Summer Newsletter

Graduation, an Internship and Plans for the Future

Good Saturday, friends!

I wish you all temperate weather, and the ability to weather tempers as we head into late summer of another election year (you didn’t think I would pass up the opportunity for a horrible pun, did you?).

What can I say by way of a personal update? I’ll tell you:

Graduation from Westminster Theological Seminary

This May, Micah, the girls and I traveled to Philadelphia, PA for my graduation from Westminster Theological Seminary. I walked away with a Master of Arts in Theological Studies: I’ve looked this up and it means that I can now introduce myself to people as “a Magister.”

Graduation regalia 'fit check - peep the earrings Micah bought me for the occasion: they say, "Clever Girl" (if you know, you know).

The girls showing their school spirit

Internship With The Anastasis Center

After all the Philadelphia sights were seen, and the graduation festivities wrapped up, our family drove to Boston to spend some time with family. In between more sight-seeing and family time, we had a chance to turn an online connection - Mako Nagasawa of the Anastasis Center for Christian Ministry and Education - into a real-life connection. Long story short, Mako and I hit it off over shared interests and ministry callings, and that conversation turned into an internship that will last at least through the end of 2024.

Based on IRL conversations I’ve had, I’ve compiled a list of FAQs about my new job:

Are you moving to Boston? Nope. The position is fully remote.

The Anasta-what? The Anastasis Center gets its name from the Greek word for “resurrection.” It’s actually the root of the name, “Anastasia.”

“After all, the name Anastasia means, ‘She will rise again.’” - Vlad, Disney’s Anastasia

What Does the Anastasis Center Do? Since 2014, the Anastasis Center has been creating free educational resources to equip Christians to engage with social issues from a historically-informed, Christian perspective. Anastasis is unique in its commitment to engage with a wide range of Christian traditions and periods of Church history, including and especially the Patristics (Patristics = the early “church fathers” who led Christianity through its first few centuries).

What’s Your Job? My job title is “Curriculum Development Intern.” I am currently involved, in different ways, in parts I, II and III of an ongoing series at Anastasis called “A Long Repentance.”

What Does “Long Repentance” Mean? The premise of the Long Repentance series is that many of the difficult and complicated social problems we face today in the U.S. today can be traced back to Christian heresies: ideas that do not truly represent Christ, and yet were brought into the public square “in the name of Christ.” Instead of proposing “quick fixes,” the Long Repentance series helps participants to do the slow work of understanding where we went off-course, so that as individual Christians we can make biblically and historically informed decisions about our engagement in the public square going forward.

How will you be involved? Here’s a list of the ways I will personally be involved with the different parts of the Long Repentance series:

• A Long Repentance, Part 1: Exploring Christian Mistakes About Race, Politics, and Justice.

  • Currently, I am going through the Long Repentance 1 Zoom class as a participant, in preparation to act as a cohort leader later this year. This is an 8-week course, and we are currently on week 2. There’s still time to hop in and be a part of the discussion if you’re interested! Or if you would prefer to start from the beginning, I will be leading a Zoom cohort in the fall. If you’re interested in either option, please message me on any platform or drop a reply to this post. I’d love to get to see some familiar faces, or just put faces to internet friends!

• A Long Repentance, Part 2: Plantation Capitalism vs. Jesus’ Jubilee Economy

  • I am in the process of writing a study guide to supplement the Long Repentance 2 episodes, which are in progress on Youtube.

• A Long Repentance Part 3: Women, Scripture and Christian Life

  • Mako, fellow Anastasis Center staff member Hayley Rose and I are in the early stages of developing this course, which will explore Christian mistakes regarding gender. I will be co-writing the course material, as well as co-hosting the Youtube video episodes. If you know me at all … like, even a little bit … you will know that a job which combines history, theology and gender anthropology is a dream come true. I can’t wait to show you guys what we come up with on this one: as the kids say, “It’s gonna be fire.”

Other Projects

Miscellaneous plans for the rest of this summer:

Reading, Obvs: As we all know, writers must read. A few I have in progress or in my to-be-read pile:

• East of Eden, John Steinbeck

• The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine, Serhii Plokhy

• The Color of Law, Richard Rothstein

Publication of my master’s thesis: Over the summer I will be cleaning up my Master’s thesis (on Genesis 3:16) to submit for publication. As I look for a home for it, you can join me in prayer:

God, grant me the serenity to tweak the things that need tweaking,

to leave untweaked the things that don’t need to be tweaked,

and the wisdom to know the difference.