Seminary Dean, , opens the fall semester with his convocation address, ” From Position Statements to Communities of Discernment: EMS as Discernment Training Center.”
Dr King’s comments and reflections to close this chapel offer a helpful summary of his address:
“I know only in part鈥攐nly as if through a mirror dimly.聽 That means that anything I鈥檝e shared with you is partly wrong, partly misguided.聽 I have tried in what I鈥檝e shared…to be fair to various points of view.聽 But I鈥檓 sure you can read in my fallibilities that I am more connected with some ways of thinking Christ than others.聽 I think it鈥檚 important…as we think about clenched fists…not to equate the passionate holding to our beliefs, with the problem.聽 I don’t see that as a problem. I know that there are passionate views present here among our faculty, our staff, and our students.聽 And my dream is not that those passions would cease being articulated, and even advocated for.聽 My dream, rather, is that this could be a kind of demilitarized zone…a place where we don鈥檛 get shot, the moment we wade into points of disagreement and tension.聽 So I do pray that鈥檚 a piece of what we can experience [at Eastern Mennonite Seminary in 2012] in a world that so badly needs this Seminary, this University鈥攖o be in the thick of it all, but in the thick of it all in a peace-giving way. And I share that as a prelude to the blessing, because I鈥檓 so deeply moved by the music we鈥檝e just heard and its tremendous balm of peace, and I鈥檓 struck by how quickly we shatter that experience of peace, the moment we go from sitting here singing it, to actually engaging it.聽 I pray there are ways to keep that peace, in the act of unclenching our fists and opening them up; but also being true to all our own beliefs.聽 If we can鈥檛 find a way to be passionate about what we believe, and also at peace with each other in the midst of that, then I don鈥檛 know a way forward. But if we can, then the way we were moved by our worship, and by the Spirit, precisely through our gathering here in the presence of the Spirit we have named on the command of Jesus, then I think we can become Eastern Mennonite Seminary as we鈥檙e called to be. So in that dream–Go in peace and all the work required and all the blessings that it can give us in the name of the Lord.聽 In that hope and in that prayer, I commend us to the new year.聽 Blessings.”
The entire campus community is invited to every chapel worship service on campus. hosts chapel gatherings in Martin Chapel every Tuesday and Thursday; 91大神 Campus Ministries hosts chapel gatherings every Wednesday and Friday in Lehman Auditorium. Specifics and occasional changes are noted in individual chapel listings.