 Andy Brubaker-Katler is Associate Professor of Christian Formation and Culture at AMBS. He received bachelor's degrees from Canadian Mennonite Bible College and the University of Waterloo, a master's degree from the University of St. Michael's College at the University of Toronto, and his PhD from Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary in Chicago. Before coming to AMBS in 2003, he was Minister of Youth Ministries for Mennonite Church Eastern Canada, and he's also served as a congregational pastor. At AMBS, he began our Explore Program that encourages youth to explore different forms of Christian ministry. He's also the Director of the Center for Faith, Formation and Culture. We'll hear a bit about those different roles during our time today. Andy's going to start by answering several questions I have prepared for him, and after that we'll have time for your questions and comments. And again, remember you can submit those at any time using the Q&A feature. Thank you, Andy, for joining us today. What would you like to tell us about yourself as an introduction? Andy Brubaker-Well, one thing is that I am really happy today. The sun set in the west last night and it rose in the east this morning and in between the Canadian women's hockey team, the American women's hockey team. So some things are still in order in the cosmos and that feels good. Maybe in addition to the introduction that Janine offered, I could add that I have two young adult daughters, both of whom are living in Ontario right now. That might change soon, but for now they're there. And my wife teaches here in Elkhart County at a school between Elkhart and the ocean, she teaches third grade at a public school. So our whole family lives are taken up with education right now at this point. And that's generally a very good thing. Thank you, Andy. Can you tell us a story about a time when you experienced God in a powerful way? I don't know if I can distill it to one story. There are two contexts where I regularly experience God powerfully. One is in nature and especially when I'm canoeing and I have lots of experiences of encountering God on rivers in mid and north Michigan and Algonquin Park in Ontario. Especially in the evenings when there are loons calling from lake to lake, I find God to be very present then. Another way that I encounter God is by witnessing kind of the confluence of energy and attention that happens when young people hear, discover and respond to a call in their lives and especially a call to serve God in some ways. So if there was a story I'd like to tell, it would be a story of a young woman who participated in the Explore program in one of its early years. She came from a relatively conservative Menai congregation and her father was pretty convinced that women were not called to ministry but she personally felt this call that this was something she at least needed to explore. And at a Mennonite convention she was invited to help participate in an anointing service. And her father was also at that convention and he had to choose, was he going to go and stand in the line and be anointed by his daughter or was he going to go and stand in another line where there was a man doing the anointing. And he chose to stand in the line and be anointed by his daughter. Even though he didn't quite believe that women were called to ministry, he believed in his daughter and he trusted her. And that story still kind of brings a welling up of emotions for me because she went on then to study and become a pastor in Florida and has continued to do I think great work for the church. She's not pastoring in a Mennonite church right now. She's at a Methodist church, but I think this is just a wonderful example of how God uses Hannah's and Alcana's. Parents uses Eli's and Elizabeth's church leaders who call and foster young people. And God continues to call Samuel's and Samantha's to serve God in ministry, formally in the church and in lots of other ways. Thank you. Those are great stories. You've been at AMBS a little longer than many of our current teaching faculty. I'm wondering if you can tell us what first attracted you to be part of the AMBS community and maybe you want to add what keeps you excited about being here. Sure. I very clearly remember the moment that I first thought about coming to AMBS to work here. I was at a youth ministry council meeting in Winnipeg, Manitoba and a particularly cold April day in Manitoba. And Jeanine, sorry, Jewel, Ginrich Longnecker was there and passed around a job description for a position that was opening up at the seminary to work with this new youth program called Explore and to do some teaching. And I looked at that and I thought, oh my goodness, I could not have written a better job description for myself if I had tried. So I was so excited I went back to Ontario and as soon as my wife picked me up at the airport with our two very young daughters at that point, I told her about this opportunity and apparently in hindsight after abandoning your family for six days, this is not a good time to propose to your wife that you moved to the United States when you're very happily settled and working in southern Ontario. But that's what I did because I did not have the benefit of hindsight. And she thought for a moment and she said, there is not an ice cubes chance in hell we are moving to the US. And that was it. I didn't think about it for a very long time until somebody sent me a letter saying, hey, you should. You should think about this. And my wife was pretty convinced I had put somebody up to this. We knew who the letter was coming from. Anyway, long story short, we ended up here in Elkhart. We've been here for for 18 years. So I think I was drawn to the seminary originally because of the youth program. This is not something that seminaries are known for doing is programming with youth. And that really excited me. There's the opportunity to get a PhD, which I had wanted to do and to teach. And I still believe my call first and foremost has been to serving the church, the Mennonite Church in Canada and the US. And this just seemed to be a good kind of continuation of that call in other context for doing it. What do I enjoy about being here and why do I stay? I'm just really drawn to the way as a seminary we are not perfect at but intentional about integrating spirituality and academics and discipleship and leadership development. All through community life, both the on campus community and the community that's created for the connect students, especially when we meet together online or when students are all here together for our intensive weeks. And I'm still part of the seminary because I really believe MBS is serving my church USA and Mennonite Church Canada as well as Mennonite Church is all across the globe. I believe we are serving them well and I look forward to continue to be to being part of that. Andy, you have a lot of different roles at MBS. So I'd like you to take some time to talk about the different things that you do. So if you'd start by describing the courses that you're teaching this year, both in the fall and now in the semester. And then if you would talk about some of your administrative roles, the different projects you're working on. And then if you'd also like to talk about your research interests and what how those are interacting with your work right now. That that will take a while to do, but I'd like to give you opportunity to kind of describe each of those things. Yeah, sure. So one of the courses that I am teaching that I taught last semester is a course that's been on the books at MBS for quite some time called God's Shalom and the church's witness. And before I was teaching it, Melinda Berry was teaching that course she had done a fair bit of work and kind of reshaping it and I really appreciate the way that that she set up the course so I've tried to continue it a lot in the way that that she had set it up. I teach the on campus version of this course and James Crabill, formerly from my mission network teaches the online version of the course. He also looks at what the Kingdom of Shalom looks like for those who are working in the church and in communities around the church, working towards healing political divisions towards addressing environmental crises towards healing racial divisions and towards becoming more radically inclusive congregations. And that's what I really enjoy teaching a course that's going on right now is called capstone. This is the third year course in in the ministry formation sequence for MDiv students. So this is kind of the last course where we try to bring things bring things together reflect on synthesize learning growth during the time that students have been studying at MBS. And this is a course that culminates in senior interviews I think senior interviews have been going on for a long time. And this is, I just really wish that every person who works at MBS every faculty member could be part of the senior interviews and part of this class just to hear the incredible stories of students learning and grows during their, during their time, during their time here. It's just, it's a real blessing and I'm just constantly amazed at how students are able to kind of articulate very concrete specific things that they've learned from certain professors certain classes, books, interactions on campus experiences in their congregations. Yeah, that's just a real joy to be part of that class. In fact, I teach it twice a year once in the semester one once in semester two and it is, it just never gets old. Another class that I am teaching coming up in May and June is called history of Christian spirituality. By now I think this is one of the, if not the only kind of purely history courses that we teach at at AMBS and by history. I mean, a course that takes one topic and kind of covers it chronologically. We still have Anabaptist history and theology and Christian theology one courses like that. But this one has this one is, is been really fun for me to teach I have always been interested in spirituality. It is a topic that is simultaneously very very old, but relatively new to Anabaptist I keep thinking. I had asked my grandparents, what spirituality was. I'm not sure what they would have said I think they might have said that something that Catholics do. But not knowing much about it and yet when I look at the lives of grandparents on both of my parents side. They were deeply spiritual. They had very regular spiritual practices that they engaged in that were really important they just didn't call it that. It's really exciting for me to be able to kind of dig deeper into the history of spirituality. Before we started to use that term and I recognize that I am standing on the very broad shoulders of people like Marlene Krupp and Marcus smucker who went before and who kind of helped us as not just as a seminary but the woman I church takes seriously the discipline of Christian spirituality. This is probably the class that I've taught the most often and for the longest as a class called faith formation and spirituality of youth and young adults. I taught that one last fall. And this class combines human development so stage of life issues with spiritual formation and faith formation, also taking into account cultural cultural influences. So, despite the fact that I am well into my fifties. And I am no longer the gene wearing guitar playing, youth pastor that I was many, many years ago I'm still very deeply interested in faith formation and think that faith formation among the teen years adolescent years is so so incredibly important and I lament at times that our regional churches denominations seem to have. I wouldn't say forgotten, but there's less emphasis on youth ministry in the church now so I'm really grateful to be still involved in that in different ways both in my home congregation Belmont Mennonite church and actively involved there and youth and also here at the seminary through the community and courses like this. Those are the courses I have on the go right now. I have quite a few administrative responsibilities as well I am director of the MDiv program here so I give some oversight to the programmatic curricular parts of the MDiv program I'm also the director of the MDF the master of arts and Christian formation program here. Jeanine mentioned I'm director of the Center for Faith formation and culture which is the center under which the explore program falls. I'm the co editor of the vision journal, Karl Coot from King Manate University is the new co editor from the CMU side of things and I'm working right now with Jane Kipfer from Conard Gravel University College and University of Waterloo to edit the issue of vision, not the one that's in print right now but the one that will be in print in the fall on spirituality and aging. It's a really exciting issue that I think that's coming out soon. I am the assistant director at the Institute of Mennonite studies Jamie Pitts is the director there so as you know this is the kind of the winger part of the MBS that does that does publishing we have a number of interesting projects on the go. I'm now at IMS and I also work with Jeanine and Rachel on the campus care group. So I provide a little bit of pastoral care for students on campus here. So yeah, I'm finding my life is full with both teaching and administrative responsibilities. Um, would you like to go ahead and talk about some of your research interests. Some of those projects that you're spending time on. Right yeah so part of my work through Institute of Mennonite studies is to help prepare for and plan a conference called reading the Bible after the Holocaust. You will probably not hear about this conference in the media and the press we are in some ways it's a follow up to the Bethel College conference Mennonites in the Holocaust from about five years ago. But we're trying to, we're shaping it running it fairly differently it's going to be in a buy invitation conference a lot smaller maybe 30 to 40 participants. And we're really looking to invite equal number of Jews and Mennonites and to develop kind of like dialogue partners dialogue groups, so that we can focus on what it means to read the Bible together we share portions of what it means to read the Bible. And we share portions with our Jewish sisters and brothers, and then there are, there are parts that are more you that are more unique to us, and I think that the main objective of the conference is to help us as Christians, and to pay attention to the ways that we have been formed to read scripture, anti semitically. So just to be aware of that so that we can change our reading of some texts. But the other part is just I think we can Jews and Mennonites together can really. We can really enrich each other's understanding just of what scripture of what scripture means at the opportunity four years ago to go to Israel and Palestine with a program called partners for peace that was initiated by the world Jewish generations. And that was just that was a really important trip. It was the first time I was really exposed to uniquely or explicitly Jewish ways of reading Christian texts and so we were, you know, went to the Jordan River to the place that is now pretty touristy but where Jesus was baptized by john in that place historically, lots of other places reading these scriptures that were very familiar to me, but also hearing Jewish scholars reflect on them and what it what they meant from a Jewish perspective so I'm really excited about this conference I'm doing lots of learning. Theologically, it has kind of shaken or dislodged me a little bit from some of my strong held crystal centric beliefs. I still quite crystal centric, but this doing the reading and preparing for this conference has helped me just be more aware of the ways that in my own self in my own family history, perhaps are crystal centric discipleship emphasis might contribute to some anti Semitic sentiments or attitudes feelings or statements so I'm just continuing to become more and more. Thanks for the question. We already have one question from an alum that seems to fit in really nicely here. Doug Amstitz is saying that the history of Christian spirituality class sounds very interesting to him, and wondering if you could say a little bit more about that and also has a MBS make connections with the Center for Action and Contemplation. And how are we, how are we including contemplative and mystic practices. Thank you Doug for that question. Yeah, so the, as a as a history class, the this class focuses more on developing themes of Christian spirituality from the time of the early church to the contemporary time. We have other classes on campus we call them spiritual practices classes that focus more on specific practices on the doing of these practices. This course focuses more on the history and the development of these practices. We have not made a formal connection with the Center for Action and Contemplation this would be something there'd be some possibilities there I I imagine many folks here are familiar with Richard Roar and his work and the work of the center. But in this course we don't explicitly make those make those connections in preparing for the course this year one of the points of connections that I'm working at developing and expanding a little bit is some of the other global connections. So the history of Christian spirituality is often taught in a very Western oriented way. And so what I'm trying to pay attention to a little bit more. This time around is like the African especially North African origins of spirituality is that this common history of Christian spirituality if you want to call it that actually may not be so common and was received and taken in many different directions. So even, even the Western story is not simply one story there was Western Christianity Eastern Christianity Orthodox, lots of different versions of this so I'm trying to pay a little bit more attention to kind of the global and non linear way that Christian spirituality has has developed. Thanks and another question has come in that also is about courses so I'm going to go with it. You mentioned that one of your courses talks about being a radically inclusive church. What does that look like in our time and space right now. Thank you Mark Diller harder for that question. Yeah, so I mean as we are all aware that many church Canada and I church USA and lots of other denominations in North American around the world are in some level, thinking about what it means to be an inclusive congregation, I attend Belmont men and I church and we have just as a congregation decided that we are going to be openly explicitly inclusive. The way we're talking about it is inclusive of people of all sexual orientations gender identities, socioeconomic statuses, races, ethnicities. So those are the categories the main categories that were that we're using there. And I think so in a class like God so I'm in the church is witness. We are focusing especially on sexual orientation and gender identities and what it means to become a more inclusive church, more broadly. This is in the last five years, but especially in the last couple years a conversation that is in some ways a lot more on the surface at the seminary and many congregations. We have quite a few students here who would identify as LGBTQ and so I am learning from them along the way about what it means to be an inclusive congregation and pretty much on a daily basis I'm challenged in some way to rethink a assumptions that I have had, or prejudices that I might carry, or just ways that I'm ignorant about what it means to be, what it means to be inclusive. So, in this particular class this is one of four, four topics that gets explicitly, explicitly addressed. And I think it's really exciting that we're at a time and place in the church where in many places we are moving in that direction, but this, this is a conversation that's been happening for a very long time and it will probably continue to happen for a very long time, but I do feel hopeful and optimistic that there's been a slight turning of corners in generally an acceptance of especially LGBTQ persons in the church and other ways of inclusion. And maybe by radical I would say that I, by radical I mean full participation in the church not just, not just being present there, or being represented numerically but inclusion of gifts of people not necessarily because of their difference, not in spite of their difference but because of their difference recognizing that they, that their identity brings something really important to the life of the church. Thanks Mark. Andy, I want to ask another question about a course that you're not teaching this year, but just recently we asked some of our alums what, what were the most significant courses they took an MBS and one that got mentioned in any other course was cultural hermeneutic, which you have kind of been the champion for, and I'm wondering if you could describe a bit of what you do in that course, and second, why you think it has been so important for our alums that this was like one of the key courses that shaped them. And third, is that course ever offered in a format that our own alumni who didn't have the option of taking it, could audit it sit in on it I don't know if it's one of those courses that's available for us, an alum audit or not but would you share a little bit more about that course because I think it's one of the courses that you are really especially identified with. Yeah, no that is, I shouldn't say it's one of my favorite courses because courses are like children they're all your favorite. But it is a course that I developed from scratch and the story is that many years ago. I was asked to teach philosophical theology. And so I developed this course and all of a sudden I realized, while I was building on a course that was already being taught that Gail had taught for many years Gail and then when I wanted to kind of do my own things with it I realized this is way way way too much for a course so I divided it into, and the first half was called philosophical theology and the second half was called cultural hermeneutics. And so the basic point of the class is to use some of the philosophical movements, especially in the West but not only in the West that have shaped culture and and how we engage in the culture. And I think for me the main objective of this course is to help us all realize that when we read the Bible when we read scripture when we think about our faith we are we come with culturally derived or at least culturally influenced questions. And so I don't, I don't believe I don't see that we ever really just read the scripture for what the scripture says on its own we're always interpreting in our interpretation, right from the questions that we bring to the text to what we hear the text say is always shaped by culture and I just, I believe that we needed to pay more attention, attention to this. I should say that my, my earliest interest in something like cultural hermeneutics I didn't call it that then but was when I was a pastor in the 90s. I felt that my job as a pastor was to encourage young people to consider the ministry to take leadership in the church. And I had a few parents that would, after a while, kind of take me out for lunch or something like this and say, I'm really glad you're encouraging my kid but my son or my daughter they're not going to be a pastor they're going to be XYZ so you know maybe you can just kind of lay off on the Bible college theology thing a little bit right. And, and I didn't know where this was coming from I thought well shouldn't this isn't this what Christian formation is about is about encouraging young people to take their faith seriously. So that's when it kind of got me thinking there are some really powerful forces here that make Christian formation and living what I would call like a gospel centered life that make it really challenging and I decided I needed to learn more about that. And for whatever reason I thought philosophy was a good way to get into that because I think philosophy talks about the kinds of things that are operative in societies, but not necessarily things that we talk about on a daily, on a daily basis. There are some of these kind of philosophical tools, especially postmodern theology, critical theory, literary studies, things like that to to reading use those tools to read culture itself, and then to help us understand how as Christians, our own attitudes and questions always approaching the text especially the Bible are shaped by our shaped by culture. So I think what students really like about this class is that we spend about two thirds of the class exploring different approaches or cultural hermeneutical tools, and then students have an opportunity to pick two or three of them and apply them to a topic of their choice. So we have had just a huge variety of just super, super interesting projects things that students have talked about, I mean, and I learned every time students do these projects and presentations I learned so much about anything from, you know, metrosexuals to polyamory to like different kinds of comics or zombies. So sometimes it has to do with media TV shows but there's so many themes way, way beyond that. And it's just, yeah, it is a really fun course to teach and it warms my heart to hear that that students also enjoy it and appreciate it. Is it available online yet my preferred way of teaching is not online. And so this is one course that that I offer only on campus it is auditable for people who are around in our close in our close by, but this one right now is only a non campus non campus course. Thank you. I'm wondering if you would have a dream for ambias that you'd like to share maybe two dreams. Yeah. Well one dream is, I mean it's partly a reality but I think it's like a yet and not yet kind of thing and that is that the summary would just continue to strengthen connections with the Mennonite Church USA regional church bodies and the global and Baptist body. I think there's just something so incredible that happens when, when people not just Mennonites, but people from all over the world all over Canada come together at this place and live in community think theologically together eat together play together challenge each other. The atmospheres is so is so wonderful so I hope we can continue moving in that direction. I will say one of things that's been a little harder for me being here as a Canadian is that I've lamented at times the fact that there aren't more Canadians that come to seminary here I realize there's lots of other really good places in Canada where Canadians can can get their education and as somebody who crosses the border regularly. I totally understand why that border is as much of a psychological barrier as it is a physical physical barrier it's definitely definitely both, especially in these pandemic years here. But I really hope and I'm optimistic about the future relationship of the seminary with our denominational conference and regional church bodies. And I also another dream I have is that we continue to pay attention to what it means to be a vibrant on campus community that is radically inclusive for people of all races nationalities. And so I think that we have a lot of expectations, gender identities, and to use the words of Clarence Jordan, who founded the quantity of farms that we would continue to be a demonstration plot for the for the kingdom, for the kingdom of God. And I think we can keep working to do it to do it better and discover what that means but that is another hope and dream a yet, but not yet open dream I have for ABS. Thank you. Those of you who are on the webinar I invite you to put your questions or comments for Andy in the q amp a feature and I have one more question that we've prepared ahead of time and then we'll turn to yours if they're there. The last question for me is, do you have any questions for the alums who are here today that you would like to know more from them about. Yeah, I have two questions. One is like, I'm probably pretty normal. I go through cycles of hope and despair for the church, especially post coven, I am really or as we move post coven. Really curious and frankly a little scared about who all will come back to church and who we will have lost in the meantime, because hanging out in our jammies and watching church online is just a little easier. That and lots of other issues I'm with young adult children I realize how many, how many young adults are just opting not to return to church sometimes there are. Sometimes they were hurt by church and sometimes it's just, it doesn't seem to be doesn't have a, it's not compelling in their lives. And other times I'm filled with hope so what I would like to hear from folks is like what gives you hope, what are the signs of hope that you see in your congregations in the places that you live and work for the future of the church. Maybe the second question then is what would you like in BS to think about as we train leaders for the important and ongoing work of addressing sexual abuse in the church. I think we have a lot of attention to it. I think we're realizing that maybe in the last decade or so we've done a decent job of helping leaders be aware of their own boundaries, be the self aware and work at avoiding situations where they are attempted to use power for their own benefit. I think where we're continuing to learn is what it means to lead a whole congregation when this happens right so what is it. How do you process this when it's people in the congregation and you're called to pastor both victims and perpetrators, things like that. What would you like in BS to think about as we train leaders for this important work of prevention, truth telling and justice when it comes to sexual abuse in the church, hopes for the church and what do we need to think about as we train. Those are my questions. Awesome questions. And if you have an answer you want to share you can go ahead and use the chat feature for that and make sure you send it to everyone so that all everyone who's here can see that as well. The next thing you talked about post COVID ties in really nicely with one of the questions that's come in from William block. Thank you, Bill. And he asked how are you dealing with the political divide in the US and the one coming in Canada as well around COVID and freedom and where it strikes our democratic issues. Great question. Thank you. Well, my mother and my sister and her family both live in Ottawa. So I get regular daily updates on what the truckers are up to in the capital. One of the things I found really interesting is trying to kind of discern and talk with people about what about this, what about these trucker protests in Ottawa and at the borders. What about it feels American and what is particularly Canadian. So, I mean one of the things that does not feel American about it is that, at least as far as I know I've heard nothing about guns or direct violence. There have been some, a lot of social awkwardness and businesses that have had to close down and people refusing to move. It's been relatively peaceful. And even though it's annoyed people that live in those areas, almost a carnival like atmosphere noisy, but not necessarily destructive. I understand the, there were some conversation in the parliament in Canada yesterday, especially around political parties and allegiances and things got a little bit more, more heated there. Compared to like the January 6 protests in Washington, the protests in Ottawa have been a lot less violent. And, you know, fewer, there were there are racist signs anti Semitic signs in Ottawa, but as a whole, a lot less. I interestingly, I was listening to a podcast the other day and one of the, one of the things that the presenter said there that I thought was interesting I hadn't really thought about is that the greater divide is probably not between right and left or liberal and conservative or Democrat and Republican, but between those who are politically engaged and those who are not politically engaged. And the problem that they articulated was that if that those who are politically engaged and radicalized in some ways both on the right and on the left, they're kind of set in the agenda for everybody. And so this person was saying that the bigger divide is between those who are politically engaged and those who aren't. So as a as an abaptist as a man and I as a Christian that makes me wonder what does what does political engagement mean, right, if it doesn't mean maybe it does mean protesting and I've been to a few protests. And the only thing that it means so what does it mean to be politically engaged for a people who have historically been the quiet in the land with people that try to work under the under the cover, undercover there. Yes, I saw Doug's comment there that there was a, there were some guns retrieved or found in the border in Alberta, but for the most part that has not been a prominent part of what's going on in the protests themselves right so Canada is not immune to it. Someone else has asked if you are still training for and running marathons. And so, if not that what what are the things you like to do for physical exercise. Boy, I'm curious where that that question came from. I have never run a marathon I used to run more than I do I don't, I don't do that now a number of years ago I had a pulmonary embolism and dbt's and my legs and that kind of kiboshed. I've been doing a lot of bike riding before then and that also has been reduced my days of 60 mile or 100 kilometer day rides. Those are done. I can do 20 miles now 35 kilometers in a day. I would say maybe partly just because I'm getting older, I'm finding more joy in walking and hiking things like that. Continuing, of course, has been just a standard exercise form of exercise for for my wife and I. So, yeah, slightly slower, slower things do a little bit more swimming up until coven at a local, local pool. That's been, that's been good. My marathon days are behind me. Patrick a bond a asks what are some of the ways in which the students embodied faith and spirituality are considered integral to ambious evaluation standards. Thank you Patrick deep question there. Yeah, so one of the joys of teaching the capstone course is that I get to ask this question and hear what students say about that. And there. Yeah, there's lots of lots of varieties of approaches so often students will come with practices that they are familiar with from their kind of places of origin churches of origin family of origin. And then at ambious we try to expand people's repertoire of spiritual practices and as you can imagine, some people really welcome this and some people find this an unnecessary hoop to jump through or box to check. And at the end of the MDF program when students do capstone, almost all of the students express appreciation for the challenge of trying new, trying new disciplines. They are clear on what works for them and what doesn't work for them and almost always they've added to their repertoire practices that that they can use. We also hear. I don't know how long we've been using the language of knowing being and doing, at least since I've been here so I think at least 20 years. But I think we're doing a better job of trying to figure out what, what, what it means to integrate intellectual growth with, like, with skills, things that we actually do with being itself, and the knowing. It's easy to evaluate the doing a little harder, but also evaluatable both self evaluation and from a kind of a professor perspective, the being one is really hard to to evaluate yet it's the one that kind of undergirds the other two. So we're, we're working out, just thinking about what it means to evaluate being how do we talk about that. And in the kind of Venn diagram of knowing being and doing, right, obviously, we want them to kind of come together as much as possible and overlap, recognizing they are somewhat distinct, but that they really, they really affect each other in generally positive positive ways so paying attention to the intersection of knowing being and doing and trying to figure out what it is that we can actually evaluate and what it is that we leave up to the leave up to the spirit. Thank you. Remember that if you have a question or comment you can put it in the q amp a there. Thank you for some more from our alums, I will ask you. We were talking earlier about hermeneutics and you have demonstrated how much you're into this by having a sign on your door that talks about particular hermeneutics. I don't know if anyone else who applies hermeneutics to every part of their life, but is this is this just a fun thing that you look for or did somebody else find that for you or how did you come about that sign and maybe you'll need to describe the sign to those who haven't seen it. Oh yeah so the sign is called particular hermeneutics how to read a door. So there was a, there was a time, oh seven or eight years ago when teaching faculty were encouraged to be a little bit more explicit and open about what, when they were in their office when they were in school when they needed to not be disturbed things like that so I had never heard of particular hermeneutics particular, but I was familiar with the term particular hermeneutics right so I just that was a play on on the word and I've, yeah so it just that if the sign says if the door is open, please interrupt me if I'm working it's open so that I can be interrupted, or disturbed from what I'm doing if the door is only open a crack, I likely a meeting with somebody come back in 10 minutes something like that and if it's closed it means I need some alone time or time that I'm not interrupted from what I'm from what I'm doing. Yeah, lots of faculty do it in their, in their own ways, but this has been especially important as our, the percentage of our student body that is from outside of the US and Canada grows and people from different cultural contexts. They need doors differently. Right. What does it mean when a door is closed and around here, we have offices that are in very heavily trafficked areas noisier areas so somebody might have a door closed not because they don't want to be disturbed, but because the hallway is noisy. Close to their office so it's particularly important that we are explicit clear about what it means when our doors stationed one way or another. Thank you. Now we're going to turn to a very heavy question. Chuck Newfield is wondering how we can prepare for what looks like might be civil war coming. I think we have trainings about how we as an abaptist committed to non violence can become more competent in how to respond when real conflict arises in our neighborhoods. Some days that reality seems all too close by. In other words, how can we prepare to be most creative and peaceful in our tactics. Thank you Chuck. Yeah, this is a question I would love to hear from from others to. I mean, I think we haven't asked it quite this way at EMS. I suspect there are courses and the work that Jana Hunter bowman for example does. I think would would address this. One of the one of the ways I think we can be doing more is just by participating in the ministry of getting in the way. So I know at least in Elkhart and Goshen there were groups of people who were who agreed to be on kind of text lists so that if an undocumented person was being arrested or something like that there could be a group of people that would come and be a witness to this. And so, I mean I think there are things like that that are really great, simple examples but they also require some kind of training. I know that there are kind of local trainings that happen and it's probably something the seminary should should be a little bit more active and and get involved with in a class like God's alone in the church as witness. So we do, we do talk about this, a little bit more from the perspective of what it means to do some of this stuff as a congregation, right, not just what does it mean to be an inclusive congregation but what does it mean to be a congregation that is advocating for economic justice, racial justice, things like things like that. But in the face of civil civil war. Yeah, I think this is a real, real live question. One of the things that I have learned is, and this particular as a Canadian moving here is just how to be amount of work. It takes just to get to know your neighbors. And especially people that either you know because they've told you, or you're pretty sure have pretty different social, political convictions. And so, you know, after we were here for a couple years we had a neighbor come over and say, Oh, I heard you're a pacifist so. But I just wanted you know, you know I'm an X Marine and I've got a gun if you're ever in trouble please give me a call you know be happy to come over and help. And it's just like, I think at that point my jaw just dropped and I didn't know how to respond but this was a person then that I, that I got to know later, and I think developing relationships is is hugely, hugely important so I have another neighbor that regularly makes reference to the fact that I'm a Democrat, even though up until a couple years ago I couldn't even vote in this country right she just assumed that that was a Democrat. So we figured out how to be good neighbors how to care for each other, look out for each other's houses show each other's driveways and, and things like that so I think that's one part of it, but it's not thought it's not the whole part right, I think really on the issue like this we need to work at both micro and macro micro and macro levels. So if you have, you have ideas about that, I would love to hear them. I'm not saying any other questions at this point and we're getting close to the end of our time so I want to say thank you Andy for answering the questions that we've given you today and for giving us a wonderful insight into your work at MBS. And I want to thank you alumni for your ongoing support of MBS. You are our most important influencers in the church both a prospective students and donors. So if you know of someone that you would like to consider seminary please talk to them about it but also send us their names so that we can be in touch with them. It's really easy now to try one course and see what it's like we've we've made that possible for people from all over.