MTSO renews an autumn tradition Oct. 3, hosting a series of Alumni Day events. All alumni, students, faculty and staff – as well as former MTSO faculty and staff members – are invited to take advantage of this opportunity to reconnect. 

Opening with the John and Ruth Mount Alumni Awards for Distinguished Service, Alumni Day includes a delicious luncheon featuring Seminary Hill Farm produce and other locally sourced food, followed by a special presentation by Professor Robin Knowles Wallace.

The day’s schedule:

10 a.m. – Continental breakfast.

10:30 a.m. – Service of thanksgiving honoring recipients of the John and Ruth Mount Alumni Awards for Distinguished Service.

Noon – Alumni Day Luncheon.

1:30 p.m. – “What I Learned in Seminary: Twenty Years of Teaching at MTSO,” a presentation by Robin Knowles Wallace, professor in the Taylor Endowed Chair of Worship. She will weave together a history of the seminary; her teaching, musical and worship experiences; and thoughts about the evolution of theological education since she began teaching at MTSO in 1997.

Alumni Day is being presented at no cost to guests, though we ask everyone who plans to attend to RSVP. Learn more about the day and complete our short RSVP form here.

MTSO’s Dickhaut Library has facilitated the creation of digital audio recordings of important figures from the formative years of the school. The recordings, which are available for online streaming, feature Dean Van Bogard Dunn and faculty members Jeffrey Hopper, Paul Minus and Everett Tilson.

They include a report by Dunn, Hopper, Minus and Tilson on their arrest in 1964 while attempting to accompany African-American worshipers to an Easter Sunday service at an all-white church in Jackson, Mississippi. Also included are the last sermon preached by Tilson before his retirement in 1988 and complete courses taught by Dunn on Mark, John and Romans.

To access the recordings, visit www.soundtheology.org, select “Audio Programs” at the top of the screen, then choose Methodist Theological School in Ohio from the “Institutional Source” menu.

MTSO will welcome guests to campus for a wide variety of events during the Fall Semester. All of the events below are free and open to the public, and none requires registration.

"A Long Way from Home": Displacement, Lament and Singing Sorrow in Psalm 137

Lecture by Valerie Bridgeman, Associate Professor of Homiletics and Hebrew Bible

Sept. 20, 7 p.m.

Bridgeman offers a presentation focusing on the role of lament when people feel disconnected from their home, whether because of social disparities or immigration.

This lecture was prepared with assistance from a faculty development grant through the Theological Commons at MTSO. It is an extension of a summer research project, which includes a presentation in South Africa. 

Building Resilience Through Mindfulness

Presentation by Brandi Lust

Sept. 26, 6 p.m.

People who practice mindfulness have higher levels of resilience and greater levels of attentiveness to their surroundings and their work. Mindfulness also facilitates meaning-making and a deeper sense of purpose. It is a particularly effective tool for diverse communities.

Lust, an MTSO Master of Arts in Counseling Ministries student, has worked in the fields of education and social justice through her business, Learning Lab Consulting. 

Keeping Your Head Above Trauma: Lessons to Share

Conversation with Rita Cavin

Oct. 4, 7 p.m.

Cavin was serving as interim president of Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, in October 2015 when a shooter killed eight students and a faculty member before taking his own life. Several others were injured.

Now retired, Cavin will reflect on the school’s response, sharing lessons learned about being prepared for the worst, getting through the acute emergency, and finding the path to resilience and recovery.

Finding Deuteronomy in the Dirt: How Farming Informs My Biblical Scholarship

Lecture by Raymond F. Person Jr.

Oct. 11, 7 p.m.

At work, Person is a professor of religion at Ohio Northern University. At home, he lives on a historic Swiss Mennonite homestead near Bluffton, run by a cooperative of 17 families to produce meat, eggs and vegetables.

The author of eight books, Person will review his written commentary and reflect on the influence farming has had on his insights into the biblical text.

As more fall events are scheduled, they will be listed at www.mtso.edu/events. 

MTSO has launched a redesigned www.mtso.edu that’s easy to read and navigate whether you’re on a computer monitor, tablet or smart phone.

What’s familiar: The vast majority of the content and menus remain in the locations where regular visitors to the site are accustomed to finding them.

What’s new: The site’s responsive design enables it to adapt to any screen width. (If you open it in a computer window and gradually reduce the window’s width, you’ll see the content reformat itself in real time.)

On a small screen, you’ll notice that the standard menus are replaced by four stacked horizontal lines, informally called a “hamburger,” at the top right of the screen. By touching the hamburger, you’ll see a menu of all the site's main sections. And on all pages except the home page, you’ll also see a blue bar identifying the section of the site you’re in and offering a second hamburger, which will let you navigate deeper into that section. Also, at the bottom of every page is a site map displaying all of our primary and secondary pages.

We have added one new area to our main menu: Ecotheology. The Seminary Hill Farm pages reside here, as does information about ecotheology in the classroom and our Community Food and Wellness Initiative.