“If it’s so easy, let’s see you do it” will be an eminently fair response to this post, offering as it does a suggestion for how to give speeches or preach sermons at college commencement or baccalaureate exercises from someone who’s done neither. Here goes… It’s been a commencement-filled weekend for me: my own university’s … More Sent Out to Serve, and Suffer
I doubt he’d remember, but I first met G.W. Carlson in March 2002. Neither of us could have guessed that ten years later I’d be helping to make this movie about him: Back to March 2002… I had just turned in my dissertation and was in town for my brother’s wedding. We grew up in … More Commencement: A Tribute to G.W. Carlson
Last week I was pleasantly surprised to receive the following query from one of our admissions counselors at Bethel: she had been talking to a prospective student who wondered which major would be most beneficial in preparing someone to fight sex slavery, estimated to be the second largest criminal enterprise in the world today (after … More History and Social Justice
Every one of the now nine years I’ve taught at Bethel University, I’ve led a section of our department’s capstone course, HIS499 Senior Seminar. In it, our majors conduct a significant project of original historical research on any topic of their choice, which leaves me to act more as facilitator and editor than lecturer. We … More Bethel’s History Senior Seminar Presents…
For a college professor/baseball fan like myself, this news was hard to hear: As of Wednesday morning, 917 players had appeared in at least one big-league game this season, according to STATS LLC. Of that group, only 39 — or 4.3 percent — were confirmed by their teams of MLB as having obtained four-year college … More The Thinking Man’s Game?
I don’t even know how to begin to explain this: Okay – first, I’m co-coordinator of GES130 Christianity and Western Culture (CWC), a course on Western Civilization, church history, philosophy, and theology that about two-thirds of Bethel students take in their first year. In addition to a team of 8-10 professors, the course is taught … More My MTV Unplugged Moment
Today I’ll come back to my series on Confessing History: Explorations in Christian Faith and the Historian’s Vocation, eds. John Fea, Jay Green, and Eric Miller (University of Notre Dame Press). I should reiterate that I read the book alongside my students in HIS499 Senior Seminar, the capstone course for History majors at Bethel University. … More Confessing History: Theory and Method
Last night my family hosted the students in Bethel’s capstone course for History majors. They turned in their research papers, shared a meal, tolerated my two-year old twins showing off all their tricks, and had one last seminar discussion together: on vocation. Since this course is almost entirely composed of students about to graduate, there’s … More Gladness, Need, and Calling: Frederick Buechner on Vocation
It’s a busy time of year, but it was good to get away and spend the weekend at Covenant Pines, two hours north of the Twin Cities, where my church holds an annual “family camp.” I was invited to teach three hour-long sessions with the adults while their kids were off doing Bible study, crafts, … More Covenant Pines and the Desert Road
There are times when I weary of having to defend the value of a liberal arts education — to prospective students and their parents, to history majors about to graduate and dreading the prospect of working at Starbucks, and perhaps even to administrators and trustees (not yet ours, thank God). But fortunately the case is … More “Increasing the Value of a Liberal Education”
The Pietist Schoolman 