At The Seattle School, reading groups are a central part of our education – many classes have assigned groups where you discuss the readings and lectures. First-year Mallory Larsen talks about the initial struggle and eventual saving grace of her reading group.

Top: Kristi, Mallory, Brian, Drew; Bottom: Claire, Cori (Facilitator), Grace, Lindy, Hayden

It was the second week of my graduate school experience. I had been drowning in readings, questions and fears as I sat in a room with eight strangers, better known as my assigned Reading Group. We are required to meet for two hours each week to discuss the readings in our Interpersonal Foundations and Hermeneutics classes. Although it was only our second meeting, I’d already grown to dread it – just another thing jamming up my calendar.

On this particular Tuesday evening, I decided to share with this group of strangers the decision I had considered about 30 minutes earlier. “I think I’m going to quit school,” I said, fearfully. Continue Reading Reading and Community

Stephanie Berbec writes about the excitement of beginning her journey at The Seattle School during the summer term.

What does anyone expect when attending graduate school for the first time? A challenge? Lots of homework? Life-change? Certainly not a breath of fresh air. For me, the answer to the aforementioned question is all of the above and more. We are talking about Mars Hill Graduate School The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology. Coming from one who had dreamed of attending The Seattle School prior to beginning and finishing undergraduate studies, I had high expectations and was not disappointed. When asked by faculty and peers what I thought about the school thus far, I most always described my experience as a breath of fresh air.

I am breathing fresh air in a place where it is safe to breathe.

Continue Reading What Did You Expect?

Cori Smith shares the great journey of being a first year and the transition into becoming a second year student.

There’s a certain aura around being a first year student at Mars Hill Graduate School. Something is mysterious and exciting each time I’ve responded to someone’s introduction with, “yeah, I’m a First Year.”

Continue Reading So Long, First Year

It has been an MHGS tradition to invite incoming students to create a self-description page as part of the Orientation process. MACS student Lacy Clark looks back at the page she made one year ago.

Oftentimes when I feel lost in my identity, I sit down in front of my bookshelf and look. I peruse the titles, flip through the pages of the books, and I remember. I remember who I am—what I value and what I’m interested in, where I’ve come from and where I hope to go—and I feel centered and rooted again. I get the same feeling as I look back on my first assignment at Mars Hill Graduate School.

I was excited to find out that my first assignment upon entering MHGS: express “who I am” within the confines of an 8 ½ x 11 sheet. I decided to make a collage. A collage seems like the only way to bring my whole self because my life feels like a collage. Where I’ve been, my interests, my influences—they’re all a bit hodge podge, but they’ve all come together to form me and make me into the person I was upon entering Mars Hill Graduate School. My collage for my first assignment not only displays who I was upon entering MHGS, but also why I chose MHGS to be the next addition to my life collage.

A lot happens in the first year at MHGS: a lot of excavating, a lot of naming, a lot of rearranging. However, when looking back on my first assignment as I end the first year experience at Mars Hill Graduate School, I don’t see all the ways that I’ve changed and feel disconnected to the person I was then. Instead I again see who I am—I remember what brought me here and what I hoped my experience would be—and I’m grounded and rooted once more. It’s easy to get lost in the first year experience in all that happens, both externally and internally. But it’s only when you get lost that you truly find value in the return.

Lacy Clark grew up in Missouri and graduated from Belmont University in Nashville, TN where she studied graphic design. She has since spent time in many places, including London and Uganda, but has decided to unpack her bags in Seattle and call MHGS home.

First-year Jocelyn Skillman shares a poem from her summer term experience.

Jocelyn Skillman was born in the Seattle area and attended the University of Puget Sound where she studied Comparative Sociology and Ancient Greek. She is involved in sketch comedy in Seattle and loves yummy food, gibberish, and playing pretend!

1st year MACP student Jeff Rogness reflects on completing his first year of Practicum.

“And so you’ve named the great paradox,
a step in the right direction is the step
towards your own brokenness.”

These are the words said to me by my Practicum Leader after a particularly meaningful time of difficult discovery.  If you are thinking about attending MHGS what you need to know is exactly what is impossible to fully convey to you.  The Practicum experience sets MHGS apart from other programs and it cannot be properly put into words.  But as Dan Allender says, “You’re a coward if you don’t try and a fool if you do…” so here’s my attempt to be a fool and not a coward.

Continue Reading Growing Pains

First year MACP student Jeff Rogness reflects on the changing rhythm from first term to second.

I am amazed that I am already halfway through my second term in my first year of grad school.  The road to get here has been full of new places, people, ideas and experiences.  Thankfully, there have also been familiar places, people ideas and experiences to assure me that I have been on the right path.  The Mars Hill Graduate School experience is a unique one, and there are many components to it.  What I have been thinking about recently is how different the first two terms have been, but at the same time equally necessary.

I’m in the MACP program and the first term courses center around these three classes Faith, Hope and Love, Interpersonal Foundations and Intro to the Hermeneutical Task which are all taught by amazing professors.  Each class session was usually provocative, enlightening and potentially transformative.  For the second term the classes are History and Therapeutic Practices, New Testament Genre and Marriage and Family.  They are much more practical and simply didn’t pack the same punch as the classes last term.  The fact that our class with Dan Allender (who if you don’t know much about him, he is enigmatic, dramatic, brilliant and crazy all at the same time) started a few weeks late didn’t help.

But what I have learned as these classes have developed and progressed is that there is plenty of beauty and mystery in the mundane of life if you’re willing to acknowledge and look for it.  For me that idea is reflected in the church calendar, a majority of the year is given over to “Ordinary Time.”  A time to rest, reflect and grow into the rhythm you learn and create from the more dramatic and intense seasons of life.

Jeff Rogness is a 1st year in the MACP program.  He grew up in beautiful Ottertail County, MN and enjoys reading, listen to and playing music and watching movies with or without friends.

Another day, another minute of holy pages of text and life splayed out around me.

I’m learning how to engage in dialogue with an eye for my neighbor’s affect, language, and the nearness and closeness I feel toward myself, him, and her in any given moment. Awareness of where I am and what I inherently bring to my presence with others is blowing my mind! When I touch base with myself, I see the threads of brokenness that I haven’t let Christ heal in me. Vulnerable presence to the ways I’ve colluded with evil feels like the sound of the Christ door opening; the Light shines in.

My encounter with the other is becoming a safe harbor of opportunity, creative love, harmony. God is growing a stable, heart-centered, and beautiful creature inside of me (the one I was made to be!). She tries on her voice and sees what remarkable things Love can do for our broken, yearning hearts. Thank you, MHGS!

Jocelyn Skillman was born in the Seattle area and attended the University of Puget Sound where she studied Comparative Sociology and Ancient Greek. She is involved in sketch comedy in Seattle and loves yummy food, gibberish, and playing pretend!

Jocelyn Skillman, our first-year blogger, continues the adventure of an MHGS education with her second trimester

So much has come into focus in these last two weeks. I dared start a little journal of tools—a tool box for when I walk my usual concession to the old kingdom. My practicum experience, individual therapy, and other courses are illuminating my dark mind habits and God is showing me how He longs for my joy. The pride with which I held my sin is slowly getting untangled.

God is showing me where and how I must seek His salvation in the specificity of my brokenness. I am practicing opening my heart to Peace and un-learning deep knots of false belief about myself. Being back at school is a hearty gust of that sweet, brisk, living air: the Holy Spirit enchants and unearths the depth and hope of my dependence on Him.

Jocelyn Skillman was born in the Seattle area and attended the University of Puget Sound where she studied Comparative Sociology and Ancient Greek. She is involved in sketch comedy in Seattle and loves yummy food, gibberish, and playing pretend!

I have officially started my second trimester at MHGS.  I have been to each of my new classes exactly one time each.  They are all different and they all scare me and excite me and make me see that I am strong and weak. I have high hopes for them and yet I find myself nervous about the amount of emotional and life work that they will demand.  It might take some time to adjust to this new trimester.

Continue Reading Being Back