This reflection was written by the College’s principal, the Rev. Dr. Jesse Zink, for this week’s Wingèd Ox, a weekly news digest distributed to the college community. You will find reflections from previous weeks here.
As we start a new semester, there is lots to prepare for and anticipate: new courses, professors, colleagues, and routines to learn. The start of a semester can be energizing and seem full of possibility. It can also feel a bit overwhelming as we try to imagine how these new responsibilities will fit into lives that may already feel too full.
It’s been my experience that as the semester advances, all of us develop a kind of tunnel vision: we get focused on fewer and fewer things, often, in an academic context, on the courses we’re taking and the assignments we need to complete. This makes sense: students receive grades in those classes and we all live in a society that prizes achievement, accomplishment, and success.
So at the start of this semester I want to draw your attention to one part of the student handbook (the revised version of which will be making its way into your digital hands later this week). It says this: “It is our conviction that the vitality of a theological college’s community life is undergirded by a vital worship life.” I really believe this to be true. Part of the way we follow God is by prayer, but prayer is not just individual. We pray together and when we pray together we not only worship God, we also connect more deeply to one another. In my time as principal, there have been so many times when I have found myself receiving such a great gift in attending a worship service led by another member of this community, and I am sure this semester will be no different.
The thing about prayer, however, and maybe especially corporate prayer, is that it’s hard to measure. You’re not going to receive a grade on it at the end of the semester. I’ve seen the ways, in my own life and in the lives of students, how when things get busy or feel particularly overwhelming, it can be easy to shove prayer to the side and forget about it, the better to focus on things that really “count”—or at least can be more easily measured.
The people who make up this community this semester come from a range of backgrounds and experience with prayer. There are many gifts here that are waiting to be released and many opportunities for all of us to learn something new about prayer and worship.
We’ll begin our corporate prayer life together this semester tomorrow, Tuesday, September 1. (To mark the new semester and meet one another after the summer, we’ll have a light bagel breakfast available after that service. Details below.) Each week during the semester, we have morning prayer at 8am on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and evening prayer at 4:30pm on Tuesday and Wednesday. We also have a mid-day service at 11:40am on Wednesday and a Friday morning service at 8am (though the first one of those isn’t until September 18). There are also deliberate gaps in the schedule—on Mondays and Thursday afternoons notably—for students who may feel called to gather together with others to explore forms of prayer we don’t often use here. If you have thoughts or questions about any of this, please talk to Jim Slack, our chaplain, or to me or another member of the faculty.
As you are looking at your calendar for the semester ahead, I hope you will give some thought to how corporate prayer in this community can become part of your routine this semester.
Faithfully yours,
Jesse Zink
Principal