Bethel Seminary Investor Fall 2016

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INVESTORIMPACT FALL 2016

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What Changed During My Time at Bethel Seminary?

“I came to seminary expecting to acquire Bible knowledge. What I experienced was life transformation,” says Corey Unger S’16, a Connecticut businessman, husband, and father of three. As Unger began his studies at Bethel Seminary, he had no idea that his greatest challenge wouldn’t come from writing a paper or taking a final exam. Instead, “I couldn’t have known that my wife Alicia’s cancer diagnosis would soon turn our world upside down,” he says.

The courses that were part of his degree path toward a Master of Arts in Transformational Leadership were also an integral part of his life journey.

“I was taking an Old Testament survey course,” says Unger, “and the experiences of the Israelites took on a whole new dimension for me as my wife struggled for life. The stories of their striving became incarnate in my journey.”

He also drew strength from the seminary community. “I learned that the body of Christ is not restricted to local churches,” Unger explains. “Bethel Seminary became a body of believers who walked with me in an impossible season. My professors became anchors for life, even at a distance. My cohort came around me. The on-campus intensives became moments to engage with a group who became a unique, deep part of my life during a powerful season.”

Unger came to seminary believing that education was about acquiring knowledge. But, he says, “I leave knowing that my spiritual transformation was as important as my academic education. Becoming whole and holy is not just a tagline. God is present and at work in all the circumstances of life, conforming us to the image of His Son. Looking back, I know I have been forever changed, and this would not have happened without my seminary journey. What changed during my time at Bethel Seminary? I did.”

You Make It Possible Dear Friends, On behalf of the Bethel Seminary student body, I’d like to extend a warm thank you for the ways in which you’ve championed us.

Through your investments, both financial and spiritual, you’ve made possible our preparation for ministry. You’ve helped to underwrite an educational experience for us that cultivates passion, empowers change, and inspires future kingdom leaders, teachers, and pastors to love people to Jesus for generations to come.

It is your generosity and commitment to the vitality of Bethel Seminary that make possible our opportunity to learn and grow here. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

Stephanie Fedor S’18 Student Senate President 2016-17

Corey Unger and family

Editor’s Note: As an investor in Bethel Seminary, you are equipping kingdom leaders for service around the globe.

Stephanie Fedor

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We hope that these stories will give you a glimpse of your impact in and through Bethel Seminary students.

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INVESTOR IMPACT

It’s All There

Perhaps you saw the tragic story in the news. On July 31, 2016, a minivan carrying the Pals family— Jamison (29), Kathryne (29), Ezra (3), Violet (23 months), and Calvin (2 months)—to Colorado for their final missionary training before leaving to serve as longterm missionaries in Nagoya, Japan, was struck from behind by an inattentive semi-driver. All five members of this precious young family were killed in the fiery crash. What you may not have realized is that

For the Joy of Japan Excerpts from joyofjapan.org

by Jamison S’12 and Kathryne Pals

INVESTOR IMPACT

Jamison was a Bethel Seminary alumnus, graduating summa cum laude in 2012.

“If Holy Scripture is to be something other than mere gossip about God,” says Christian author Eugene Peterson, “it must be internalized.” This internalized faith pulses through every entry of the inspiring blog left

by Jamison and Kathryne at joyofjapan.org (see excerpts below). Read it and you’ll know, as I do, that death has not stolen their vibrant testimony—nor thwarted their intention to offer everything so that others may hear the Good News.

In life-unfolding entries, it’s all there. The reason Christ came. The reason they were going to Japan. The reason we exist. The reason you give . . . The reason, together, we must press forward.

David K. Clark Vice President and Dean

Jamison, Kathryne, Ezra, Violet, and Calvin Pals

March 25, 2015

[The message of Christ’s love] is one that many of us know well, hear often, take for granted most of the time. But, my Japanese friend was apparently hearing it for the first time. This was his response:“This is exactly what Japan needs.” He went on: “We don’t know what it is like to be loved like that.” . . . We desire to go to Japan with a message of indestructible joy. We have started this blog as a way of inviting you, our family and friends, into this with us.

June 29, 2016

We exist “in Christ.” If you were to somehow remove him, all that we are would go with him. He is our Life.

Apart from him we can do nothing, and we are nothing.

When a person comes to know Jesus Christ in all of his beauty, love, compassion, wisdom, power, and glory, it should come as no surprise that he or she would desire others to know him and to be burdened when

others don’t. We want others to have life in Christ, forever.

Christ’s command at the end of Matthew 28 [says], “Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you.

And, behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

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How Your Gift Prepared Me for Skeptics and Skydiving

by Rick Mattson S’06

In the postmodern university world where I work, we hold special sessions called “Stump the Chump.”

These events encourage college students to ask any question they want about Christianity, and I’m the Chump. My job is to offer a thoughtful reply to their inquiries, which range from, “Isn’t the Bible a tool of oppression?” to “Why does the church hate gays?” to “Why believe in religious superstition when I have science?” And if you throw in a few questions about other religions, the problem of pain and evil, predestination and free will (this question never goes away), and creation/evolution—you’ve got the makings of an evening with students where anything can happen, and usually does.

One time, at Michigan State University, we were set up in the middle of a huge cafeteria. I was camped under a glaring homemade sign that read, “Ask any question about God,” feeling conspicuous, as though I were missing an important item of clothing. A really important item. As it turned out, I didn’t have much time to be self-conscious because the 10 students accompanying me turned into 20 and then 30, as a crowd gathered.

An hour of intense Q&A with the Spartans ensued, my voice foundering in the din of cafeteria background noise. Then a young atheist stepped

forward and began pressing me with objections regarding God’s existence and the role of Christians in the Crusades and Inquisition. On this latter topic, I posed a question back to him: “If I go out and pound dents in your car with a hammer, do you blame the hammer?” The atheist paused a moment, probably seeing where this analogy was headed. He shook his head. I supplied the answer: “Probably not. You’d blame the person (me) who misused the hammer to bring harm to your vehicle. In the same way, don’t blame Christianity when it’s misused—blame sinful people; they’re the problem.”

I learned that analogy at Bethel Seminary. In fact, I learned how to serve as the Chump at Bethel Seminary because my professors modeled it for me. I was a little older when I arrived as a student in the mid-1990s, and I’d been around the block a time or two. So I asked a lot of questions.

I remember asking Professor of Old Testament David Howard how he answers the objection that it was unjust of God to require the Israelites to commit genocide on the Canaanites. Dr. Howard has this hand motion where he mimes the removal of his biblical studies hat and replaces it with an apologist’s hat before responding to such queries. I loved it.

I knew he was about to deliver some

These verses leave us with the conviction that making disciples among all nations is in fact the call of all Christians. If you are a Christian, you are unquestionably called by Christ himself to bring the nations into the joy of knowing and worshipping God. The question is: What’s your role?

Rick Mattson

serious gold nuggets to the class, which in this case was a brief foray into Canaanite cultic practices of idolatry and child sacrifice—the consequences of which can be found in the charnel houses [storehouses of human skeletal remains] of the time period.

These days I still travel the country doing the work of an apologist on college campuses. Though I never know what faith questions I’ll encounter, I seem to take the Bethel faculty with me. That’s the kind of equipping your investment in Bethel Seminary makes possible.

I’ve written a book about my experiences on the road, cataloging a series of faith analogies, called Faith is Like Skydiving: And Other Memorable Images for Dialogue with Seekers and Skeptics. Bethel Seminary is hidden between the lines on every page of that book—just as your support of Bethel Seminary is quietly embedded in the ministries of its graduates.

Thanks for investing in the next generation of pastors, Christian workers, and, yes, even . . . Chumps.

Rick Mattson is an apologetics specialist for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. When not on the road, he serves as the campus staff at Macalester College and St. Olaf College in Minnesota. He’s an avid golfer and family man.

Rick at University of Utah coffee shop, 2016

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