"The Plunge" - the hallmark of the Seabury education. Every year, the middler (2nd year) class takes the course entitled "Church, Culture, & Mission" which is a class designed to teach the student a bit about parochial ministry. In late October/early November, the students are sent in teams of 2-4 persons to some willing parish around the country for about two weeks where they will dive in, "plunge" into the life of said parish. The goal is to see how a parish is run, analyze and assess the culture in which the parish exists and does mission, and focus on anything of interest to you (as determined by student goals: mine include preaching, congregational development, and adult Christian education). So, my team, comprised of 2 other capable persons, will be headed to St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Medina, WA and All Saints' Episcopal Church in Redmon, WA (both on the East side of Seattle, in Microsoftland). Once all one parish, there was a split in the 1980's, creating All Saints'. That will be part of our team's goal - investigating the causes and consequences of that split. So, we leave this Friday for Seattle, about which I am very excited because I am the farthest West I have ever been right now. Plus, Seattle is suppossed to be a neat city. I'll take my rain coat. Our team will return on November 9th, and I do not know what my blogging capability will be when I am there, but I will try to when I can. We'll be staying with some gracious families who have agreed to put us up (put up with us) for the time we are there and we look forward to those relationships. I'm getting excited.

On another note, welcome with me to the blogiverse a friend of mine, K, who is a young Episcopalian discerning a call to priesthood. You can find him over at All Things Not Considered. It seems his new dog and his personal training are occupying much of his time right now, but I would look forward to some interesting and provocative postings about life in the Episcopal church if I were you.

I'm still trying to decide whether to switch to blogger's commenting system. DawgDays, what did you mean when you said "switch instead of fight"?

-R