicians, and confused spiritual leaders. When sermons and talks on faith. But in my experience, we re- many, even in the Church herself, are inclined to yield to ceive far less instruction, either devotionally or academical- the spirit of cynicism, critical judgements of others, and ly, on the topic of hope. Even as I began writing this letter, condemnation of others through a culture of ad hominem I looked at five or six commentaries on the verse above. I attacks, Trinity School for Ministry is forming leaders who found each one shockingly superficial and unhelpful. There sustain life by calling others to the hope of life in the God of is a possible reason for this, and I believe the apostle Paul hope. This edition of Seed & Harvest is pointing to how our understood the complexity. First, hope is both a means and alumni, faculty, staff, donors and students are bringing sub- a destination. Second, it is possibly the hardest virtue to stantial hope to a world and a church that sorely needs it. As embrace and manifest in our lives. Third, it is arguably the we are ever wont to do, we invite you to join us in praying quality above all others that demands humility of spirit. for and lifting up leaders who bring the hope of Jesus Christ to the world. It is a means as well as a destination in the sense that one must affirm that there is hope in order to embrace hope In Christ, the Hope of the World, as a means for living through the pain and reality of life itself. Thus, the apostle Paul said that we must first trust in the God of hope in order to yield ourselves to the work of the Holy Spirit that makes us hopeful. Winston Churchill described his fellow prisoners and himself when they were imprisoned in the Staats Model School in Pretoria during the Boer War: “In the end, if there is no hope that a prisoner will lose his shackles, he may lose his mind.” (The Hero of the Republic, 187). When he escaped he ran headlong into his own fears: “‘I realized with awful force that no exercise The Very Rev. Dr. Henry L. Thompson III Dean and President SPRING/SUMMER 2019 3 DEANS’ CORNER Hope by The Rev. Dn. Geoffrey Mackey Dean of Students and Director of Alumni Relations ne of the great joys of being on staff at Trinity But the eyes of faith can see the ever present truth: is accompanying students for two or three years Oas they prepare for their future ministries. I have Things which were cast down are being raised up, had the privilege of watching 12 graduating classes walk and things which had grown old are being made across the front of the nave to receive diplomas. Each new, and … all things are being brought to their year, it is with a sense of joy, pride, and yes, hope, that we perfection by him through whom all things were watch another group of women and men celebrate their made….2 accomplishments and commence their new ministries. Hope for the future of our churches. Hope for the world. So we do have hope in the ministries of our students. As we hear from our alumni, we learn over and over again Yet, as we look around, neither the world nor the church of the powerful and moving ways that God is changing appear to be places of hope. This was brought into our lives, healing diseases of body and mind, reconciling own backyard last October as a hate-filled gunman killed enemies, and granting his life-giving Spirit to those who 11 and injured seven at the historic Tree of Life Synagogue were formerly dead in their trespasses. But our hope in Pittsburgh. Or when, in December, an altercation at is not merely in the character of our students or the an Ambridge gas station left two dead. Or when we learn excellence of our professors. Rather, it is in the call of God that our brothers and sisters in Christ—our dear friends— to take part in his work in this world, the “ministry of suffer persecution and martyrdom around the world at the reconciliation” (2 Cor. 5:18) that he has given us. And that hands of those who set themselves against our Lord and is far greater than any of us can conceive. What a great his gospel. privilege to be fellow workers in God’s harvest! For we know that it is God himself who is working out his will Nor does the church seem to fare any better. What among and through us for his own good end: denomination has been immune to scandal? What parish has not struggled with dissention? What pastor has not Then shall the wolf dwell with the lamb, struggled with doubt? What ministry has not struggled nor shall the fierce devour the small; to make ends meet? And as Stone’s powerful hymn puts as beasts and cattle calmly graze, it, the church is “by schisms rent asunder, by heresies a little child shall lead them all.