A frequently-heard part of many Fuller student’s story: “My congregation told me not to go to Fuller because it was too liberal.” Or “My congregation told me not to go Fuller because it was too conservative.” The funny thing is, it’s true. Fuller students are liberal and conservative and moderate. It’s the great mix of opinions and friction between those opinions that makes Fuller Theological Seminary a great place to–wait for it–learn.
So if competing opinions make for a learning environment, what better place to learn from than that bastion of the unchurched, Portland, Oregon? If you’re a Bible Belt-dweller (not that there’s anything wrong with that), you might be of the opinion that any area outside the Belt is rife with sin and anti-Christian rhetoric. Yet how are we to learn if we’re smug, satisfied and enveloped in our own knowledge, opinion and subtly-honed prejudice?
Accessed via Scot McKnight’s posting regarding the Portland Monthly interview with (in)famous atheist Christopher Hitchens (which is a fascinating interview both for Hitchen’s level of intelligence and his skewering of interviewer and former Unitarian minister Marilyn Sewell), Portland Monthly Magazine did a series of five articles about leading Portland-area church leaders. From the church in the pub to the documentarian, their versions of church may not fit with yours. Yet these ministers are faithfully following Christ and advancing the Kingdom in one of the least-churched regions of this one nation under God. This series of articles are interesting both as an exploration of church and as a way to minister in the context into which God places us.
