Fuller Theological Seminary

Fuller Seminary

Faculty Advisor: Glen Stassen

135 North Oakland Avenue, Pasadena, CA 91182

Tel: 626/584-5200 Toll Free: 800/235-2222

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This WEEK:

Our Beatitudes Society event for this first week of the quarter is an all-campus event rather than a "regular" meeting. We will be showing the documentary "At the River I Stand," about MLK's "last stand" with the garbage workers of Memphis (in the main auditorium on campus), to commemorate the 40th anniversary of MLK's shooting (this Friday, April 4th).

What is your regular meeting time and place?

Tuesdays, 10-11 AM, pretty much every week. We meet in a Fuller conference room (as often as we can reserve it), or classroom, and sometimes in the cafeteria.

What's going on with your chapter this semester/quarter?

In the winter quarter we will shift gears and focus on one sustained study topic, like Ched Myers’ 7-fold covenant for “Sabbath Economics,” using a new study guide for small groups produced by Matt Colwell and Bartimaeus Ministries. We may cover one chapter each week in the focal areas of

surplus capital (investments)
negative capital (debt)
consumption
giving
“green” living
work and Sabbath
solidarity with the poor.

We also plan to have a campus-wide showing of the Michael Moore documentary “SiCKO.” As always, our list-serve of over a hundred some students keeps it members abreast of faith-based, peace-and-justice learning, service, and action opportunities in the greater Pasadena and L.A. areas.

How many people attend?

Averages 15-25 each week.

How does your chapter coordinate with other campus groups?

We are a conjoined network of the Peace and Justice Concerns Committee and The Beatitudes Society chapter.

What challenges does your chapter face?

The busyness and multiple demands on student’s lives; figuring out effective ways to advertise our events around campus; coming up with a broad range of issues (not just the traditional “liberal” causes) so as to broaden the participation and perspectives from the campus; developing community among the members (need more time for discussion/socializing, perhaps); mixing action with learning, by perhaps having more action oriented sub-committees form around particular issues of interest (we have had several action opportunities this year, through the hotel workers campaigns in LA, including civil disobedience; a local homelessness project Fuller is involved in etc.); how to develop an integrated vision of faith and politics (not such a scatter-shot of every kind of justice issues); mixing up the format so as to not get in a rut; having leadership and involvement from a range of folk, not just the designated leaders; small budget

What kind of social justice projects does your chapter participate in?

See above

What conversation models do you use for reflection/faith sharing? For example, how do you talk about what you care about?

Mostly your standard presentation and then discussion time. I have thought about proposing some kind of study guide discussion group format, that might run for most of a quarter, to help develop a more integrated faith/politics perspective and give more opportunity for sharing. Something with a little structure, but basically just allowing for folks to come and talk about what they’re learning, wrestling with, etc. Might try this out in the spring. Each spring for the last several years we have also done a visual/art display (with stats and charts and photos etc.) in the central courtyard of the school, coinciding with Holy Week and usually having an anti-war theme.

What worship and prayer practices does your group use?

We normally open with a prayer and often a 5-10 minute “devotional” from scriptural or other writings, often geared toward whatever the topic of the day might be.

What else would you like to share about your chapter?

This year we have an expanded “leadership” team of 5 or 6 students (myself, Eugene Suen, Mary Marjorie Bethea, Matthew Krabill, Stasi Macateer, and Eric Fenton), three of whom are official “co-chairs” (i.e. a part of Fuller’s student government/All-Seminary Council). Eric Fenton proposed a handy schema for thinking about our outreach to the campus, in which there is an x-axis with “education” and “action” as its two poles, and a y-axis with the “core”/regulars at one end and the “crowd”/less connected students at the other. We could then think about our group’s activities with these quadrants in mind, focusing on either:

a) education for the core (or normal weekly gatherings)
b) education for the crowd (like campus-wide documentary showings or provocative/public visual displays)
c) actions for the “core” (CLUE hotel worker campaign actions; volunteering with Pasadena’s Homelessness Prevention program)
d) actions for the “crowd.”

Being realistic (and knowing our history) we will likely only be able to do two of these quadrants well, and education will likely be our primary “mode” (given our setting in an educational institution and long-term vision of shaping future leaders). However, we encourage/welcome any initiatives/ideas from our members that push us more into the “action” quadrant and into the “crowd” connections. There seems to be an open environment for our concerns among the larger campus, best as we can sense.

What are you studying and why do you care about the Beatitudes?

I (Kent Davis Sensenig) am a doctoral student in Christian Ethics with particular interest in historic Jesus/historical Galilee studies, political ethics and peacemaking, and ecological ethics. This flows naturally out of my roots in the Anabaptist-Mennonite peace/free church tradition. Aaron Weldon is a Master’s student who is quite interested in systematic theology from a peace church/Anabaptist perspective and the synergy between contemplation and social justice.