The following is a letter my wife and I sent out to our church today:

Dear Evergreen Brothers and Sisters,

“And now I commend you to God
and to the word of His grace,
which is able to build {you} up
and to give {you} the inheritance
among all those who are sanctified.”
Acts 20:32

One of the ways we describe our earthly journey this side of heaven is as a pilgrimage. A pilgrim who travels to a destination chosen for him by the Master he trusts. Sometimes following that master means a parting, whether temporary or permanent, from beloved companions. Shakespeare called such a parting “sweet sorrow.” It is sweet, because you know it is right and good; but it is sorrowful because leaving ones you love is never easy.

And so that sweet sorrow comes for us. We are writing to you to let you know that we have applied for admission to Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. We do so to follow the call of God on our lives, as best we can perceive it.

God uses many things to guide us though our lives, including our personal histories and experiences. We began our married life in the heady days of the ‘70s “Jesus Movement.” We were sure that time was short for the Lord’s work and that education and training were luxuries we could not afford. We immediately started our family and began to serve wherever God planted us. In our 30s, maturity brought a longing for the education we had missed out on earlier. So we pursued and obtained our undergraduate degrees.

During all those years we discovered a love for learning, particularly about the things of God, which we fed with much reading and listening to those more learned than ourselves. There awakened in us a desire to study God’s Word and theology, but the paths down which God took us did not seem, for many years, to include the possibility of seminary.

From the beginning of our marriage, we had a strong sense that the years we find ourselves in now would be given to God’s service in some special way. Having both married and had our children young, we looked forward to the “empty nester” years that would come in our 40s not as a time to sit back and relax, but as a time when we would be able to give ourselves to ministry in a much greater degree.

We never thought we would be in Charlottesville this long…but then Evergreen happened to us! All of you, and the wonderful things God was doing here, kept us around. But always there was that pull that there was something more that God wanted for us. Some of the present formation of that has happened largely through and because of Evergreen. Here we have deepened our love for theology and its importance in forming our daily walk with God. Here also we found the expression of gifts in counseling and discipleship that we hadn’t fully seen before. And here our desire to increase our training in those areas so as to be even more useful was fed.

One thing that we feel a need to make clear is that we are not leaving because of any current situation in Evergreen. To tell you the truth, we have lived through a horrendous church meltdown in the past…Evergreen’s present struggles are “momentary, light afflictions” (2 Cor. 4:17) by comparison. We have been amazed by what we have seen God do thus far, and have great hope that Evergreen will emerge from this a better, even more Christ-honoring church. To see that process all the way through would be great joy. And yet the opportunity to go to Westminster has presented itself now. It came down to a “now or perhaps never” decision. As it is, Mark will be 50 at graduation!

Let us share with you what we will be pursuing at seminary. Mark will seek a Master of Divinity (M. Div.) with emphasis in biblical counseling. This program involves a minimum of three years. Because of a wonderful scholarship at Westminster, Karyn may take any classes at the same level or below for free! Karyn plans to pursue a Master of Arts in Religion (MAR), a two-year program. The plan is for Karyn to work full time our first year while taking a few classes. Our dream (which would take a small miracle) would be for provision for her to be able to go full time starting my second year.

Another question many might ask is what our expected outcome will be, what we plan to do beyond seminary. To that we answer…we’re going there to find out! We believe that God will lead us through the experiences and contacts we will have and make while there. We are open to just about anything, from pastoral ministry to overseas missions. We’ll leave that door for God to open.

Timing? Mark’s Intro to Greek class begins July 29. That will be an interesting time, as Karyn will be departing for Maine about the same time to be with Hannah and Philip for the birth of our fourth grandchild.

To say the least, these next few years will be a challenge of faith for us. We will be leaving secure and well-paying jobs and undertaking great expense with little knowledge of where income will come from. But we have always seen God provide for us when we have stepped out in response to His call. We go unafraid, and ready for God to display His glory.

Thank you for reading this long letter. There is simply no way we can convey in these words a fraction of our affection for you all. Evergreen has been the best spiritual home we have ever had, and it’s always hard for the “college kids” to leave the nest, but the time does come. All that you have been to us we will carry in our hearts in the years to come. If any of you would like to talk further with us about this move in our life, please do get in touch. And we will be ever so grateful for your prayers, as we commit to pray for you all, even after we have departed.

May God be the Hope and Stability of us all,

Mark and Karyn Traphagen

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 16th, 2004 at 10:24 pm and is filed under It`s All About Me. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.