I'm Going Sailing!

Bright and early tomorrow morning I leave for a trip in the Mediterranean.  For three weeks I will be hiking, sailing, and living with a small group of students from Eastern Mennonite Seminary, exploring the early Christian movement in the Mediterranean.  Since I can't say it any better than our fearless leader Linford Stutzman, here is the course description as it is in our syllabus:

The focus of this course is on the dynamics of the Christian Movement that exploded throughout the Roman Empire, particularly the major port cities of the Mediterranean during the first to third centuries. By the end of the third century, in spite of discrimination and outright persecution, approximately ten percent of the inhabitants of the Empire were Christian, threatening the very fabric of Roman culture and political institutions. This is a fascinating story, filled with implications for Christians seeking to be effective and faithful in living and witnessing in global empires at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Using the latest scholarship and field research, this course will seek to understand this first-century phenomenon that eventually changed the course of history, and relate these findings to the experiences and insights from Christians living and witnessing around the world today.

This course is offered as a three week intensive seminar in the Mediterranean. Students will begin in Antalya, Turkey and end in Athens, Greece, sailing along the southern Turkish coast aboard SailingActs  and the Blue Pearl, a Turkish gulet, then cross the Aegean to Greece on a ferry. Students will experience sea travel in the first century, learn to work together in sailing the boat, visit numerous seaports and islands of the Acts stories, and engage in intensive reading and discussion of the culture, politics, religion, and economics of the first century world. In this way students will gain insight into the combination of creative witness and social factors that contributed to the rapid growth of the early church around the Mediterranean.

We will begin our trip together in a week from now, on the 13, but I am traveling over early to explore the city of Istanbul for a few days before the class begins.  I hope to have occasional access to wireless internet (as Linford has promised us we will have), so I should be able to keep this blog up to speed (or at least relatively so).  For now, though, I still have to pack.