Hello friends!
It's been well over a year since I posted on this blog! I had started it as a project for my summer 2020 internship while I was completing my MA in Ministry at Asbury Seminary.
In the meantime, I got hyper-busy finishing up that last year and then launching into new adventures. My podcast plan expired and I didn't renew it, so if you try to listen to them, you're just going to hear silence. I may resurrect them at some point in time.
One of my biggest projects is writing my newest book, Burned: Rising from the Ashes of Spiritual Crisis. Burned is for those who have been burned up or burned out in their Christian religious experiences. It's a collection of transformative and restorative spiritual practices for reconnecting with God when what you've tried before either triggers you or just doesn't work. I've written most of the book already, and have just a few chapters and an appendix left to finish.
I wrote a Summer Update 2021 on my personal blog which will let you know what's kept me busy lately. The short story is that I graduated from Asbury in May, I'm finishing my book, I started teaching high school English and middle school Language Arts part-time at a weekly Christian homeschool program, I'm still homeschooling my youngest teen, and I'm still working part-time for our local crisis hotline.
I also had the wonderful opportunity last fall to teach a Practical Theology seminary class session as a course assistant. I did a presentation via Zoom on research methodology using my paper on The Church's Response to Marital Abuse as my example.
In addition, when I took a Transformative Teaching class in the spring from the same professor, Dr. Beverly Johnson-Miller, I revisited this research for my student lesson presentation. You can watch the public part of it here: Transformative Teaching Presentation on The Church's Response Marital Abuse.
But wait! There's more! This week I'm doing the same research methodology presentation for the current Practical Theology students as I did last fall! Here is the link for the Slide Presentation on the Research Writing Project. It's an honor to do this, and always a pleasure to work with Dr. Johnson-Miller, who privately "commissioned" me for crisis advocacy work when I was on the Kentucky campus this spring. (Edit to add: Just finished the new presentation! I loved teaching it!)
In the future, I hope to do some local or video presentations on this topic. As I told a friend recently, I'll be doing some sort of advocacy work for the rest of my life.
What is your call?
Grace and peace,
Virginia Knowles
