STEVEN CURTIS CHAPMAN SONG for this BLOG ENTRY
Yeah it’s an awful video. But the song rocks, so get over it.
Y’know I’ve never kept a blog before. I started one many years ago to keep a record of the progress of some music I began recording, but that ended basically as soon as it began. I dunno, I just kind of assumed no one would care. But, as my life has changed so much in the past few years, and especially with the most recent change of having begun my seminary education in the spring of 2016, I thought it would be interesting to share my longer rants and see how people react to them. More specifically, I’ll be posting a lot of my musings about theological and ministerial quandaries that enter my mind from time to time. I decided to call the blog “Practical Christianity,” as that is a label I’ve been using in the past few years to describe my personal theology and philosophy of ministry. More on what exactly that means in future updates to come. I imagine updates will be few and far between, once a month or every few weeks tops.
But for now, to inaugurate my new website and more specifically the new blog, I thought I would share with y’all the beginnings of a new long term goal that I am starting to develop. As I mentioned, I began studying at Torch Trinity Graduate University in Seoul Korea in the spring of 2016, with a general goal of becoming a pastor. But, I am currently researching the possibility of an idea that may narrow down the parameters of that goal a little further.
This idea occurred to me around June or July 2016, after the conclusion of my first semester of seminary. One of my favorite people to chat with during the semester was a fellow student who we will call Aeris for purposes of this blog. Aeris is an ethnic Korean who was born and raised in Australia, and had come to Seoul to study at Torch. Y’know it’s interesting. I’ve known plenty of Australian guys, and their accents always made me think of crazy men who go out into the Australian outback and do incredibly stupid things with really dangerous animals while arguing about who has the bigger knife, a la Steve Irwin or Crocodile Dundee. Aeris is the first Australian woman I’ve ever really spoken to, and I gotta say, on a woman, an Australian accent is actually quite charming. I might note that she’s 13 years younger than me, so let’s derail that train before it leaves the station. This new life goal has zilch to do with my love life. Moving on.
Aeris Gainsborough
In addition to her very lovely accent, much of my enjoyment of our conversations was derived from her answering my inexhaustible questions about Australia. I’ve always been very fascinated with Australia to the extent that it is actually the #2 location on my bucket list, in part because I'm also abjectly terrified of it, being simultaneously the #1 place that I am hell-bent on not getting within a nautical light year of (Google “Sydney funnel web spider” or "blue-ringed octopus" and thank me later). I figure I’ll probably make that the last thing on my bucket list I fulfill when I’ve reached the end of my life and am ready to die, since going there is likely what will kill me anyway. But I digress. So, she would tell me about what it's like out there, including assurances that Australia is not the terrifying isle of calamitous damnation and devastation from the fertile imagination of Lucifer’s most sadistic inquisitors that I think it is and that the rest of the world makes it out to be (shyeah like she’d know better than those memes and BuzzFeed writers).
One aspect of Australia that we touched upon but didn’t go into a whole lot of detail into was what church life is like. Given Australia’s infamous origins and the very imminent probability of horrifying death that accompanies basically every conceivable activity its inhabitants engage in on a daily basis, I was always curious about what church life is like out there. Does their theology emphasize the afterlife more given the likelihood that they will all die as soon as they step outside? Has Satan been portrayed in their artwork as spiders and/or octopi with fangs the size of Fender Precision Basses? Instead of “He’s got the whole world in His hands,” do they sing, “He carries the whole world in His pouch?” Unfortunately we never got to addressing these very important, scholarly questions. Mostly, Aeris just told me about her own experiences in serving at her local church. This got me thinking.
As I mentioned, Australia is the #2 place on my bucket list. The vaunted #1 spot goes to Greece. Athens, specifically. If I die without seeing the Parthenon, I will be very disappointed, no matter how awesome heaven is. Unless heaven is just a recreation of Athens in the heavenly plane. That would rock. Anyway, my fascination with Greece started with being introduced to its mythology by the son of a family friend when I was a little kid. At first, I was into it just from the perspective of a sci-fi geek, entranced by stories of monsters, heroes, magic weapons, grand adventures, etc. I do recall being a little creeped out that men seemed to be able to just take the women whenever they please, but I was young and naive and didn't understand that that was standard fare in the times that these stories depicted. Other than that, I found them enthralling. Through this as well as through standard history classes, I learned much about their very fascinating culture and rich history and the central contributions they made to western society and philosophy (another subject I've always loved). Later on, I began to study the mythology on a more academic level. This, along with wikipediaing the names of various notorious monsters in Final Fantasy XI, most of which were named after mythological creatures, led me to the study of comparative mythology/religion, which actually gave me a lot of insight into Biblical interpretation (more on that in another blog entry down the line). All in all, I have been slowly falling in love with the Greek culture ever since I was a little kid and have been completely enamored with it for as long as I can remember. Plus, I love Yanni.
No, seriously. Yanni rules and you know it. Disagree and I’ll cut you.
The thing is, unlike the rest of the places on my bucket list (which include Ireland, Jerusalem, Greenland for some reason, etc.), my fascination with Greece and Australia run so deep that I really don’t want to just spend a vacation there. I want to actually live in those places for a few years and really breathe in the cultures. But I never had a reason to go to either of those places long term. I certainly never qualified for any jobs that might take me there. But from my conversations with Aeris about Australia’s church culture, it occurred to me that once I finish seminary and am “certified” to be a pastor, that’s something I can do really anywhere in the world where there are English-speaking Christians. I've known that I want to be a pastor since about 2007, but I never really thought about where. Back then, I probably just assumed I'd continue to live in California. The reality is that right now, I just can't afford to live there... at least not the parts of it where I would actually want to live. And while I am enjoying my time in Korea, I'm not convinced that this is my permanent home, nor is there anything in my life right now that would arbitrarily make it so. Greece... Athens... I think I could be be happy and fulfilled there. But is that enough of a reason to commit to serving somewhere? Does Greece "need" me?
A Sydney funnel web spider. Not only do they have venom strong enough to kill a human, unlike deadly American spiders who have the decency to stay reclusive until we bother them, these bastards have been known to chase after humans. They chase after humans!!!
With that very basic premise and question in mind, I began doing some research. I spoke with a friend of mine who lives in Italy who told me that, due to Greece and the greater EU’s economic situations, entering the EU and living there long term has been much easier in recent years. Furthermore, I Googled “ministry opportunities in Greece,” and came upon an organization called Hellenic Ministries (HM) which focuses on missionary work in Greece. It seems that there is a very fertile and active mission field there. Despite its long history and significance in the development of Christianity including being the birthplace of the Greek Orthodox Church, Greece is currently reportedly a spiritual wasteland. Only 2% of the Greek population regularly attends church on a weekly basis, and there is a severe shortage of Greek church leadership and available Bibles. As such, organizations like Hellenic Ministries have been focusing on providing Bibles and Bible education to Greece, in addition to church planting and other missions work. It is a wide open field that is hurting for help.
Here’s the thing. I have never been particularly missions-minded. Though I support missionary work and what it accomplishes, the burden on my own life has always been to serve the local community. Combined with my desire to really live in Greece and not just visit it, my mindset in going to Greece would not be as an outsider missionary who arrives to teach, but actually moving there, joining the community, and serving it as a member of it. I wondered if perhaps the difference between that and what a missionary does may be a simple matter of semantics, but the HM representative I spoke with told me that no, they are quite different and they likely could/would not provide any support for what I want to do.
Another thing to keep in mind is that I have not yet so much as set foot in Europe. I have only met a handful of Greeks in my life, and only one who was actually from Greece (as opposed to having Greek roots but being American), and he was just a doctor who I spoke with briefly once. I have absolutely no idea what life is like in Greece, and I don’t see myself being able to finance a trip out there to see what it's like during the next 3-4 years that I’ll be attending seminary. Who’s to say I could even really survive in that culture or would enjoy living there once my sightseeing is complete? All told, biting the bullet and going through with this would likely require an all-in mindset and the taking of a gigantic, headlong, blind leap into a complete unknown with no lifelines or escape plans other than collect-calling my parents and begging them to buy me a ticket back to California so I can mooch off them for a while, during which time my dad would undoubtedly resume his lectures about how I should have just been an engineer from the start. It’s a terrifying thought.
The Parthenon, my holy grail of sightseeing.
That being said, the thought of living in Athens - the number 1 spot on my bucket list, being situated such that I'm a weekend trip’s distance from such places as Sparta, Thebes, Corinth, Delphi, Knossos, Hellespont, Halicarnassus, Mycenae, the Peloponnesian forest, Argos, etc., and perhaps even eventually going to school there, University of Athens perhaps, and learning about all those things that have fascinated me about Greece from their own perspective… these are all absolutely intoxicating ideas to me. In my time in Korea so far, I’ve had zero interest in seeing the different Korean historical sites, content mostly to just stay home and playing video games on weekends. I can guarantee that won’t happen in Greece. I will be traveling as much as time and budget will allow, seeing all these places that I read about in histories and mythologies come to life. I’ll probably find a place with a good view of the Parthenon and go there every day to bask in its glory as I prepare for my pastoral duties that weekend. It’s something I can see myself enjoying and doing for the rest of my life, and quite possibly worth diving headlong into the unknown for.
Finally, due to the spiritual condition of Greece and the kinds of ministry efforts being pursued there, I would likely be a pastor for a small church. I think this would very much suit my pastoral style and make it easier to institute the church practices I would like to see (more on that in a future blog entry).
At the moment, these are just wild fancies. I wouldn’t even call this a goal or plan at this point, as I’m still doing research to find out if it’s even conceivably feasible as a pursuable goal. It may end up being nothing more than a pipe dream. Even if this becomes a plausible reality, I expect my thoughts and plans on the matter will evolve as the years go by and as my own theology and pastoral philosophy develops. Will they evolve into a solid plan that I can confidently go through with, or into a decision to not go for it at all? We'll see. But for now, even the mere thought of the possibility is exciting, and I haven't been this eager to reach the next stage of my life in a very long time.
In the meanwhile, if anyone has any information that might help me like the state of English ministries in Greece, information about visa requirements in the EU, any contacts that might be able to help me, etc., please drop me a line. I'm sure anything will help!
On a side note, my go-to sci-fi/fantasy name of choice has always been Matthias. It began with my ranger character back during my high school Advanced Dungeons & Dragons days, and reached the apex of its glory as the name of my main character in Final Fantasy XI, an MMO that sucked up a good 14 years of my life. I’ve named numerous other characters Matthias, but that FFXI character is just special in some way. /sigh
Anyways, Matthias is the Hellenized form of the name Matthew, and was the name of the 13th apostle of Christ who replaced Judas Iscariot after he killed himself or died in a freak accident, depending on which account you go with. As I understand it, it’s still a fairly common name. So let’s say I move to Greece. Perhaps I’ll find it beneficial to adopt a Greek name the way many Korean English students find it easier to have an American name. What if I chose Matthias? Wouldn’t it be hilarious if, after having lived numerous fantasy adventure lives as Matthias, I live the remainder of my real life as Matthias? Haha. Ha. Well it was funny to me when I first thought of it.
Anyways, to close out this inaugural blog entry as I couldn’t really come up with a better way to do so, here are the many faces of Matthias. May his adventures never cease.
5 generations of Matthias, left to right: Jedi Shadow (The Old Republic), Wudang (Age of Wushu), Human Infiltrator (Mass Effect 3 Multiplayer), Paladin/Warrior (Final Fantasy XI), and Dark Knight (Final Fantasy XIV). I've actually used the name in many other older games, but I no longer have access to them, and therefore weren't able to get screenshots.