Mars Hill Graduate School Ruined My Life
*This is a sponsored post // Image via Joshua Longbrake
A few weeks ago my friend Josue who is now doing marketing for Mars Hill Graduate School asked if I would do a sponsored post about the Seattle grad school/seminary I attended for two years. I immediately accepted. Not because of the money, but because I desperately want every single one of you to stop everything you are doing, pack up all that you own, and take the next few years to have your lives completely ruined by the little red school teetering on the shore of Puget Sound.
To say that MHGS was life changing would be an understatement. A truer thing to say would be that Mars Hill Graduate School gave me my life back by giving me hope for a life I didn’t know was possible.
Yes, I got a Masters in Christian Studies. Yes, I learned how to be a better artist. If you go you too will learn to be a better theologian/pastor/therapist/artist. But let’s be honest, you can get these credentials and learn these things just about anywhere. What Mars Hill Graduate School gave me and can give you was much more deep.
As I was thinking about how to explain my experience, I started going through my notes from the first class I took taught by Dan Allender - Faith, Hope and Love. The following excerpt is from the very first session I sat in:
“The nature of hope transforms the heart because it increases our capacity to imagine. And what we desperately need is biblical imagination (not fantasy) which is a map (path) to creating what does not exist. Hope is meant to be the basis of creation. The difference between fantasy and dream is that fantasy is an escape from reality. A dream is what you are willing to bleed for to create.
What are you willing to bleed for?
What are you willing to die for?
Would you be willing to die to come to this class, or to be in this master’s program? Are you aware that there are consequences to being in this program? Things in your family, in your marriage, in the way you relate to people will change because of you being here.
There is a price to all creativity and that price is your blood.
Are you willing to die for your dreams? Or is fantasy a more comfortable place?
We see Mars Hill Graduate School as part of our transformation. So we hope for a new school for our redemption. Most schools do not offer this kind of hope because it is too hard.”
MHGS gave me a chance at my real life. The one I was born to live. Not the fantasy I was trying desperately to keep. In a word MHGS ruined the life I was pretending to live.
Just over a year later and I’m still processing. The floodgates have opened and they cannot be closed. My life will never be the same and yet believe me, I am mostly certainly not fixed or done. I have reverted. I have lost touch with dear ones. I have failed in bringing the philosophies of MHGS back into my context. However, the hope that MHGS gave me makes me actually believe there is grace. And it is with this grace that I live and create from.
If you are looking for a program that will just give you a degree, go somewhere else. But if you are looking for a place that will give you your life back, then maybe you’re ready for the gray skies of Seattle.
MHGS has three programs:
The deadline to apply is January 15, 2010 and if you’d like more insider information, check out their blog curated by Josue himself - experience.mhgs.edu.
Since a blog post cannot fully contain all that a feel about MHGS, please do me the honor of speaking with you if you’re at all interested in ruining your life. Shoot me an email and we can set something up on the phone. And if you’re still on the fence, have a look at a video I created for MHGS a couple of years ago about the faculty and the school’s call to love their neighbors.
