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Hello … my name is Mike … and, I am a pastor.
ESR was, and in many ways remains, important to what it
means for me to be a pastor.
I was in the ESR community from 1972 until 1975. The ESR
in which I was immersed was very different from the ESR, now.
In many respects, for me, returning to ESR is rather like
the experience of an acquaintance who was raised by Finnish
immigrant parents in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, who learned
the Finnish language and customs of his parents, and, finally
as an adult, visited Finland himself, hoping to experience
his parents' native country, only to discover that his language
was antiquated, his customs insignificant, and the native
country of his parents existent only in the memories of his
parents and in the tomes of history.
Rather than burden you with descriptions of what ESR as
a place looked like, I'll simply say that it presented persistent
challenges and demanded a certain intimacy, a certain creativity,
and the development of a repertoire of spiritual, intellectual,
emotional, and physical flexibilities among those who shared
the space.
Place, buildings, furnishings were important, but only as
they contributed to the unique ecology that was ESR as an
intensive, intentional, spiritual and educational community
to which God brought me as an unwilling Jonah by means of
my own personally customized near shipwreck and Leviathan.
Again, you'll be spared the gory details.
I was a member of the committee which planned the construction
of this building. Among my concerns in that process was to
avoid making a building or including furnishings that would
impair, rather than contribute to, the unique ecology which
ESR continues to be.
Thankfully, I did not come to ESR alone. Simply by her association
with me, my dear wife suffered both me and my journey to Richmond,
Indiana. I came to ESR for what were likely the wrong reasons,
but those reasons got me to the community. I like to believe
that I stayed and finished for the right reasons. Many who
came in those days did not stay long enough to complete a
degree. The community was far from perfect and did not speak
to everyone's condition, although its intentions were good
and its practice mostly honest and compassionate.
While in ESR, we learned to be proficient at the usual seminary
stuff: Old Testament, New Testament, Theology, Church History,
hermeneutics, textual criticism, exegetical rigor, pastoral
counseling, prayer and spiritual disciplines, communication
and so on. We did the whole facts, techniques, and systems
thing as well or better than most seminaries and seminarians.
No brag, just fact.
In addition, then the ESR community offered unique, participatory
opportunities to learn church/meeting administration, fundraising,
planning, budgeting, recruiting/evangelism, institutional
organization and institutional change. Together, we created
and practiced our first sermons, our first weddings and our
first funerals. Together, we dealt with our first successes
and failures in meetings and congregations.
Everyone had a crash course in the dysfunction of Tom Mullens'
pancreas. Elton Trueblood walked the halls asking new students
if they had started their first book yet. And, Wil Cooper
was the guiding force for ESR, intent on preserving Quaker
belief, tradition and practice as well as assuring that The
Religious Society of Friends would have equipped leadership
into the future.
ESR helped me learn that good questions can last a life
time because they can be used constructively and repeatedly,
while the best of answers is short lived and often does great
damage when recycled. ESR posed the most powerful of Scriptural
questions. Among those questions is not, "Do you believe in
God and Jesus as his Son?" The letter we call "James" says
that even the devils believe that. Among those most potent
Scriptural questions are: "What are you doing here (Why are
you here?)? [See Elijah at the cave]. "Do you want to be whole
(What do you want?) [See the healing at the pool of Bethesda]?
"What is in your hand? [See Moses at the burning bush]. "Can
these bones live?" [See Ezekiel at the valley of dry bones].
And the implied question posed by Jesus' repeated command
"Follow Me!!", that question is, "Will you be led?"
The first question plumbs the depths of meaning, purpose,
and intention; the second one, of imagination, vision and
passion; the third, of self awareness and consciousness of
current reality; the fourth, of eschatological hope and faith
in the ultimate power of God; and, the fifth, of trust and
humility.
What was most important to me about ESR is that it provided
the spiritual environment in which both my wife and I learned
about and began our journey in self-awareness, in honesty,
in discipline, in responsibility, in humility, in intellectual
growth, in reality testing, in vision, in imagination, in
values, in priorities, in simplicity, in faith, in spirituality,
and in Jesus, who is the Risen One that is transforming the
cosmos and each of us. In short, we learned how to learn;
and, we began to learn the stuff of quality human and spiritual
relationships. We began to learn the stuff of survival in
an imperfect world and an imperfect church. We began to learn
that a person who is a Christian cannot merely go to church;
a person who is a Christian can only be the Church. Incarnation
is ontological. Our learning and our journey continues each
day, even now.
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