 Good afternoon and welcome to all of you who are joining us for this third Thursday conversation. My name is Janine Bertie Johnson and I serve as director of alumni, as well as director of campus ministries and admissions and development associate. Just a couple of housekeeping details before we get started. Please note that the webinar, including questions is being recorded. And if you have a technical concern at any time during the webinar, please send a chat message to the AMBS host. If you have a comment or question for our speaker, we ask that you use the Q&A feature 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 asked Jamie. If you can see who else has joined our webinar, please use the chat function to give your name, location and what years you were at AMBS. Make sure you have it set to go to all panelists and attendees, not just panelists. Turning now to the reason we're all here. Dr. Jamie Pitts is associate professor of Anabaptist Studies, director of the Institute of Mennonite Studies, and editor of Anabaptist Witness Journal. He graduated from the Institute of the University of Texas Fuller Theological Seminary and received his PhD from the University of Edinburgh and Scotland. He is also on the board of the Central District Conference of Mennonite Church USA. Jamie came to AMBS in 2012 and is valued as an excellent teacher and colleague. Jamie will start by answering several questions that I have for him and after that we'll have time for your questions and comments. I'm going to turn at those at any point through the webinar by using the Q&A feature. Jamie thanks for joining us today. I invite you to start by just telling us what you'd like to know about you, what you'd like us to know about you as an introduction. Sure, well thanks Janine for inviting me into this space. I've heard a lot about these conversations and I'm honored to participate in them and looking at the list of participants and seeing the names come in. I'd like to see some familiar names, folks that I've had in class or interacted with over the years as well as some new names. So welcome everybody. Yeah, I mean you kind of gave a thumbnail sketch of some of my background. I grew up in Texas. My dad actually went to seminary when I was four in Virginia to become and he became an Episcopal priest. I had been baptized in the Catholic Church. He was Catholic his whole life up to that point. And so I spent my formative years in the Episcopal Church in a pretty charismatic context. And then that led me in the college into a non-denominational kind of more Pentecostal charismatic faith experience and church context. From that context that I went to seminary myself out of Fuller and that's where I met Mennonites for the first time. And I visited some of the Amish communities south of Cleveland. That was really my only awareness of Anabaptism up until I got to Fuller and met some wonderful Mennonites and other Anabaptists who wooed me into the tradition. And so that's kind of why I am here and I'm grateful to be here. Can you tell us a story of a time that you experienced God in a powerful way? Sure. Well, I thought of a couple different stories that I think maybe I'll just tell them briefly rather than telling one story at length. So when I was 11 years old, my family moved from Houston to Austin, Texas and my dad took a pastorate in Austin. And I had, you know, growing up in the church, in the Episcopal church, there was, you know, I'd already been baptized, so I was looking forward to confirmation. I didn't know that at the time, but that's a really formative time period in the church. But my youth group leader was, as I mentioned earlier, kind of a care, the youth group I was in was deeply shaped by the charismatic movement. And he asked me if I had given my life to Jesus. And I did not, I'd never heard that before. And, you know, now as a theologian, I might have, I do have lots to say about some of that, the theology that was surrounding that experience, but I prayed the prayer to accept Jesus into my heart. And that is one of the most powerful experiences of the Holy Spirit that I've had in my life. It felt like water was running through my body. And I said that to this youth pastor, and he said, well, that's the Holy Spirit. That's what happens when you accept Jesus. And so, you know, whatever I might think theologically about some of the different theology of that experience, I still really value it as a genuine experience of the Holy Spirit. And so, you know, growing up in the charismatic kind of world, I had a lot of very intense experiences of the Holy Spirit. And so I kind of had to reconstruct some of how I understand God's presence after that. And I'll say that, you know, part of that has been for me has been through spiritual direction. And just to give one example of a time where I felt the Holy Spirit felt God's presence through the spirit in spiritual direction was when I was coming here for the first time. It was before I came here. I had an interview. I'd never been to MBS, never been to Elkhart. And I had a vision within in my spiritual direction session of walking on this campus. And it must have been after my interview. So I think I so I've been here once, I guess. And so I had a vision of the campus and walking in that God was alongside me kind of like God's hand was with me. And I just had a deep sense of peace about whatever came and I was offered the position and so I had a deep sense of peace about coming here knowing that I would be in God's presence and that has been the case, thankfully. That's beautiful. And you've kind of touched on this already, but what attracted you to be part of the AMBS community? Yeah, well, like I said, I did first learn about Mennonites at Fuller Seminary, so an evangelical context in which there was not Mennonites were not the dominant stream and so kind of becoming interested in Mennonite theology and Mennonite church life and so forth was definitely the kind of edgy thing to do in that context. It was kind of it was certainly an edge at Fuller. It was not the mainstream of either theology or the student life and faith at the seminary at that seminary. But I was really captivated by Mennonite theology and I was actually I was talking to one of my professors from Fuller yesterday, Juan Martinez. Juan, as some of you may know, is a Mennonite brethren, originally from South Texas. But I was the president of Senia in Guatemala for a decade and has been was at Fuller for a long time. And when I was at Fuller, he taught there was enough about the students seeking ministry positions that he taught a course in Anabaptist history and polity. And I audited that course in 2005. And, you know, I read some Mennonite theologians but I never really gotten a broader introduction to the history. And I never actually told Juan this until yesterday but it was in his class that I decided that I wanted to be a Mennonite. And you know part of that for me was seeing this tradition that and Juan really taught an imperfect view of the tradition he did not try to romanticize the tradition. But he also talked about the history of the tradition and present and global present of the tradition as one that centered following Jesus, worshipping Jesus, reading scripture and or anything our lives through reading of scripture and community and in ways that were really deeply resonant with my charismatic background but also felt to me like got more of kind of what I was learning through as my through my studies of scripture that kind of whole message of Jesus. And so my work later in my doctoral work in Mennonite theology kind of I was able to continue to explore some of my thoughts on that and so when I got I applied to AMBS, you know again I'd never been to the seminary I the only I lived in Washington DC for a year after seminary with some Mennonites who further tried to de romanticize the tradition for me. But I will do my PhD in Scotland I was pretty removed from Mennonite circles and so I had not had a lot of experience in the Mennonite world but when I interviewed here. Rebecca Slough picked me up I flew from Edinburgh, Scotland to Chicago, and Rebecca Slough the former dean here in AMBS picks me up and by the end of that car ride. I had which is about you know two and a half hours I had a sense of this. This would be an amazing place to work. This would be an amazing boss. And just what I was learning about the seminary community from her. I was very intrigued and the more I talked to people the seminary but the more you know when I met that time President Sarah. I was so impressed by the rank and the faculty and students I was just so impressed it felt like. This is a place where I can continue to explore I can continue continue my own journey of exploration of this tradition this my sense of calling as a, as a scholar and professor. This is a place that really felt like home. That's that's what it felt like when I first came here and that's that's been the case. Well we're so glad you came. Tell us about the classes you're teaching this year both in the fall and in the spring and a little bit about each one. Oh, I gotta think back to the fall. I taught Christian theology one on I think. Yeah, in the fall I taught Christian theology one on campus and online. So those of you who haven't been at the seminary in a number of years the way we do our theology now is our kind of systematic theology is through to a two semester sequence that every student pretty much has to take at least the first class. So there's Christian theology one and two. And each of those classes covers a number of the kind of classical topics in systematic theology so in Christian theology one we talked about the doctrine of God, the Trinity, the different views of Jesus about Jesus. And you know salvation sin creation, some of those topics. So yeah, I've been teaching kind of on a cycle I teach that class every year on campus and every other year I also teach it online. And I will say, you didn't ask me to talk about this, but I'll say briefly that I really find the online teaching extremely valuable because those students not more valuable necessarily my campus classes I love campus classes take that for granted that all of us here have enjoyed campus classes but in the online class let's say in theology it's really fascinating because you have people who are full time pastors, and they'll get on. And you know we're talking about something like theodicy, like what you know how do we think about the goodness of God and God's power and creativity and so forth and relationships are suffering and evil. And you know we had course materials and then you have pastors who are you know oh this happened to me last week, and you know, can, can others kind of speak into this is how I responded but I wasn't really sure and then you might have three or four other pastors or other church leaders. say yeah you know I had that this is kind of what worked for me and, but I was really interested like relating it to the course materials. So I've just seen a really rich interplay in those between practical ministry and the kind of course materials we use through those online courses. And here in the spring, I am teaching. Anabaptist history and theology so probably most of you in this call took a version of that class that's the 16th century. Anabaptist origins class. And I also in teaching online a course that essentially kind of takes the history and theology up from after the origins. That class is called global anabaptist midnight history and theology so we look at tradition formation. It's kind of the tradition around the world through migration and mission activity. It gives us a chance to to learn about the kind of more immediate background for the, the global church that we engage in today. And I'm also teaching a course called theology and context. I created this course when I first came to the seminary and teach it every other year. And this involves thinking about how we understand our social world. So, you know, we use terms like society or class or race or a variety of terms that come to us that we used to try to make sense of the world around us. And that is our, what are our biblical theological convictions have to say about how we might think about the world. Are there categories from scripture for instance the the category the principalities and powers, how does that shape how we see the world around us and act in the world around us so the class asked some questions like that, putting theological materials in the conversation with a variety of theories so the class now works as a kind of introduction to social theory for peace study students. And then we, we, we use Elkhart as a case study. So you've been thinking about kind of some of the theory around how we think as Christians about society. Well, what are some research methods that allow us to really dig into the context around us. And so we spend a number of weeks learning about the history using statistics doing interviews to learn more about Elkhart. And so yesterday, my class over zoom interviewed the mayor of Elkhart Rod Robertson, and we had a great discussion with him. I think we're interviewing the cultural historian of the Pockegan band of Potawatomi Marcus Winchester. So we have some just really exciting conversations and ways to learn more deeply about our context so those are the classes I've been teaching this year. I think that there would be several of us that would love to come back to seminary and do some of those classes. So I will say I'm teaching the theology and context for the first time is a hybrid. This next fall. So if you want to just come and hang out in Elkhart for a week. And do the rest of the readings on online and other assignments then we'd love to have you. And Jamie, you have other projects besides courses. Can you describe your work with Institute of Mennonite Studies and Anabaptist Witness and some other things like that that you're working on for the seminary. Sure, yeah, there's a lot but I'll try to be brief here. Institute of Mennonite Studies, as you hopefully all know is the research and publishing arm of the seminary we have a number of book series. Studies in Peace and Scripture, a new series we started a couple years ago called Studies in Anabaptist Theology and Ethics. And then a, the series, the Classics of the Radical Reformation which is a translation series that probably you all read some of when you took Anabaptist History and Theology. And I'm the chair of the committee, the editorial committee for the, that translation series so I'm pretty directly engaged in that. I'm also as part of how, so, you know, part of my interest when I came to the seminary was how we think about the relationship between the seminary and the local community. That's why I've shaped this Theology and Context course as I have. But that class and my position at IMS has got me involved in a project here in Elkhart that is, it's an oral history project collecting stories of black elders who grew up in the segregated black neighborhood. It was called Benham West. So just up Benham from the seminary just south of the railroad tracks to the west of Benham was from the 1930s through the 60s, the only place in Elkhart that in really an all of Elkhart County that African Americans were allowed to live. And we've heard from some elders that they wanted their stories collected before they passed on and were forgotten and felt like black history needs to be a lot more visible within Elkhart. And because of my role at IMS I was asked to help give some guidance to to this project and so Nikisha Elena Alexis from our intercultural competence and undoing racism team. And I are giving leadership to that project so the Elkhart black history projects is a is a significant focus for me right now. And about this witness is a mission journal that I edit so many of you may remember mission focus, which was a journal first started by the Mennonite Board of Mission by Wilbur Shank in the early 1970s and then edited by Walter Sawatsky while he was at in the 90s and until 2012. I now edit that and we renamed it and about this witness. And it's a come we have issues that come out every twice a year on different themes so our last issue was on displacement of indigenous peoples and land has a number of great essays on that topic. And we have an issue coming out later this month on worship and witness and that will be guest edited actually by Katie Graber and Annaly Leptison who have been up to the key editors of the voices together handle project. And I've been doing a webinar series with them actually and so next Thursday since you all seem to be available on Thursdays. Next Thursday I will be interviewing them about this issue and the topic of worship and witness. So I would love for you all to tune in there you can find us on Facebook, or Twitter or Instagram and get the links to register for the webinar. Thank you. I'm wondering what are some dreams or a dream that you have for AMBS. Well yeah I mean kind of picking up from one of the threads I just mentioned I would love for AMBS to be more deeply integrated into the local community more of a part when I when I moved to AMBS when I moved to Elkhart. You know, it was 2012. So the city was still reeling from the financial crash. And I remember going to set up you know a bank account going to find a dentist for the first time here. Going to get sheets at Sears, which I was still open here and I'll get now closed. And I just remember people every place I went why are you here. Well, it was a tough job and first of all because of the economics of Elkhart people in 2012 people were surprised that anyone moved to Elkhart for a job. But then I would say well I work at the Mennonite Seminary the what. What's that. Well you know it's down on Benham, kind of just south of Hiveley. Oh I thought that was a, you know, retirement community I didn't know what that was. I even had someone say Mennonite, well they're done in Goshen. Are there other Mennonites here in Elkhart too? You know and I think that if you took that at face value you would overlook the way that Mennonites have been deeply engaged in Elkhart for a long, long time. And the seminary community has been deeply engaged in the life of Elkhart for a long time. So I don't want to under underplay that but I do think there are ways that the seminary can be more deeply engaged in the life of Elkhart. And, you know, being a witness, serving, learning from folks in the community. And so I've been doing some work around that. As I mentioned my colleague Jana Hunter Bowman in spite of the fact she lives in South Bend she's been doing quite a bit around this through her work with the witness colloquium which is a Wednesday noon event. So, and the administration has also taken this seriously over the years so that's a vision I have. Another I'll just say one other piece that kind of goes the, you know, in some ways the opposite direction but thinking about the relationship between the local and the global is really important to me. And I, in the last five years or so, AMBS has become has had a much higher percentage of international students than we have at least in the first five years I was at AMBS. I hope that AMBS can continue to grow as an international seminary in partnership, still rooted with our denominational affiliations with Mini Church USA and Mini Church Canada. But being part of what those denominations are doing, connecting through an annual conference with the broader expression of Anabaptism in the world. I think partnership is going to be really important there there's some wonderful work going on all around the world in theological education that we can both again help serve and contribute to and learn quite a bit from. And it feels like we're at the beginning of a really exciting journey in that direction and I dream about where we will be with that in five to 10 years. It's really exciting. And do you have any questions for the alumni who joined us today. Anything you're interested in knowing from them. Well, I'm always interested to know what you learned about in seminary that you still ruminate on that still feels important. But you, you know, or their ideas or topics that you feel like resources that you got that you feel like yeah this has been something I continue to draw on. I also think I'd be curious for your perspective on this I think you know sometimes we we ask students that are graduating we always ask students that are graduating that kind of similar question. But sometimes when you're in the middle of it, still are you know at the end of your program you don't, you don't really know what it's going to be like in five 1020 years. And the things that seem really important from seminary or seemed like I can't believe we didn't get more of this or whatever. In, you know, down the line you realize you come to see things differently and I'd be curious to hear some reflection on that. Some of the things that you know when you were in seminary you really were excited about or interested in and then 10 years on you thought oh that was that was not as important as I thought it would be. And actually this other thing really turned out to be more important or some of what I got, I, you know, I wish I had gotten something else, or the things that you would have hoped for from seminary. So those are those are that's the questions that come to mind. Thanks. So, now we have time for you, who have joined us today to make comments or ask questions. If you'd like to answer Jamie's questions that he just asked you can do that either in the chat or in the q amp a. If you have a question for him. Please put that in the q amp a so I'm sure to see it there. Jamie while they're typing in their questions I'll start with one more and that is just tell us a little bit about your project on the Holy Spirit and your research and writing in that area. Sure. I have a book project that is tentatively called organizing spirit. And what I've been interested in is over the years of teaching in the Anabaptist world and thinking about my own longer experience with Holy Spirit. And, you know, through the church and so forth. So how we talk about the spirit in relationship to different forms of social organization. And that sounds a little abstract so let me try to get a little more concrete I've noticed that in the Anabaptist world we like to emphasize we like to use those biblical passages that the spirit blows where she will. We really emphasize how the kind of disruptive character of the Holy Spirit and often we reference 16th century Anabaptism here. When I, there. I will not say who this was where I got this quote from the moment but I have a quote I've used and some writing from a current midnight leader who said you know, Anabaptists midnight turn we're not at our best when we're institutionalizing. We look back to the 16th century we saw they were, you know, they had the Holy Spirit and that meant they resisted the institutions. Now, often we need to be resisting institutions. So, my point here is not to to cast shade or to criticize. Association of spirits and resistance or spirit and movement spirit and the freedom and ways from freedom from and freedom within institutions and ways that kind of disrupt some of our ordinary ways of working. So we we underplay both biblical and historical Anabaptist material that talks about that would that lead us to see maybe a more positive vision for the role of institutions. And you know, to me it's interesting to hear men and I leaders who are institutional leaders criticize institutions as such. I neither I neither want to give a blanket kind of blessing institutions nor do I want to criticize them as such and my worry is that we've used the language of the Holy Spirit to criticize institutions as such. And so I'm interested in the kind of multiplicity of forms of social organization that the spirit might give rise to, and I'm using a number of case studies to kind of help flesh out the theology I get from contemporary systematic theology and historic Anabaptism so for instance, I have chapter on Vincent Harding great black civil rights leader who spent about a decade with men nights in the 60s. And was an institution builder throughout his whole life and if you read his history books he's constantly talking about the role of what he called freedom institutions in the black freedom struggle. And I think if we pay attention to these kind of institutions. We might have some kind of moral and theological guidance that helps us have a more complex way of talking about how the spirit is coordinated with our social lives. So, yeah, got a bunch of other case studies but I'll leave it there for now so to hear from some of your questions. Thank you. This question comes from Jacob phrase. He said he's so encouraged by your ecumenical and Episcopal background and pleased to note that several of today's faculty come from other than Anabaptist traditions. What is the present spiritual yearning of seminary students is their quest similar to yours discovering an abaptism, or are they seeking to be educated in the interfaith world for example indigenous spirituality interfaith dialogue with Muslims etc. Just wondering about the yearning of our present day students spiritual yearning. Thank you Jacob. Yeah, thank you Jacob that's a great question. Interesting. I think I would need. It has changed over time, since I've been at MBS and excuse me part of that is the changing demographic of the student body. I would say when I first came to MBS the first few years. You had what I would describe as a kind of jaded. Mininite students who grew up in white Mininites from North America who grew up in white Mininite congregations and they personally and their congregations majority of the people in their congregations would trace their origins back to the 16th century Anabaptist. And they were often quite jaded. And their spiritual yearning was I think in some ways to connect their faith to to a kind of posture of a sort of political posture that had that they would have seen as had some integrity and cultural posture as well against the background of communities that they would have seen as kind of out of touch in a lot of ways. And so they were at seminary trying to connect some dots they they got interested in different political movements, but it was harder to see how that actually related to their faith. They're there, you know, were more kind of assimilated into North American culture. But again it was harder to see how that connected to their faith even though that was really important to them so how do you that yearning to how do you connect these pieces. When you've seen that the Anabaptist communities don't have it all figured out. On the other hand, there were students like me, who came in kind of very hungry for what Anabaptism seemed to offer. And so I used to love staging conversations in my classes between these people who thought Anabaptism was the best thing of all time. And they just learned about it, and they wanted to, you know, learn everything they could about it and let it transform their lives and again a kind of seeking integrity I would say was was a you know for those of us who came from kind of more generic evangelical politicalism, putting the pieces again, you know, pieces around politics and culture and faith together. Anabaptism was seen as a kind of key, key point in which discipleship kind of more rigorous discipleship in community, the with with a much more robust sense of ethics was seen as a significant step towards integrity. And then so you have those kind of very optimistic folks then talking to these jaded folks. There's still some of that dynamic in the classroom but of course with a much higher percentage of international students you bring a number of a wide variety of kind of spiritual yearnings. I see some kind of coalescing on. Well, I would say that I think some of the jadedness is still there but it may be this is you know we hear about millennial kind of millennial sentiment more optimistic so I don't maybe this is part of it but I see a bit less of that kind of cynicism about the church and more of a curiosity. How does the church how does my faith connect me to the things that I care about in, you know, that the political concerns I have the cultural passions that I have. How does my faith really work at the heart of that. And then there's a role in this especially you know I think of a wonderful international student is in the class that I just taught this morning, who keeps asking how to how does this work for me as a pastor. And that kind of the search the yearning for, again a connection between a deeper intellectual foundation and framework for our faith and practical ministry is something I see a lot of as well so in terms of the the original question I don't know that, you know we have we have classes in in Islamic Christian relations, and we're increasingly integrating engagement with indigenous sources into our courses and so forth. And these are, you know, I would say the kind of post colonial anti or decolonial spirit is very has become very central to what we do at the seminary in all of our classes. Many of our students most of our students from variety of backgrounds are really interested in how do we think about Christianity how do we have a faith with integrity that does not reproduce and actually fully faces the legacy of colonialism. That would be another kind of spiritual quest that I see many of our students and certainly our faculty is being engaged on right now. Thank you very much. Janet, Guthrie says she's very excited to hear about the Elkhart black history project and oral history work with black elders in the community. Will the AMBS library be archiving these interviews. How will the community at large be encouraged to access the information, any thoughts about cross generational fertilization to engage black youth as part of the initiative. Thank you so much Janet. Yeah, that's a wonderful question and I don't know you Janet I don't think but if you have. I love about this a lot and so if you have thoughts around this I would love to hear from you. You can send me an email. So this is a really core issue that the question of archival access as a major ethical issue. When it comes to research on and with marginalized communities. And so we've been thinking about some of these questions from the beginning, the location of any archives, any public kind of events we do that draws attention to so the ideas that we're going to be creating a book and documentary film out of these oral histories. So how do we. Yeah, location of the archive so AMBS has done some scanning of the primary text resources we've been getting from some of our interviews. The Ocean College did an oral history project about a decade ago on the origins of the black community Elkhart and all of that material is housed at the Elkhart County Historical Museum. They are trying to think about some of these questions of access as well they've done a couple big projects exhibitions, but if you're familiar with that museum it's out in Bristol which is not very accessible to Elkhart's black community. It's not that far but we are meeting actually so the some of you may be familiar with SNCC the student nonviolent coordinating committee. There was an active force in 60s and 70s black freedom struggle here in the US. They have a new day they recently did an oral history project in collaboration with Duke University and they thought through a lot of the technical aspects of this of the, the access community access problems and so we actually have a meeting with them in a couple weeks to talk about archival access so I could go in a lot of technical details here I don't think that'll be of great interest to everybody in the call but Janet again if you want to contact me. I'm happy to talk more about this because this is a really important issue we're trying to care for. Thanks. Roy Kauffman is asking is it significant that Anabaptist theology was enculturated in agrarian settings for most of men I history and Roy is is one who has written about Freeman South Dakota as one of these communities. Yes he has. Hi Roy. It's good to hear from you. I know your views on this and I, I broadly would say I share them. It is significant and in general, I think we are needing, you know I say we, Anabaptist Mininites are needing to wrestle with the significance of the materiality of the, of the art tradition. And by that I mean we rightly talk about Anabaptist theological distinctives. We rightly talk about current global connections global church connections as significant and you know I was presenting on something on Anabaptist history a few years ago at a local church. And I was asked well shouldn't we just forget about this whole all the midnight stuff from the last 500 years, because that's not important anymore what's important is the global the future. How did we and how did we get here that requires some real careful attention to the forms of life and thought of not just people who live 500 years ago but the people who have lived 400 and 300 and 200 and 100 years ago. Seeing that they were not always as homogenous as we've made them out to be. And which is not to say they were, you know, we need to think critically and carefully, but also appreciatively about the material conditions for the existence of this tradition. We like to kind of sneer at the quiet in the land, the predominantly agricultural communities that sustain Anabaptism and about this life and tradition for most of the last 500 years, but we would not be here. We're not for those communities so we there there's kind of a I think it needs to be a reckoning. And one of the things I appreciate Roy that you do and your your most recent book as you think about the different dimensions of what is important about the agricultural basis of the Anabaptist community historic Anabaptist community life in relationship to the to the real moral and political issues around indigenous justice. Those communities have been implicated and participated in the displacement of indigenous people so there is a reckoning that needs to happen. But guess what that reckoning isn't solved if we just say oh forget the agricultural communities will just be urban dwellers. And that's that doesn't concern us because we've let the farm. So, you know, our ecological crisis as you also draw in your book also forces us to ask some questions around the value of agricultural life so there's just a number of different reasons why we need to think a lot more carefully than I think we have about the rural and urban Anabaptist life and us urban dwellers and I would count myself not just as I live in the great metropolis of Elkhart but because I've always lived in cities and Elkhart's the smallest city I've ever lived in. We need to find a lot of ways to support and value theologically and practically the rural basis, you know that historic and ongoing rural reality of Anabaptist life and you know I just saw some statistics. So last week related to Europe I think they're just focused on Europe but it was through the 1950s in countries like France and Germany and the Netherlands, you had 25 to 50% of populations still living in rural agricultural settings working on farms. Now the percentage is 2% and almost throughout Europe. That's a massive social and cultural change that has significant environmental impact that we have not given almost any thought to. And so I think you know Roy and I see Troy is asking who was the question is his Roy Kaufman and his most recent book is the drama of a rural communities life cycle which focuses on his own Mennonite community and Freeman South Dakota. And you'll see some nice words from me on the back of it, because I do really appreciate what Roy is doing here. But again I mean there's just so many reasons to pay attention to this conversation and the questions. A lot of us who live in urban settings rightly focused on questions of race, indigenous justice and so forth these are, these are not alternatives. We need to hold these questions together. And so yeah there's a lot more to say about that but I'll let you read Roy's book and then we can have more conversation about it. Thanks and I put both of the book titles and years in the chat there so you can look those up. Okay, here's a fun question from Randy Miller, who asks how have you experienced the transition from being the rookie on faculty to being one of the grizzled old timers. And he especially is interested in knowing like, do you feel like you have more freedom or there are different expectations and so on just what has that been like. That indicates all the transitions of the last several years thank you Randy for that question. Hi Randy yeah thank you. And yes I am getting grizzled you can see some gray here creeping in. That certainly was not the case when I started this job at, I think it was 31. I'm now 40. And the faculty has has dramatically changed where you know, there's a couple. There's still probably most faculty members are older than I am but I've been around, almost a decade now, and there's several faculty members who are much have been on on the faculty for much shorter period of time so yeah. Yeah, I no longer feel like the starry eyed kid looking up at these giants of you know these theological giants like gaol grubber coons and lowest Barrett and Ben Olin burger. I recognize that I now carry some institutional history and I carry some responsibility for the institutions kind of continuity and sense of who it is and what it is and I look back and I think wow I've trained almost a decade of men and I pastures. That's, that's incredible. That's not something I gave a lot of thought to, you know at 31 of like, oh what's what's my legacy going to be I didn't know how to think in those terms but now I think about, wow. I have a deeper sense of the responsibility, the gift of the responsibility that I have in this position in a way that at the beginning it was more like I was just kind of figuring out where I was who I was, what I was doing. Now I can kind of relax a bit more on some of those questions and think, okay well what kind of legacy, have I been developing and what do I want to personally and an institution. What do I want, how do I want to help shape this institution and you know I will say from the beginning. It is a small seminary and it's a, it's an empowering seminary so I've been invited into leadership in a variety of ways from pretty early on but I definitely again feel more comfortable in some of those roles now and like, I have some responsibility as a more fully member to help guide along with colleagues and administrators, the future of the seminary so it's a it's a it's a good feeling, scary sometimes. And you know I miss those old colleagues and in some ways I miss the, you know, kind of being able to sit back and let Ben and Ted and Gail kind of have it out and figure things out. Not just because of the because it was nice for them to carry that way but because they were incredibly wise and wonderful people and and I just, I really do miss our conversations as well, and wonderful wonderful colleagues now of course we we don't see a lot of each other right now because of the pandemic so it's been almost a year since we've worked in person closely together. And that's not bad but also just because of by virtue of the generational shift. Those older colleagues are no longer around as much. And that's too bad but that's how it goes. Thanks, we have time for another question if anyone would like to put one in the Q&A. I'll ask one Jamie that maybe we'll spark some more thought, but you have one of the gifts you bring to MBS is your ability with the Spanish language, and you've made some connections with other Hispanic ministries as well would you share a little bit about your work in that area. Sure. Well, you know, when I interviewed the first so when I interviewed at MBS. I was not using I didn't really draw on Spanish language literature in my PhD. I wasn't really I was speaking Spanish kind of for fun at that point. There's lots of Spaniards and they live in Edinburgh so I was still speaking Spanish regularly. I remember Charles Bond trigger the student representative on my committee, my hiring committee in the, we weren't using zoom was probably Skype at that point but I skyped from Edinburgh. It's kind of a preliminary interview to see if they wanted to bring for them to decide if they want to bring me in and I never forget he asked me how would you use your degree in Spanish and the fact that you speak Spanish in your job at MBS and I was just shocked because first of all that he had actually read, like that far in my CV. But also, it was not something I thought about it ends up being something that has been important for my work at MBS so I teach the course on Christianity Latin America every other year and so that's become an important way for me to kind of continue from Latin American history and theology and help shape students to learn from and hear these voices. But I've also as you mentioned Jeanine I've also connected with so I spent part of my sabbatical a couple years ago in Mexico City. I'm working with the CM churches. CM is a midnight conference located in Mexico City. And I've worked at various points with some of the leadership there. So I taught kind of lay in about this history course while I was there. And just related to church folks in that area and I've been able to as well so in an about this witness we actually publish in. We try to publish in the language any language that we receive, as long as we can find somebody that we trust that can edit it. And because I speak Spanish so that's enabled me to connect with a lot of Spanish speaking church leaders and theologians and so forth and we regularly publish articles in Spanish. My assistant on an about this witness Marco secosta is from Argentina and so he's really helped us a lot in the last year or two. On that project, I've, I've worked some with some of the local Latino assemblies of God. I went to Mexico and lectured on the Holy Spirit at this big assemblies of God Church in Mexico City, and I've done an event with them on campus here in this at the seminary so it's definitely opened up some really interesting connections that I didn't expect And it's been great as well with Janet hunter bowman coming on faculty as a fluent Spanish speaker and her deep connections in the Colombian midnight church to for us to develop the seminary more broad our relationships with the seminary more broadly. Well, I'm not seeing any questions coming in from the alumni but I can answer this one pretty quickly. We have just about three minutes left. Can you say just a word about how the pandemic has affected the ambias community or your your role specifically Well, like most people, I guess, or many people connected to the seminary, at least I've worked from home, so you were seeing my office for the last year here this is in my home in Elkirk. And, you know, in some ways that's been great. I wear sweatpants to work. And I have, you know, less interruptions on some ways they get more work than, but obviously you know there's just a deep sadness over the loss of the community is probably most of you hopefully know. So, I think that the, the most that the kind of informal relationships on campus or at least as formative for students and staff as anything we do in the classroom. And so I really deeply miss those informal kind of chats with colleagues and what can come out of there out of those conversations, the breaks, you know, in the middle class. I actually did I taught the only on campus class this year. And that was in the fall. And it was a small group of mostly brand new students who just moved to Elkirk and we sat really far away from each other with masks. And it worked it was before things that kind of took a turn for the worst around the winner and so felt safe to do that at that point. And just being at break was was so wonderful so I miss that and can't wait to be able to to engage in in person community life again. Thank you Jamie for answering all these questions and giving us the insights into your work at MBS that you have. Thank you our alumni for your ongoing support of MBS. We thank you for your prayers, especially during this time of pandemic and for your financial support and your influence on other donors. And thank you for continuing to tap people on the shoulder that you think should continue seminary or should consider seminary study. You really are our most important influencers in the church. Tonight is the first of our alumni virtual reunions. Tonight's reunion is for those who attended MBS in the 1950s and 60s. These reunions by decade will continue almost weekly into June. It's not too late to sign up go to the alumni part of the MBS website and you can sign up on that page for the virtual reunions. Next month will be our last third Thursday's conversation for this school year, and we'll be visiting with Jana Hunter Bowman assistant professor of peace studies and Christian social ethics. Thanks to all of you for joining us this afternoon and thanks also to student Becca Baratu who has provided technical support. This concludes our third Thursday conversation. Have a wonderful day.