 Welcome to all of you who are joining us today for our April version of third Thursdays. We're so glad that you could come. I'm Jeanine Bertie Johnson. I am alumni director at AMBS as well as director of campus ministries. Just a couple of housekeeping details before we get started. If you have a technical concern at any time during the webinar please send a chat to the AMBS webinar host. And if you have a comment or question for our speaker we ask that you please use the Q&A function which you can find by hovering over the bottom of your screen. I'll be watching for those questions and comments and I'll select the ones that I'll ask Alan. Please note that the webinar including questions is being recorded. Turning now to our conversation Alan Rudy Froze is associate professor of Christian Proclamation at AMBS. He received his MDiv degree from AMBS in 1992 and also learned earned a PhD from Emmanuel College at the Toronto School of Theology in 2012. He's been part of the AMBS faculty since 2011 and his research interests include preaching practice methodology and theology, the human voice and body and storytelling. Alan will start by answering several questions I have for him and after that we'll have time for your questions and comments. So Alan thank you for being here today. What would you like to tell us about yourself as an introduction. Oh yeah that's good. Well you did a fine introduction there of some of the important things in my life. For instance the reality that I've been at AMBS now for 11 years going on to the 12th. It's the longest time I've ever had a full-time job that long. It's great. Yeah I grew up in Canada and lived most of my life in Canada in different parts. Grew up in British Columbia and Saskatchewan and then moved to Manitoba and then lived in Ontario for many years. And was a pastor for many years before I decided to do a PhD in homiletics and preaching and yeah something about myself that I find interesting is that I live in two places. Our whole family was in Goshen, Elkhart area for the first six, seven years of my time at AMBS. And through various circumstances Maryland had to move back to Canada. And so I live in two places. I live in Elkhart and I also live in Kitchener Ontario where my wife and our young adult children live. And so I travel back and forth in fall. At AMBS and then travel here to Kitchener. I'm speaking from Kitchener today. And then in winter I live mostly in Kitchener but still drive back and forth a lot to AMBS to my apartment there. So I live in these two places. There are about seven, eight hours apart in the car. I love the drive actually. It's kind of a liminal space. Who am I? Traveling from one place to the other. And yeah, I love to cook. That's another thing I want to say. I don't, I mean, hobbies. Yeah, I have some hobbies. I wish I had some more vigorously physical hobbies. But yeah, I love to cook. I love to cook for our family. I even love to cook by myself in my place in Elkhart and experiment with all kinds of things. And yeah, that's all I'll say for now. That's an introduction. There you go. Thank you. Questions we've asked each person joining us is how have you experienced God in a powerful way? Do you have one or two stories that you'd like to share? Yeah, yeah, that's a really good question. I think I had some of these questions before Janine presents them here. So I've been thinking about this one for a while and I think what I want to say here is that I've experienced God in this rich thing that we call Christian community. I think in high school and my college years in Winnipeg and at AMBS as a student and then as a faculty member, there's something beautiful about being in a Christian community where we worship together, we work together. And God is revealed in these places. I think the experience more recently of working on the voices together. The hymnal and worship resources collection. That was a mighty spiritual experience where it wasn't just the sort of the central group that was meeting, but all these different consultants and all these many, many, many groups coming together from many quarters of the world and from North America. Trying to figure out what, how we worship and how we sing and how we speak and how we approach God. This was very powerful spiritually for me. Yeah. We might have some more questions about that experience on that later but for now I'm curious, what attracted you to be part of the AMBS community as a faculty member. You are one who came back. Yeah, you know, so when I was a little boy, I was 6 years old and we lived in British Columbia and we, my parents worked at a place called Camp Squia. And at Camp Squia in summers, Clarence and Alice Bowman came to set up a hermitage, like a little cottage in the woods. And I would go up to visit them and they were eccentric. I mean, not only just eccentric, they were, I mean, he was an academic, which, which totally blew me away and I found that really interesting. But they were also very eccentric. I mean, they named the bears and raccoons around the area and had conversations with them. And I mean, there's a kind of mystical thing going on there too. No, I mean, I remember my dad once saying that he wanted to have Clarence talk for 15 minutes at a fireside and Clarence said something like yeah, I don't know what I do. I usually talk for three hours at a time. And I was like, whoa. Not that we do that at AMBS these days anymore, but I was like, wow, what is this? And, and Clarence, I saw Clarence studying for hours and hours and hours a day. And I was like, wow, what is that? So, over the rest of my life, I mean I always kind of followed what was going on at AMBS and I was listening keenly to people who were studying there and Yeah. And then in my days of university at the University of Winnipeg, I remember a very particular incident where Martin E. Marty Lutheran historian came to lecture at the University of Winnipeg. And I was really struggling with what to do the next year after I graduated. And he said something like, if you're interested in sort of spreading your wings out. I was interested at that time in comparative religion. He said, if you're interested in comparative religion and actually speaking with people of other faiths, you've got to dig down deep in your own tradition. And that was the night I applied to AMBS. Right. I mean, I always knew it was there. And yeah, it was, it was for me it was a sort of a longing to dig deeper into the Anabaptist midnight tradition. And then after you studied here, what made you want to come back to teach? Well, yeah. Well, I mean, it's, it's one of the very few midnight seminaries in North America and the world. So that helps. Yeah, I mean, I love the community there. It's, it's, I mean, the, the, the teaching faculty staff students, that was always a very positive experience for me. I, I love the way that academics are blended with sort of a rigorous spiritual life. I'm still always working at that. And I like the, I especially now I love the way that the teaching faculty and others work really well together. That's, that's a really, that's a real strong, strong thing for me. And, you know, when I attended AMBS 30 some years ago, yeah, it was a very international kind of place and it still is. I mean, it's gone through different kind of iterations over the years. And international means different things than it does now, but I loved when I was a student there and now that I teach there the interactions with, with Mennonites and, and people from Christian faiths all over the world, it's, it's a great place to be. Thanks. And if you'd be willing to describe the different courses you're teaching this year, and a little bit about each of them, and then if there's some courses that you aren't that aren't in your rotation this year but you'd like to tell about those as well. It would be great for people to hear the variety of things you're teaching. Sure. So, I mean, one of the main courses that I teach is preaching. And last year I got to teach preaching three times. What a great year. I taught it in fall, I taught it in winter. And then I taught every other year I teach it at Conagrable University College here in on in Ontario and Waterloo. And yeah, so I love teaching preaching. I, my, my, one of the ways that I approach preaching is that it's a physical bodily experience and we're using our voices to communicate so we actually do a lot of voice work in the preaching class. I think voice is very connected also with our ideas. Sometimes I get this thing. Well, aren't you working on content as well. And it's like, well, of course I am, but we're going to get to that also through through the voice. So, and then I also teach a voice course specifically and I'm looking forward to teaching that this fall. It's the LEAP these days, which is leadership, education, and out of Baptist perspective, always acronyms. So, the LEAP course is a, is a course that some, it's an orientation course for AMBS. So it's the first course that a lot of students take at AMBS. The students are online in early August and we all come together for this, this crazy, intensive, beautiful week in August where I coordinate that I do some teaching in that and all the faculty at different teaching faculty and staff and teachers at AMBS all get together and we work with the new students and we try to help them get oriented to academic life and to AMBS life. And it's, it's, it's, it's, it's like camp, you know, it's exhausting and it's also beautiful to have everybody together for that experience. I teach biblical storytelling and I will teach that in May. I'm looking forward to that. So an intensive course in May over two weeks. Yeah, biblical storytelling. So it's, it's, I mean, it can be a number of other things than this, but it's, it's memorizing biblical texts and telling them in a compelling way. And so I'm using a lot of my voice work with that as well. I also teach a course called performing the faith. I'm not teaching that this year or next, but it's a it's performance theory. So it looks sort of more broadly at how it is that we performance theory is it mixes up anthropology and liturgy and ritual studies and all kinds of things and looks at how it is that we perform in public. And so we do talk a lot about worship and we talk a lot about various kinds of performances and worship but we also talk about other kinds of performances I'm performing right now. So Jeanine, even though she's sitting there just like that, we're always performing in certain ways that we're we're sort of welcoming others in or not. And so I'm fascinated by this by performance theory. It's, it's a great, great topic. And then I also teach a course every year called ministry and church and world. And this is a course where in sort of the middle time, often the second year, but for some, for other students, it's, it's the third or fourth year. When they are working in a, in a church setting or in an internship of some kind, it can be in a community center or hospital. There's been lots of different kinds of placements. And then I meet with the students on a Wednesday afternoons and we have very organized ways of processing what it is they're going through as interns and integrating all kinds of other things from other AMBS courses. It's a lot of fun. I think you also teach a course called rest and play. Oh, yes. Can you tell us about that? Yeah, I'm teaching it right now. Yeah, rest and play. It's so much fun. And, you know, one of the things that I've loved about AMBS is they let me invent courses like And I mean, not without some do thought and I don't get to do anything I want, but rest and play. Right. So we have a lot of these one hour courses at AMBS on spiritual with the spirituality focus and rest and play. So I came up with this one. And I mean, one of the things that I mean, I love humor and I love playing and I mean, we play instruments, we play all kinds of things, but adults kind of forget to play at a certain time. And so, yeah, we explore play and various aspects of play and we play And then rest as well. So we do get into kind of Sabbath rest but we sort of also talk about leisure. And we talk about how How, I mean leisure is a pretty recent kind of term and phenomenon. It's very middle class. And we talk about how we spend our time. So rest and play. It's a lot of. Yeah, again, it's a lot of fun. And is that the only one hour spiritual practices course you teach. Yeah, I teach a voice class as well voice and identity so that. And just for this coming year we're doing something that we've never done before an AMBS as far as I know. So these one hour classes. I mean they have different kinds of their, they're taught in different ways. So what we're going to do with this one is it runs Tuesday morning, all morning. So it's, you know, two and a half hours of being together and that's it. There's no homework. Often we run these classes where it's a one hour class and there's one hour of actual teaching per week and then students do homework for three hours, two hours, whatever. So it's all happening in the classroom. We're going to read in the classroom. We're going to play games in the classroom. We're going to work with our voices and talk about our voices and our identity and. Yeah, so that's an experiment. And if anybody wants to sign up for that. It's Tuesday mornings. This is an advertisement. There you go. Can alumni audit that one? Yeah. No, well you can. You have to be on campus though. It's only on campus. Yep. Thank you so much for describing all those courses. They sound awesome. Wondering about your current research interests. What are you working in terms of outside of the courses you teach. Yeah, I mean, one of the, well, it's kind of three things. One, I'm still working on this, working on this voice certification so that I can be an official teacher of the Kristen link letter voice theory. And so that I'm spending time in Scotland this summer. Three weeks and then three weeks next summer as well. And then I will be certified as a voice teacher voice for actors and speakers. And worship leaders and preachers and so on. It's not voice for singing. It's voice for speaking. So that's a very exciting thing and I connected to that is a second thing. One of the areas of research I'm into is stage fright for people who work in the church, especially for preachers and worship leaders and song leaders and so on. Over my time in the church, I keep hearing that right I keep and I have a lot of stage fright myself, believe it or not. And a lot of anxiety about standing in front of people. And this is a, this is a significant thing and one of the things that makes it a bit different in the church is that, you know, we have this, this thing that we're, we're kind of, we're not just in front of people we're, we're serving God. And, you know, the preacher or the or the worship leader or the reader of scripture is, is speaking for God in a way we talk about that sometimes and so it's, I mean, one of the things that got me onto this was people who teach regularly as school teachers or whatever they teach economics the university or something, and there they have no tension when they're doing their particular lecture or teaching grade five or whatever. But they don't speak in church, they refuse to speak in church, they will not preach, they will not read scripture, because it's too, it's this holy space, right? And they're kind of too much at stake or something. So that, that is a fascinating thing and and and the, I mean, one of the things connected to voice and stage fright is that there's all kinds of fun things we can do to warm up our bodies before we preach or worship leader so on. And that's a lot of fun. The biggest project I'm working on is swearing cursing. I've been fascinated by swearing ever since I was a kid, and had experiences in high school. And, and other times and I mean I'm just noticing that Christians are swearing a lot more than we used to even evangelical Christians. That's anecdotal all of that but and a lot of people don't swear I realized that but swearing is all around us and I'm fascinated by that. We swear primarily in three general areas one is around the holy. And then we swear around sort of the body and sexuality and then we swear around the other right we have all kinds of bad names for people we don't understand, whether it's racial comments or cultural comments or gender comments and so on. So those three areas are there they're really intertwined to so the work I'm doing is mostly on kind of those first two areas, and that is that the ways the way we swear around our bodies and we use body parts and just sort of declare that a swear word and call somebody that. And the religious words right. We use a lot of religious words to when we curse when we swear and what is that what's at the bottom of all of that. So I'm wondering, I think the central kind of question is, is what's behind all of this. Right. What is behind the language that we use generally and and strong language and and then specifically what could be behind each of these some of these individual words. Now I have to find it Christian publisher. This is one of the issues right. What words can I use what words can't I use. These are huge issues and I mean just lately I did a an interview on CBC radio in Canada here and it was broadcast across Canada. In a particular show called tapestry and I mean we talked I talked to the interviewer for like 40 minutes. And one of the questions I had was which words do I get to use and they said, Oh, well, we'll just have the interview and then it goes upstairs right to the people at CBC and they decide and interestingly enough. So they they beeped out a lot of words. They beeped out some pretty mild swear words I thought and then they didn't be about other ones that I thought were more severe. And they actually said one of the producers actually said that they because it's it airs on Sunday afternoon. They beeped out more than they thought they would Sunday afternoon. So again, it's this, and that's fascinating. It's this tension between the religious sort of piety and swear words and yet we use a lot of these swear words. A lot of these religious words of swear words. Right. I'm fascinated by that whole thing. Right. Yeah, yeah, I'm on sabbatical next winter and I plan to write the book on it there's lots of great books and swearing. There aren't a lot of good books that explore it kind of from a Christian point of view and I'm not exploring it from a kind of morality point of view. Shall we swear or not swear. Probably not very interesting for a lot of people. I'm more looking at what what's going on in us that that produces these words that come to that come out sometimes we're not even thinking about it and there they are. Thanks. I'm wondering what dreams you have for am. Yeah, I love the the directions that were that I see happening from the administration these days and this this was there long before the kind of new administration as I know Sarah Wenger shank was working on this but these. These connections were making with Ethiopia and with Korea and and Mennonite World Conference. I think this is very exciting. I think we're. I guess one of my dreams is that we become even more of an international community and that that has to start shaping us in some pretty radical ways I think. But I'm excited about that and I think I think the kind of rich diversity that we have on the campus. And tells us something about the kind of rich diversity we could we could also have kind of collaborating with lots of Christians around the world. I find that really exciting. Just adding on to that how how do you think that might affect your teaching roles like. How has your teaching teaching changed as you have worked with students from other than North American context. Oh yeah that's a great topic and I've I've really learned a lot I mean one of the things that. And this this has to do with voice as well so. One of the other things that I've that I've started in the last several years is that. Students don't have to preach in English in our class right the first sermon often is in English but the second sermon they generally preach two sermons in the preaching class. It can be in whatever language you feel most comfortable in or the language that you're going to be using when you go back home wherever that is. You see a very different body and you hear a different voice right I mean somebody who's more recently learning English or English is a second language that yeah the sermon comes off and there's some interesting content and I mean it can be a great sermon. But the person is not always quite there. Right. And that'd be true for me too I mean if I was preaching in French or German my goodness it would. Be so worried and concerned about getting the words right that myself my body my voice don't come across. So when for instance an Ethiopian one of our Ethiopian students preached in English it was very different. When he did his second sermon in Amharic and then the whole body and voice were involved in different ways so that's just one of the things that were. We're working on in preaching I think that the next thing to work on. Is I mean in preaching class. We don't have time to hear long sermons in fact the sermons are even shorter than we often would preach in North America so. I'm asking students often to preach 10 minutes sermons or even eight minutes sermons depending on how many students we have in the class. We don't have time to hear those long sermons. But I'm very likely teaching a preaching class in Ethiopia next year and their sermons tend to be 45 minutes to an hour long. So that is going to be a brand new kind of. And most of the forms we have preaching that come out of Europe and North America are really based on a sermon that is 25 to 30 minutes long at the very longest. Right. So preaching for 45 minutes or an hour this is something I'm really going to have to work at and we have a number of Ethiopian students who've been helping me with this already and I'm really thankful for that. Thanks. And one other question I have and then I encourage you to start putting your questions and comments into the Q&A. But Alan, do you have any questions for the alumni who've joined us today. Yeah, you know, I would be fascinated to hear from alumni is. What did you study at AMB ask like, what was the program you were in? And what did you graduate with? Like, was it an MA and P studies? That's the old degree they had. MA in theology was an MDiv with a concentration and whatever. And then what did you do with it? Right. I mean, one of the things that we've been looking at at AMBS is. Are the MDivs, for instance that we have, are those true to what people actually do with them? Right? So we have a kind of a kind of focus in the MDiv studies where you can take chaplaincy or pastoral ministry or concentrate in theology and P studies. Christian formation is another one. And then what happens is, so there's certain courses in each of those. Now what happens is you do a thing in Christian formation and then you go work as somebody who's involved in an organization that works on peace issues, right? Or you get a peace degree here and then you become a pastor, right? So, we're always trying to connect these things to actual experience. So I'd love to hear what you studied at AMBS and then what you're doing with it. Great. So that's the kind of thing if you want to put in chat, what your answer to Alan's question, what did you, what did you focus on in your studies and what did you do with it? We have one question that's come in already from Laura Funk, who's very glad to do it again, Alan. Yes. And I'm going to add a little bit to the beginning of this. You mentioned earlier that you teach a course at Conrad Grebel. If you would explain a little bit about how that relationship between AMBS and Conrad Grebel works or how it's benefiting students there. Laura has the question about whether there are any plans to offer something in person or online with CMU in Winnipeg. Oh. In Mennonite University, for those of you who are listening. Thank you, Laura, for that question. Yeah. Thank you very much, Laura. And great to, I can't see you, but great to hear from you. The appointment that I have at Conrad Grebel, it's every other year. And it's, I teach the preaching course. This is the course that most of the masters of art students at Conrad Grebel, the masters of arts and theology. Oh, I think it's called, it's a different degree. It's called something else. And I can't remember what it is. This is not good at me. But yeah, so I've been teaching that course every other year for several years. One of the agreements, or one of the things we're working out with Conrad Grebel College is that you can often do your degree, your MA in at Conrad Grebel and then complete an MDiv, like a lot of those courses transfer to AMBS. And we have a student graduating just this year who did some significant, I mean, she graduated from the program at Conrad Grebel and then came to AMBS. And I think she was here for only 2 years, maybe 3. And she was able to finish her MDiv and she's graduating this year. So that's 1 of the ways that we're connecting. I wish there were a lot more connections. I think there could be crossing the border is not always simple. Like that's actually an issue. Like to have AMBS professors teach in Canada and, and, uh, and vice versa to have Grebel professors teaching. It's in L card. It's not simple to get visas and there's always border issues. I don't have border issues because I have a visa. I have a work visa in the US, but it's not straightforward and it's costly to do those kind of things. Now, we do have the option of the internet and have more and more zoom kinds of courses. So that kind of thing can work. Yeah, I'd love to teach some courses at CMU and we do at times have connections there as well. Yeah, you know, some years ago, I taught a course in the summer school at CMU, which was great. It was like a 1 week long intensive thing. And that was wonderful. Yeah, I would, I mean, I would love for our schools to be working closer together as well. I know there's lots of reasons why we don't necessarily do that, but it would be as a teacher, I would, I would love that. Yep. I'm just going to insert a little description from the admissions perspective. What we do with Conrad Grebel that's distinct. Normally, when someone has graduated, they, the Association of Theological Schools only would allow half of those credits to be applied to another kind of degree. And we got special permission from ATS because of our unique relationship with Canada. We are a Canadian seminary, right? We're part of that. So we got special permission to allow people to move right on from their MA into their MDiv and not lose any credits. And that's the unique thing about this relationship that has been so great. So that's great. Great question. And we look for more questions to come in here. I'm going to ask a few more that I have. Alan, you mentioned that you love to cook. You're awesome. I've heard you describe yourself. I think, I think, I, if I remember right as a coffee snob. Oh yeah. Yeah. And so one of the things you're known for when you're on campus here is making specialty coffees and inviting people to come and enjoy those and for a while you had a working relationship with somebody who made crepes. And coffee. Can you tell us what that has been like for you to interact with the AMBS community as a coffee barista or whatever you want to call yourself? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, when I retire, I want to be an actual barista. But yeah, so I mean, several years ago, we started this thing, Salome Haldeman was a student here from France and she loves to make crepes and I love to make cappuccinos. So we called it crepes and cappuccinos. And I think we ran this five or six times from the Dick guest house and on a Saturday morning and I remember one time when I made 45 shots of espresso. I have a very nice espresso machine. And it's kind of industrial style. And yeah, that was a very busy morning. That was the biggest one. Most of the other ones have been smaller. But yeah, we, we, I mean, this is not the only kind of social foodie event today. The AMBS is actually a lot of real, even during the pandemic. I mean, we took all the measures we could, but we were having picnics and potlucks and and sharing food in various ways. And yeah, it's a pretty, I mean, I love my Falls at AMBS when I'm actually, and I'm right there on campus, which is a lot of fun. Yeah, we work. We work, we work hard at having, well, that's probably not the right way to say it. We work at actually having fun together and it's, it's a really good time. And then sometimes I just have people over for coffee, because it's good. This is the legacy of my father. My father passed away this last fall. And yeah, he in his last, well, this is part of his whole life was that he was off into the coffee shop in whatever small town we lived at at nine o'clock in the morning. And also, no, at seven o'clock in the morning and then at 10, and then sometimes again at three. And it was about the coffee, but mostly it was about the conversations. Yeah. Awesome. I have another question. It's two parts. How have you over the last 11 years seen the role of preaching evolving in the church. And the second part of that is, what do you think the pandemic has done to the role of preaching and and how is it shifting and will some of those changes be made more permanent or are we going to shift back into the pre pandemic ways of preaching. I'd just be interested to hear your. That's that's good. Yeah, I just had a good conversation this morning with with. I'll just say a woman preacher here in in Ontario. And she talked about the reality that when she preaches. She mentioned sometimes domestic violence. And talks about all kinds of things that are that we used to not talk about from the pulpit. And I mean, so one of the big changes that's happened in preaching in the last 11 years is that we're getting. We're getting more personal personal we're getting. I think preachers are more vulnerable. In a good way, I don't, I don't advocate for preachers to preach from their wounds, but from their scars. Is that the right term? Yeah, I mean, if you've got gone through something really recently that's probably not the best thing to preach about but if it was a while ago and you've grown and learn and healed in a big way from it. I mean, one of the biggest sort of larger movements in preaching in the last 20 years. Although it does include the last 11 as well is kind of the, the, the sort of storytelling to to the preacher as testifier or witness to what's going on. Yeah, I mean, I grew up in this whole, I grew up preaching in this whole era where we're telling stories like in the 90s and the 2000s. There's all about stories. In fact, some preachers were weren't even calling themselves preachers they were they were storytellers. And, and that's kind of a bit but a story storytelling can still be, I can be still pretty distant from the story I'm telling. Right, whether it's a story of Jesus or a story that's happened in our community. I can still be pretty distant from that the move toward this other kind of preaching sort of testimonial preaching or or preacher as witness. That's a bit different because it includes me more, not that I'm going to be telling more stories about myself that's not what this is about. But it's about being more human and being more vulnerable and opening up more conversations that are actually quite honest about life and faith. And, I mean this course this connects now with swearing and with not that I'm advocating preaching and swearing together I'm not doing that but but but there's a kind of honesty that people are asking for these days about life and faith. That simply wasn't true 50 years ago and that's quite the same way. And so one of the things that we work out a lot in preaching is like how honest can I be right. So this this move from kind of storytelling preaching to the preacher as testifier or as witness to the faith or witness the gospel. You can read more of that from Anna Carter Florence in her book preaching as testimony. Or you can also read that in Thomas Long Reacher as witness. I think that's what it's called. Yeah. So that's one of the things that's shifted in preaching. And also one of the things that shifted in preaching in the last 11 years since I've been at AMBS. I would say in my first years there and I was surprised by this. There were, you know, most of the time at least half half the students in the course are women. And I think the first few courses I took most of the women in the class couldn't actually preach or it was it was not. Yeah, they could sort of only preach because their husband preach most of the time or they or they were. The church was a bit skeptical of them preaching so on. I remember one woman in one of the first class courses was just thrilled in the middle of the class that she was finally the first woman they had on the worship committee. Wow. I would say over the time I've been here there have been more and more women who are recognized as preachers in their own right and who are lead pastors and expect to do that and who whose voices are respected. I'm still surprised that that's kind of new. And in a way it isn't there's lots of women who are preaching and MC Canada MC USA and all over the world but but there are. It's just interesting that the seminary I've been seeing the opposite of that sometimes. Right. And what was the second part of the question has the pandemic changed preaching. Oh yeah. Do you think that things will go back to the way they were before or will those changes. Yeah, that's good. So while he's talking please send your questions in. Yeah, this is a fascinating question and I mean one of the things that that I've heard from preachers is that they're preaching shorter sermons. And it's interesting that what that means is different for different people so one space I was in on talking about this one of the person said that they their sermons were cut in half from 40 minutes to 20 minutes. And then others were saying yeah no for me it's gone from 20 to 10 minutes right so so there's a kind of kind of brevity there that's that's interesting. You know, I'm trying to think exactly why we're preaching shorter sermons I think maybe we just have a different attention span on zoom. And I think that's quite true I think there's all kinds of things going on there. This is I mean really if you think about it. I mean I'm looking at myself right now this is in the whole history of human evolution. This is the first time that we're looking at ourselves and speaking. And that we're we're sitting in a room. And, and I'm broadcasting all over and we're broadcasting all over North America this is bizarre. Right. In real time. And I think there's things that there are things that are happening to our bodies that this whole thing of zoom fatigue is quite real. And part of it is, is the sound is different. I can, I can see you but you're not three dimensions. You sound slightly different on the computer you look slightly different than in person there's all kinds of things like that and then seeing your whole church, you know, there on the screen. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, but but one of the advantages of preaching is that you can see my expressions. Right. You can see. I can see the pre when I attend zoom services I can see the face of the preacher. A lot clearer than when I'm sitting in the pub now that can be different because sometimes the zoom preacher is still. It's a long shot, right where you see the whole pulpit perhaps and the whole body and then you don't see the face as well but if I'm here this this is how I've often preached online it's like right here. So you can see my, my expressions, you can't see my arms as much unless I do this, but you can see the full expression of the person, which I think has some real benefits. Awesome. All right. There are about four people who have answered your question Alan. Yes. Know those, and then see if you have any response to them, Audrey mirror said, she did an MD with a pastoral counseling focus, but then did congregational ministry for 14 years followed by ministry for 20 years. Yeah. Mark Diller harder has been a generalist so he did the general MD assumed he would pass to right after graduation, but worked for years with young adult ministry with Mennonite Church Eastern Canada before becoming a pastor, the end, give a good grounding. What I don't remember is any guidance and becoming a tech expert or video editor for for being a pastor during the pandemic, which is awesome. Robin Walton noted that she got a master of arts in Christian formation was already a chaplain and continued in that role until retirement, and began developing her skills as a spiritual director. During her program at AMBS and has continued that beyond. She has three directees now and also mentions that in connection with her hospital work she has developed a relationship with a local Somali mosque, being steeped in an abaptism did in fact prepare me to be open to other faiths. I learned at the mosque that the leaders there. Sorry, I have to scroll down here, all attended men and I schools in Somalia when they were growing up and credit the men and I it's for their place in the world now. And then Laura funks said she spent a glorious semester at AMBS and then slowly worked on her MA with CMU Canadian Canadian men and I university did a focus on spiritual direction and has a private practice as a spiritual director for the past 10 years, and that's how is doing that work with midnight church manitoba. And then she is heading into a congregation to work with seniors with a spiritual direction component. Oh, sorry, Audrey said that was Ken who who did the focus on pastoral counseling sorry about that. So Alan, any comments on those responses to your question. Yeah, I mean that's, yeah, thank, thank you very much for those that's really interesting. I mean it's. Yeah, there's, there's, I mean life takes us in all kinds of different directions and. Yeah, it's good to hear all those those mixtures of things that that people are doing. Yeah. A follow up question to that. Yeah, one of the things that changing at AMBS I believe next year is that preaching now be required for doing an MDiv degree. And do you want to say a little bit about that I think it reflects some of this movement from what people think they're going to do to what they actually end up doing what would you like to say about requiring a preaching class. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so just, just so you know, I've been working at this working at, I mean, it's not just me, but I've been working at having a preaching course for every MDiv student. For the last seven years and here we are. Great. Hallelujah. And also, I mean, also we've added as requirements to the, to all MDiv programs preaching and pastoral care. So that, because these 2 things, you know, they're crucial in pastoral life. They're crucial in all kinds of life of service in the church. I mean, 1 of the things that I was experiencing at AMBS is that students were. Doing MDivs or other kinds of, well, we'll just stick with MDivs, Masters of Divinity. And maybe they were thinking they were going to go do an academic route to do a PhD or they were thinking they're going to be a chaplain or there are all kinds of things that they were thinking they were going to do. And, and they end up preaching a lot. Right. So they come back to me and say, oh, yeah, should have taken the preaching course. And so we were, we were just trying to listen to that and hear that. And then I think the pastoral care thing was crucial to like. And this also came from a lot of conference ministers who were, who were noting that they had persons with Masters of Divinity who didn't have a preaching course or a pastoral care course. And they're like, wow. But again, you know, you can, you can choose. Choose a course of study. And again, if you're thinking of going on to do a PhD, if you're thinking of going on to do church administration, you may not be thinking about some of these things. Reality is, though, in the Mennonite church, if you're going to be, well, in most denominations, if you're working in administration, if you're working at a paratroops organization, if you're working, you're still going to be preaching. And a crucial part of your work, even if you're, well, if you're an administrator is pastoral care, like these are, these are really important things. So that's just a bit of background to, to that reality. Yeah, we also, we also, we're hearing stories. This is just a few stories, but people saying, I'm going to do the. I'm going to do take the sort of MDiv theology route or peace studies route or biblical studies route. So I don't have to take preaching because I don't want. Because I'm nervous about standing up in front of people and talking. I was like, okay. We could work at that. And I want to work at that. So, so, yeah, so I'm happy for this change. Back in 1986, when I started seminary, students were required to meet with Erlen Waltner and June Alamon Yoder. And we did a little speech assessment. Yes. Then they talked about what are your plans. And I said, well, I'm planning to be a chaplain and I don't see myself preaching. Well, at that point, there weren't lots of women preaching, right. Yeah. They both said to me, if you're going to get a seminary degree, you will be asked to preach you really need preaching. And so I did and it really did transform my own ministry and self understanding so I'm really excited about this change. I'm not seeing other questions coming in from our alums I'm going to give you one more chance here. If you have a question you'd like to ask Alan please type that in the Q&A feature right away. And Alan, as we think about all of the things we've covered today, are there things that you would have had a chance to talk about yet. No, not necessarily. Yeah, I mean, I think I think one of the things. Well, I think just a broad thing that the church that the church will face and is facing is this whole issue of COVID itself. Right. I mean, you talked about sort of the nature of, of, of, you know, worship and preaching and so much. And so those kinds of things in the pan in the midst of a pandemic. I just think that this. Yeah, there are ways in which, in which the world is being shaped by this pandemic and I think that even removed from the issue that we're meeting online. And on zoom for worship that's going to have some big, big effects on the church in the future. I'm not sure what those are. But I think there's going to be, we're going to look back on this era in some interesting ways I don't know what they're going to be. But this is a this is an interesting moment in the church that that I think we're going to notice. Well, and another thing that's happening right now is the polarization of our society. And in some context more than others. How do you work at preaching in a polarized setting like what, what are your students asking about and what are you, what are you introducing as you think about that. There's, there's, there's, there's more and more kind of literature out there one of my friends in and I can't remember her name in the Academy of homiletics, which is the sort of guild that I'm connected with with preaching, wrote a book actually a few years ago called, you know, preaching in the purple church, right, because the blue and the red. So it's a very it's an American kind of perspective but that's a really good question. And these these things are cut differently in different places so the kind of polarization in Canada is different than in the US and of course in different parts of the US is different. Different kinds of issues happening in places like Ethiopia and Venezuela and I mean, so so there's, there's, I mean one of the things we often say at ambs is we'll just stick to the Bible. And there's actually, I mean, I know that the Bible can still be used there it is preaching in the purple zone. Yes. Yeah, I would recommend that book highly. But yeah, we talk about we talk, I mean, the Bible can be, we can preach this super conservative sermon from the Bible I can preach super liberal sermon if those are the sort of the polarities. But there is something about sticking with the text and letting the text speak. That's sort of easier said than done. But yeah, you know, one of the things that this is massive study done preaching in as more like the 2010 kind of era. They interviewed 267 people who love listening to sermons these lay people and they, they eventually produced four books. It's called listening to the listeners. If you want to look it up. One of the things they found they weren't looking for this. They found that about a third of the people listen to sermons, not because of its style or its form like is it exegetical or narrative or what they listen to the sermon because they love the preacher. Right. They have deep respect for the preacher. Right. So there's there's something about the ethos of the. I mean this, of course, has to do with the congregational structure as well but you know that you're listening to the preacher and you're listening to the sermon not because of their political views or this or this or this big but because they were there. When your dad died and they really helped your family through it and you just see throughout the pastor's life that they're preaching the gospel with their life and that helps us to listen right to the preacher. So I would, I would go back to that more than style or sometimes even things that are said. But that our lives are witness to the gospel. Thank you so much Alan for sharing with us today for all of the questions you've answered. And we're so glad to get a better glimpse into the work you do. Thank you to all the alumni who've joined us today as well and thank you for your ongoing support of AMBS. If you haven't given yet this year this fiscal year invite you to do that your financial support is so helpful to us, and also your encouragement of other people that you know to support us. If you know of people that you'd like to have take a course please put them in touch with us or send us their name and contact information. We keep finding that our alumni and pastors are the primary motivating force for many people to start seminary studies, having someone tap them on the shoulder really does make a difference. If you have a course you'd like to take we have several courses being offered this summer in our summer term and what really exciting courses. You can sign up for those online as well. Please stay connected through our church leadership center you might have seen that we have a webinar coming up on May 4 with Drew straight on Christian nationalism. And they're already over 300 people registered for that webinar we are so excited about the response to that. If you haven't yet signed up and are interested do that right away. Next month on May 19, our third Thursday conversation has changed from what was earlier announced. Jacobs is getting the chance to go to Tanzania for the first ordinations of women in the Tanzanian Mennonite church. So am BS librarian Carl Stutzman will be joining us to talk about his work as library director. Also thanks to Janet McGeary our student AV tech who provided all of our technical support today. This concludes this month's third Thursday program I hope you have a wonderful day. Thank you so much for joining us.