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News October 2019 Perspective Online

International Tea Time

About two dozen students, faculty and staff turned up for snacks and fellowship at the annual International Tea Time, a gathering for the community to get to know Perkins’s international students.

Students from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zimbabwe, South Korea, India, Ghana, and Kenya led a singalong, with Francois Mukosa, a second year M.T.S. student, playing the guitar.  The international students had the opportunity to introduce themselves individually.

Jae Jun “Daniel” Cho bowed to the group, demonstrating how he would greet people in his home country of South Korea. He expressed his gratitude for the missionaries who brought the Christian faith to Korea some 130 years ago.  Cho grew up in a Methodist home – his parents are both pastors in the Korean Methodist Church and his grandmother is serving as a missionary in Myanmar.  He also shared that American classrooms have been a bit of a cultural adjustment.

“In South Korea, students don’t express their opinions in the classroom,” he said. “I’m trying to be more talkative, but sometimes I feel I’m becoming a super impolite person!”

Alice Bonareri Ondieke of Kenya also expressed appreciation for the warm welcome she has found at Perkins.  “I’m visually impaired and didn’t know anybody here,” she said. “It takes great faith to come so far away. You’ve been so good to me and I’m grateful for that.”

Mukosa expressed gratitude for the music that came with Western Christianity to his home country, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and its nurturing power. Mukosa led the choir at Africa University, where he studied as an undergraduate, and was part of a musical group called Band Umoja back home.

“This music has helped sustain the church,” he said. “Maybe I can recommend this to you, too.”

Sumesh Jacob of India shared that his first name means “good sheep” and his last name, of course, comes from the Bible. He grew up in a community of Saint Thomas Christians, a group of Christians originally from Kerala, India, who trace their origins to the evangelism of Thomas the Apostle in the 1st century.

Many of the students came from large families back home. Ellen Chimowa of Zimbabwe is the first born of five children. Frederick Mensah of Ghana is one of seven children.

“In Ghana, everybody belongs to everybody and you have to think of everybody,” he said. “I think both cultures can learn from each other.” Mensah is an ordained Methodist elder and had a ministry in Germany for seven years before coming to Perkins.

Ishmael Mathiu noted that residents of his home country of Kenya speak some 42 different dialects; when he converses with Alice, they don’t speak in their mother tongues because they would not understand each other; instead, they speak Kiswahili. Mathiu, who is president of the International Students of Perkins, also expressed gratitude for Perkins’s welcoming atmosphere.

“We feel good when we are here,” he said. “We are home away from home.”

The gathering provided an enjoyable time of fellowship but also served as an important reminder, according to Dr. Robert Hunt, Director of Global Theological Education.

“Beneath the tea and unfamiliar snacks is a deep truth: our common humanity is manifest in diverse cultures,” he said. “And nothing helps us understand our common humanity more than when these diverse cultures are manifest in human form. At Perkins we meet the selves we’d never know in our students from foreign cultures. We learn more fully who we are from those most different from ourselves.”

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News October 2019 Perspective Online

2019 Distinguished Alumna Award

The Perkins School of Theology Alumni/ae Council has selected Rev. Katherine Glaze Lyle (M.Div. ‘1993) for the 2019 Perkins Distinguished Alumnus/a Award. The Award recognizes Perkins graduates who have demonstrated effectiveness and integrity in service to the church, continuing support for the goals of Perkins and Southern Methodist University, outstanding service to the community, and exemplary character. Read the award announcement here.

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News October 2019 Perspective Online

Faculty Update

Jack Levison Meets the Pope

Last spring was eventful and travel-filled for Jack Levison, W. J. A. Power Professor of Old Testament Interpretation and Biblical Hebrew.

On April 3, Levison lectured at the University of Bern as part of a series of public guest lectures incorporated in a course on the Theology of the New Testament.

Entitled “Filled with the Spirit: From the Old Testament to the New,” the lecture offered a unified perspective on how the Holy Spirit is viewed as the source of inspiration in interpreting scripture.

Later in the month, Levison traveled to Rome to meet with the Rev. Andrea Ciucci and Dr. Nunziata Comoretto, of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy for Life. Levison made this trip from Munich, where he was doing research, because he is co-editing a book on palliative care. “The people at the Vatican wanted to talk to me about their role in this book, which includes essays from an array of international experts,” Levison said.

The book is based upon a Spirituality for Life Conference held in Houston in September 2018. The ecumenical conference, sponsored by the Vatican, Houston Methodist Hospital and MD Anderson Cancer Center, brought together palliative care and spiritual leaders to explore ways to integrate spirituality into palliative clinical practice. Robert L. Fine, MD, Clinical Director, Office of Clinical Ethics and Palliative Care at Baylor Scott and White Health in Dallas, is Levison’s co-editor.

During his visit, Vatican officials invited Levison to join an audience with the Pope, an experience he found moving and eye-opening. “It’s absolutely remarkable in our day and age, in a time of such harshness and divisiveness, to witness the humility Pope Francis embodies,” he said. “I was so moved by the atmosphere of peace and respect in the room.”

Levison notes that he’s the second person in his family to meet the pope.  His spouse, Priscilla Pope-Levison, Perkins’ associate dean for external programs and professor of ministerial studies, met Pope Francis at the Vatican in October 2017.

With the recent publication of his new book, The Holy Spirit before Christianity (Baylor, 2019), Levison’s fall schedule includes an October 6 author event at Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas and a weekend speaking engagement (October 12-13) at First United Methodist Church Missouri City, Texas, a suburb of Houston.

 

McKenzie at North Georgia Conference

McKenzie with the first- and second-year Residents in Ministry of the North Georgia Conference.

Dr. Alyce McKenzie recently served as a consultant for the North Georgia Conference of the United Methodist Church in a retreat center in Peachtree City, Georgia, in August.

Her visit began with a daylong workshop on “Marks of Effective Sermons Across Cultures” with clergy and lay members of the conference’s Board of Ordained Ministry, to help board members in their evaluation of candidates’ sermons.

Next, she led a two-day workshop with the first- and second-year Residents in Ministry focused on the subjects of “Best Practices for Memorable Sermons” and “Making a Scene in the Pulpit: Vivid Preaching for Visual Listeners.”

Dr. McKenzie also preached at the closing worship service, led by the Residents in Ministry, on Romans 10:14-17, with the title “Somebody’s Calling!”

 

Robert Hunt on Podcast

Robert Hunt was recently interviewed for two episodes of the podcast Good God: Conversations with George Mason About Faith and Public LifeIn Episode 70, Hunt weighed in on the cultural implications of the United Methodist decision to adhere to traditionalist views of marriage practices. In Episode 73, he talked about evangelism in a pluralistic world: How can Christians engage in relationships with people of other faiths or no faith and still offer what we believe is a life of beauty and truth? Listen to Episode 70 of the podcast at  https://goodgodproject.com/podcast/episode70 and Episode 73 at https://goodgodproject.com/podcast/episode73

Ted Campbell Quoted in WaPo Story

Confederate monuments have been the center of controversy in recent years in Charlottesville, Va. Now they’re the subject of Bible studies in two United Methodist churches there that “reinterpret the statues as idols meant to prop up the false religion of white supremacy.” Read the story, including a quote from Ted Campbell, Professor of Church History, here.

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News October 2019 Perspective Online

Alumni/ae Update

Christian S. Watkins (M.Div.’19)

Christian S. Watkins Heads to D.C.

Christian S. Watkins (M.Div.’19) left Dallas in September to accept a position as the 2019-20 Wendland Fellow for Faith and Justice with the General Board of Church and Society (GBCS), an agency of the United Methodist Church based in Washington, D.C.  During the fellowship, he’ll be learning more about GBCS’s activities and helping to equip and work with local church justice teams in the North Texas and Central Texas Annual Conferences. Christian boasts that he’ll enjoy the world’s shortest commute; he’ll be living next door to the GBSC offices and across the street from the Supreme Court and U.S. Capitol.

Alum Forges Wesley-Rankin/Shelton Partnership

All students deserve to be taught in the way they can best learn. That simple idea led to the Wesley-Rankin Scholars program, a partnership between the Wesley-Rankin Community Center in west Dallas and the June Shelton School and Evaluation Center.  Helping spearhead the program is Wesley-Rankin’s executive director, Shellie Ross (M.Div. ’11), who initiated the conversations that led to the launch of the Wesley-Rankin Scholars program in the fall of 2018. Read the story on the North Texas Annual Conference website here.

Rev. Debra McKnight (M.Div. ’08)

Perkins Alum Pastors Urban Abbey

The journey of Rev. Debra McKnight (M.Div. ’08) hasn’t been without obstacles. The freedom to live out her calling as a pastor came on the heels of immense testing, resistance to conformity, persistent theological reflection, and the pursuit of God’s will. McKnight, a 42-year-old mother, is the founding pastor of Urban Abbey in the Old Market in Omaha, which started as a satellite of the First United Methodist Church but became independent nearly four years ago. With the motto “coffee, cause, communion,” Urban Abbey will celebrate its eight-year anniversary in November. Read the story in Omaha Magazine here.

Trouble the Water

The Rev. Dr. Rebecca Dwight Bruff (M.Div. ’95, D.Min. ’11) recently shared the story behind her new work of fiction, Trouble the Water (Koehler Books, 2019) at the United Methodist Foundation of Arkansas in Little Rock. Bruff was living in Dallas, serving in a church, when she made a brief visit to South Carolina with her husband. “We only had a couple of days to visit, so our first afternoon we took one of those touristy horse-drawn carriage rides through the historic part of town,” she said. “Along the way, we heard a story that neither of us had ever heard before.” The tale was so riveting that it inspired her to move to South Carolina and write the book. Trouble the Water is available on Amazon.

Alum Leads Border Immersion

Rev. Dr. Owen Ross (center) co-led an immersion trip that gave clergy and laity an up-close look at life along the Texas-Mexico border in Matamoros. Photo courtesy of the North Texas Conference of the UMC.

The Rev. Dr. Owen Ross (M.Div., ’02) recently co-led a two-day immersion trip offering clergy and laity an up-close look at life along the Texas-Mexico border. Participants spent a day learning about immigration issues and training to cross the border. The next day, participants crossed the border to meet asylum seekers and hold a vigil at the Gateway International Bridge, praying for migrants and demanding Congress to protect migrant children and families on U.S. soil. Read the story on the North Texas conference’s website here.

Religious Scholar Awards

A Perkins alum is one of 50 recipients of the Church Mutual Insurance Company’s 2019 Religious Scholars awards. Each scholarship winner will receive $5,000 to use toward the completion of the 2019-20 academic year. Raquel Cajiri Feagins (M. Div. ’07) is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Spirituality from the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio. Justin Barringer, a current student in SMU’s Graduate Program of Religious Studies (GPRS) also received the scholarship.

Keeping the Earth

Can science and religion agree on the most urgent issues of conservation and climate change? Perkins alum Dr. Roy May (M.Th. ’70) recently spoke on the topic, along with Dr. Stefan Summer, at a Sept. 7 event hosted by the Cottonwood Public Library in Cottonwood, Ariz., and the Northern Arizona Climate Change Alliance (NAZCCA). They examined the current issues raised by climate change and our spiritual and human responsibilities in the face of this global crisis. Dr. May also holds a Ph.D. in theology from the VU University in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. For 30 years he taught theology and ethics at the Latin American Biblical University in San Jose, Costa Rica.

 

Obituaries

The Rev. Dr. Kenneth Molton Dickson

The Rev. Dr. Kenneth Molton Dickson (M.Th. ’58, D.Min. ’75) died August 13 in Long Beach, Miss. A graduate of SMU, he was a proud member of the Mustang Band as an undergraduate. He was ordained an elder and served Highland Park United Methodist Church for 42 years. Dickson is survived by his wife, Dr. Mary Jane Ramsey Dickson; children Rev. Dr. Dorothy Dickson Rishel (Rod) of Long Beach, and Rev. Kenny Dickson (Michelle) of Plano Texas. In addition to a funeral in Mississippi, memorial services were celebrated at Highland Park United Methodist Church on Friday, September 6. Memorial gifts may be sent to First United Methodist Church, 2301 15th Street, Gulfport, MS 39501 or Haiti Missions, C/O Highland Park United Methodist Church, 3300 Mockingbird Lane, Dallas, TX 75205.

Read his obit here.

The Rev. Robert Scoggin

The Rev. Robert “Bob” Scoggin (M.Th. ’54) of Rochester, Minn., passed away peacefully on July 27 during a musical rehearsal with beloved friends. Scoggin was ordained as a deacon in 1952 and as an elder in 1956 and had several appointments in the North Texas Conference. He was a Minister of Music in Wichita Falls and Dallas, Texas, then in Rochester, Minn. Bob was the Minister of Music at Christ United Methodist Church in Rochester for 30 years and continued to play and give lessons after his retirement in 1993. In 2017, Bob and his bride, Pat, celebrated 65 years of marriage. A celebration of his life took place on September 14.

Read the obituary here.