I’ve been incredibly blessed this seminary off-season to have one of my old U of Michigan friends offer me a contract job at his engineering firm in Grand Rapids. The weather has been nothing short of a travesty the entire time I’ve been here, but nonetheless it has been an enjoyable and productive visit.
Being back in GR has had its benefits. For one, this is the heart of Reformed territory in the states. So I’ve had access to Calvin College library and even met up with David Engelsma at the Protestant Reformed Theological Seminary. I’ve also resumed training with my old Taekwondo club. If I return to GR next year and resume the contract job I hope to test for my 2nd degree blackbelt, 18 years from the first one.
My mind, however, is not entirely in Grand Rapids. There are some really exciting things coming up. Of course I’ll be back in beautiful Colorado for the summer and fall semesters and am looking forward to doing some hiking there. But really it is the drive there which I’m excited about. Well, not Nebraska or Kansas or anything like that, but rather the places I’ll be stopping at. First on May 24th I’ll be heading to Grace PCA in Indianapolis. This is the church that Gordon Clark preached at from 1958-1965. There I’ll be meeting up with a former acquaintance of Dr. Clark, doing some interviews perhaps, and maybe touring Butler university. The following day I’m continuing my research into the Clark biography (possibly to be titled “The Presbyterian Philosopher”) at Dr. Clark’s daughter’s house in Illinois. In addition to interview family members there I hope to spend more time with Dr. Clark’s original papers. I don’t want to get my hopes up too high, but I think this meeting will be very successful in improving the story in the biography.
But, beyond Colorado (or even the drive there) my mind has been off into the future a couple years and thinking a lot about the ministry I hope to found. That being a hostel on the Appalachian Trail. I’ve been working on all of the plans on a preliminary level. One new development is that I’m working on applying to Presbyterian Evangelistic Fellowship (PEF) as a missionary. This has the benefit of allowing donations to come to me through PEF tax-free rather than trying to set up a non-profit status for the hostel.
What I could probably use soon is a website for the hostel. At this point it would be announcing the plan and doing preliminary support raising for it. In time the website would develop into a list of services which the hostel provides and details about the place. I could use a volunteer who’d be interested in helping to set up this website. I’d be glad for anyone to contact me regarding this.
Perhaps even further out in time, I’m working on a long-form article on “Logic, the LCMS, and Van Til.” The LCMS, of course, is the Lutheran-Church Missouri Synod in which I was raised. This article is something I’ve been thinking about for many years. It will be about the place of logic in modern Lutheran churches. I see this as the central question in Lutheranism and am completely bewildered as to why I haven’t been able to find much written about it.
Well, that’s all for now. Oh, yeah, I’ll be looking for new things to fill the absurd amounts of free-time I have. I’m almost done (with the help of many others) transcribing the entire collection of not-published-in-books items written by Dr. Clark. Over 200 items have now been uploaded to the GHC Foundation website. Hopefully my next hobby is less tedious and less finger-cramping than this million-word typing exercise.
