Dear Fellow Seminarians:
While I am genuinely worried about the difficulty of this class and whether I can handle it, I am excited to be enrolled in it. I have a bachelors of science in liberal arts. I have taught English in Taejeon, South Korea, for the past fourteen years.
I am an MDiv student in Christian Ethics. I have preached some here in South Korea, on a volunteer fill-in basis and I lead English Bible study groups. I feel a strong need to get help in my study of the Bible, to become a better preacher. I expect to get much help from my experience at Southeastern.
Having lived apart from the U.S. for half my adult life, and having been isolated from Southern Baptists for that long, I feel strong sentiments when I realize the fullness of the beauty that remains in my mind regarding the culture to which I am on the cusp of returning, a culture which to me is a bastion of believers who share my feelings on inerrancy, something that is not at all common here in South Korea, where all too many of my Christian friends and students claim to be “Christians but…,” meaning they can agree with ninety-some percent of the Bible.
What is that? It is not inerrancy, while it is the dominant environment of the culture in which I have lived and taught English for the past fourteen years. The one salient aspect missing, the thing that sticks out so much for me emotionally, has been the paucity here of the “Spontaneous Inerrancy of Ma and Pa Baptist” that was so common in churches from my stomping grounds, the foothills of North Carolina. Christianity here is relatively new and seems to be strongly correlated with material acquisitiveness.
Watching Chapel videos and reading my texts are poignant to me, in the autumn of my life, given the warmth I feel anticipating a return for formal study of God’s Word, an environment which stands in stark contrast with the difficulties I have experienced at times, living somewhat as a “stranger in a strange land.” Than within this current situation of my transition to the lifestyle of a seminarian in residence, I don’t know that I have ever had such positive anticipation in my life, so warm and eager are my feelings. I expect to be surrounded by vibrant, sincere Christians on all quarters for the next few years, all who speak English well.
And I don’t mean to gloss over the bumps and rough places, idealizing the culture of my youth. Of course I realize all is not always gravy in the Bible Belt, Land of grits, country ham and red-eyed gravy. I am sure I will be tempted to add to my beltline once I return to the land of my youth next month. I will have to make a conscious effort to watch my waist with assiduous care, now that I am considerably older and less capable of just “exercising it off” at the drop of a hat.
Please pray for my family to have a smooth transition with a minimum of culture shock when I bring them to the U.S. I just got news this morning that we successfully received a Green Card Immigrant Visa for my South Korean wife. Now, we merely need to sell some property to have something to live off of while at SEBTS, pare down possessions, pack our belongings and arrange for shipping that which we cannot carry with us on the plane.
Love, Nathaniel
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