Kerux: a portfolio of Calvin Theological Seminary - Volume 44.6 - 11 May 2010

An Interview With the President-Elect

Editor’s Note: Rev. Jul Medenblik is the President-elect for Calvin Theological Seminary. Senior Staff Writer Nate Van Denend interviewed Rev. Medenblik about his upcoming position at CTS.

JM

When I was an attorney and processing my sense of call there were two questions I kept asking myself. First, do I see myself continuing in that field for the next twenty five to thirty years? Second, what would I regret not doing for God? The answer was the opportunity to go to seminary and study and be in that full time vocational ministry.

NVD

What should we know about you as a student body?

JM

That’s a big question. I like to travel with my family. Sometimes the opportunity to be in the car together is the best part of a family trip. I have a 22-year-old son and a 15-year-old daughter. Am I a sports fan? Yes, particularly the Chicago teams. I am a Chicago Cubs fan, which means suffering is part of the process, since they haven’t won the world series for over a century now.

NVD

How do you see yourself interacting with the student body?

JM

My wife and I particularly look forward to the sense of connectedness and the opportunity to have an occasional class to teach and to be present with students, eating at the student center. I have a sense that there is an opportunity to make connections with students and draw them in. It probably works best in a small group format rather than doing it in a large town hall meeting. I think it gives an opportunity for you as students to know what’s going on in administration.

It may not be best to always think about a course. Maybe it’s an hour presentation where you bring in local pastors or special speakers, but you’re up front with them and you have the opportunity before and after to dialogue with students. So rather than think of just a course, I think about occasional seminar presentations that I might be able to offer as a way of connecting with the student body.

NVD

In the next five to ten years, many of the faculty will require. What kind of traits, and skills will you look for in the new faculty?

JM

That’s a great question, because we do face new opportunity of not only blessing those who are finishing up in their work at Calvin Seminary and who have gone through a number of changes, especially most recently, but I also think about what it would mean for us to have a more diverse faculty - a faculty that continues to balance, as I think our current faculty does, what does it mean to be deep in academic scholarship but also relate that to the local church and pastorate that many students are being trained for. I look for people who connect head and heart together and who connect with people in diverse settings. But, I would also ask, are they the type of people that would joyfully mentor and walk alongside students, even as they are people who need to have the gift of scholarship?

NVD

I was talking to Prof. Rylaarsdam a little about this question and he said “What would the Seminary look like if every single faculty member had participated in someone’s conversion?’

JM

I think Professor Rylaarsdam was right to challenge us to think about what it means to walk alongside people. My church has had the privilege over the last year of having four or five adult baptisms and I just received an email this week from someone who had just heard about what was happening here at Calvin Seminary thanking me for my role in bringing them to Christ. That’s something for pastors and leaders of churches to think about - what it means to have a hospitable community where there is that level of understanding to walk alongside people who initially seem so far away from God and to experience the joy that you have with sharing in their story but also sharing Christ with them along the way. We allowed these people to have time to listen, to learn, to develop, to grow, to ask questions in an atmosphere where they knew it was safe. I think that’s a category we’ll especially need in the 21st century. What does it mean to have a safe church where people can ask questions about God?

NVD

So then to tie it into the question again, when you’re thinking about the next generation of professors. What will Calvin Seminary look like ten years down the road?

JM

The faculty themselves have a major role in identifying people in their field who may fit at Calvin Seminary. It’s obviously something that students will be involved in. At this point in time what I would love for us to see is how do we do this by planning ahead of time and understanding that sometimes its related to a whole department. So, rather than thinking of this as taking just one piece out of the faculty and putting another person or piece back into the faculty, instead looking at the entire faculty alignment.

I think we need to recognize that not any one person brings all the gifts that are needed for every endeavor. So, I do think that interdisciplinary studies and opportunities for professors to work together is not only something that’s happening now but something that will be enhanced and grow over the next decade.

NVD

Since you’re a pastor and not a professor moving into this position, does that represent a shift towards making the Seminary education more practical?

JM

That’s an interesting question. It’s hard to talk about myself, but I have a constellation of gifts. So in that way, it’s a recognition that one title may not define a person. For example, because I lived for a decade in Florida does this mean that the seminary desires to reach out to Florida or because I served in Canada for a year is that a signal that they want to demonstrate to the church in Canada an openness to more Canadian students? It’s hard to think of my selection as creating a message in that direction. I think that because of my role in the board of trustees I would continue in the same direction in terms of calendar and curriculum and an emphasis that way in formation for ministry and an appreciation for being Biblical, contextual, authentic, and an environment that fosters lifelong learning, because our desire obviously is to train people who have theological breadth and depth and also pastoral sensitivity.

There are two things I am particularly mindful of in all interactions. One is prejudging a person or situation and the other is exclusion. In this case, to prejudge someone with a J.D. and an M.Div. as someone without an interest in scholarship is obviously not true. But, there is also some level of exclusion to assume that just because someone has a Ph.D. they do not have a deep love for the church.

NVD

Recently there have been a series of decisions making it easier to go to another seminary and then become ordained in the CRC. That means Calvin Seminary has to compete for students in a way they never had to before. To what extent does Calvin Seminary have to be mindful of what other seminaries are doing?

JM

I have a desire for us to not only have better connections with other seminaries but also other students who may for whatever reason be choosing that particular seminary in that particular location. I think Calvin Seminary has to be Calvin Seminary. We have be a place where people choose to come. I look forward to helping us articulate that well, connecting us with other seminaries and other students in other locations.

I come at this with somewhat of a unique story. In 1991 when we were living in Florida I was an attorney who had the opportunity to go to Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando. RTS was just opening up their Orlando campus and I was practicing law three hours away. RTS was shaping its curriculum and calendar so that students could come to class on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. So, I could have then stayed in Lake Worth, FL, continued practicing law a part-time basis and then went to school Tuesday- Thursday. But, because I was rooted in the CRC and my understanding of the value of the education I would receive at CTS, I chose not to go to RTS in Orlando but came to CTS with my family. I have never regretted that choice and I will tell every perspective student that there’s a great value to coming to CTS, as I’ve found, and I hope others have found it as well.

NVD

What is the gospel?

JM

I love a lot of different ways that we frame that question and frame it well. You can think of it as the fact that the whole gospel is related to the whole story. It’s about Creation, Fall, Redemption, and New Creation. Many people focus on the middle two. As Reformed people we broaden to that full gospel and ask, what does it mean to know the creation but also to be part of the re-creation project?

NVD

So when did the Gospel grab you?

JM

I think of two times when it particularly did. One I cannot describe other than as a particular Easter when I was 12 or 13 and feeling clean. That’s a different word to describe it, but I think it’s a biblical word and just having a sense that what I had just heard, and I had heard it previous years, was something that I now understood that God intended for me to hear and that Jesus Christ did die for my sins and desired to have a relationship with me. Later on, when I was 17 and my dad was going to undergo open heart surgery. At that time I was the eldest son and we’re farmers and he was away having that surgery and we wondered about his living beyond that surgery. It’s gettting to be harvest time and there is a sense of worry and concern and anxiety, but also a sense of lament saying, “God, do you understand what’s going on? Do you hear us? Do you hear our prayers?” And I remember really having a sense that God heard us and that God said “I’m a father who understands pain and suffering and loss and anytime you ever doubt that, understand again the cross.” That was another opportunity for me to deepen my faith and recognize that it wasn’t about going to church Sunday mornings and Sunday evenings but it was about something so much more. I’ve had the great opportunity to help people understand the Gospel as something that they can be a part of and something they can be connected to - not because of anything that they’ve done but because of what Jesus Christ has already done for them.