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There
were initial hopeful indications last year that SIM could manage having an Orthodox person on board, and that Bill
would have a continuing role at NEGST (now part of Africa International University since receiving our government
charter last March). However… both SIM and NEGST/AIU regretfully informed us
just before we returned to Kenya in August that their governing bodies had
decided that maintaining their Protestant evangelical ethos precluded having
Orthodox members. Both SIM and AIU colleagues have been amazingly kind,
affirming and encouraging throughout this process. They’ve done everything they
can to be helpful. But the result is the same. Bill has been relieved of his
role at NEGST/AIU and has been asked to withdraw his SIM membership by the end
of December. On the other hand, my
situation is unchanged. I continue to teach at NEGST/AIU, and I’ll continue
to be a member of SIM with Bill as my non-SIM family member. Our donors can
continue to give to SIM and I will receive a family-sized living allowance.
So
what’s left is for us to find out just what
God has in store for Bill at this point in his life. Bill has applied to
teach in another church-related university here in Nairobi. They’ve been very receptive,
but slow in getting back with details. He’s also applied for teaching positions
in various parts of the world, and is looking around at other opportunities
here in Kenya. In the meantime he’s immersed himself in a long-delayed church
history project, taking advantage of time he rarely has for writing. And he’s
been helping out as a speech writer for the Orthodox Archbishop of Kenya—a rather
surprising role to find himself in!—and doing some editing for a publication of
the Orthodox archdiocese. But as we all know, waiting is hard. You can imagine
the strain this has put us under, on many different levels. Please do pray for
the Lord’s leading in Bill’s life, and for us to have hearts open to whatever
we’re meant to learn during this season. Bill hopes sometime in the next month
or so to contact those of you who are our regular donors to let you know what
the possible ways forward seem to be.
Meanwhile I’m loving being back at NEGST/AIU. After
spending a longer time than usual in the US (five months—the longest we’ve been
away from Africa since 2003), there’s a definite sense of being ‘home’, back to
a community where I know colleagues and students and feel like I’m beginning to
make a lasting contribution. This term I’m teaching hermeneutics and Greek
syntax, advising students writing master’s
and doctoral theses, serving on a new committee exploring distance education and e-learning
possibilities for AIU, helping with the campus-wide women’s fellowship, etc., etc., as well as continuing my role as ACTEA Accreditation Officer (but more
about that below…)
The hermeneutics course is the most
interesting at the moment, both because I enjoy the topic and because it’s a
required course for all first-year MA and MDiv students at AIU so I get to meet
all the new students. Unfortunately that means only about 20 of them, as the
continuing global economic squeeze leaves fewer scholarships available, and
AIU’s recent expansion has put the focus on undergraduate professional programs
rather than graduate-level theology, so our MA/MDiv intake was relatively low
this year. But oh well, it does mean I have 20 emerging leaders from Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia, the
brand new country of South Sudan, Korea, Australia, the UK and
the US, whose ways of reading and
using scripture I get to put my mark on. Basically what we do in this course is
summed up in this quote from the textbook: “Hermeneutics is a dialogue between
the text and reader where the text and reader enter into a conversational
covenant informed by the world of the author.” Which means that we’re trying to understand how we as
readers of the Bible engage with the biblical text in a living and active way
in our own world today, while drawing from and remaining faithful to what
God said to and through the original authors in their original contexts. And
we’re trying to understand the Holy Spirit’s role in the whole process. Yes,
it’s a mystery. But our task is to comprehend as much of that mystery as we can
so that we can be effective and responsible preachers of God’s word. I love my
job.
I
also love my role as Accreditation Officer with the Accrediting Council for Theological Education in Africa (ACTEA),
but I’m sensing that that one is about over. In January 2007 I was asked to
take this on for 18 months while the African leader being trained for the
position did his PhD studies. Nearly five years later I’m still here! But it
looks like that PhD thesis is about to be submitted, so I’ve told ACTEA that
I’ll step down in December to make room for new leadership. I consider this significant
progress for ACTEA. I’ll still finish up several accreditation and
re-accreditation projects that are already underway—a couple of schools in
Kenya and one in Zimbabwe—but basically I’m done with that and looking forward
to seeing what else the Lord brings my way. The good news is that the thorough
revision and updating of the ACTEA accreditation standards I’ve been working on
the last couple of years was recently approved by the ACTEA Council, so even if
I’m not around they’ll all be using ‘my’ standards for the foreseeable future.
As Bill says, this fulfills my need to be in charge of everybody!
Photos…
Yes, we’re back in Kenya!
Bill communes with a colobus monkey
Lunch at our favorite
Ethiopian restaurant with Cambridge friends Mark & Barbara Phippen, who
were here in August-September serving as short-term missionaries—and who we
hope are coming back!
(Thank you, Mark, for the
above two photos)
Back in the classroom… Here’s
me and my hermeneutics students
And Bill-the-scholar, happily
immersed in reading and writing
On the home front: And then
there were three! Our kids—Caroline, Linnea & William
Linnea & William in front
of their first apartment, in Rockville, Maryland
Caroline (far right) celebrating
her 21st birthday in September with some of her housemates…
(Photo taken at a winery near
Charlottesville and near our house—makes me long for those Virginia mountains)
…and showing off her college
spirit at a UVA football game with this rather unique (we can only hope!)
article of apparel. A shout out to Bill’s former pastor’s wife, Lu Harkey, for
this special hand-me-down.
