Tuesday, September 17, 2019

A Shoe Shine Boy at Kayo’s Barbershop

By Jon Dunnemann


As a youth, shinning shoes at my grandpa’s barbershop on Saturday mornings was kind of like being an altar boy during a Catholic service.

While an altar boy mainly attends to supporting tasks at the altar such as fetching and carrying, ringing the altar bell and so on, I had a number of relatively similar tasks helping my grandpa that consisted of cleaning the mirrors and windows, emptying the trash, keeping the magazines neatly stacked, replenishing each barber’s supplies throughout the day, restocking the soda machine, sweeping and mopping the floor as needed, and taking out the trash at the time of closing.

In the background at the barbershop, WNEW 1130 AM Radio 'On Your Dial' in New York was always playing the highly popular music of Eddie Jefferson, Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, Johnny Hartman, Lena Horne, Nat King Cole, Mel Torme, Sarah Vaughan, Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme along with America’s greatest big bands, ballads, blues, and notable songwriters.

Throughout my regular exposure to this music, I could not help but become a big fan of the jazz and blues vibe and even now, I still greatly enjoy these richly soulful musical styles.

Looking back, the first expository preaching that I ever heard about important issues of war and peace, and right and wrong came directly from my Uncle Junie who upon returning home from his service in the United States Army joined his father eventually becoming a master barber as well in Kayo's barbershop located on Bloomfield Avenue in lower Montclair, New Jersey. The same town where I was born on Monday, January 24th in 1955. These are a number of the reasons why to this day I still dig all that jazz.
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Discipleship Formation in the African Methodist Episcopal Church in the 21st Century

Galatians 5:16-26 (MSG)

16-18 My counsel is this: Live freely, animated and motivated by God’s Spirit. Then you won’t feed the compulsions of selfishness. For there is a root of sinful self-interest in us that is at odds with a free spirit, just as the free spirit is incompatible with selfishness. These two ways of life are antithetical, so that you cannot live at times one way and at times another way according to how you feel on any given day. Why don’t you choose to be led by the Spirit and so escape the erratic compulsions of a law-dominated existence?

19-21 It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community. I could go on.

This isn’t the first time I have warned you, you know. If you use your freedom this way, you will not inherit God’s kingdom.

22-23 But what happens when we live God’s way? He brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard—things like affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. We develop a willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart, and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments, not needing to force our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely.

23-24 Legalism is helpless in bringing this about; it only gets in the way. Among those who belong to Christ, everything connected with getting our own way and mindlessly responding to what everyone else calls necessities is killed off for good—crucified.

Oblate School of Theology - Letter of Conditional Admittance | 11.22.2019

Oblate School of Theology - Master of Arts in Spirituality

Master of Arts in Spirituality


Program Goal
The goal of the Master of Arts in Spirituality is to provide students with an in-depth understanding of Christian spirituality with an emphasis on significant classical and contemporary spiritual and mystical traditions.

Program Overview
The Master of Arts in Spirituality is an ATS accredited graduate level academic program designed to help students from a variety of Christian religious traditions deepen their understanding of Christian spirituality. Students will study various classical and contemporary Christian spiritual and mystical traditions, movements, and figures. Graduates will be equipped to better understand their own spiritual journey and prepared to be valuable resources for spirituality and renewal centers, parish and retreat work, as well as other spirituality-related faith formation and educational programs in a culturally diverse and globalized world. Students will also be encouraged to participate in cohort integration groups. This program is available online or face-to-face.

Program Objectives
Upon successful completion of the program students will be able…

1. To present a summary overview of major historical periods within the history of Christian spirituality and mysticism by identifying relevant movements, schools of spirituality, and major figures.
2. To demonstrate proficiency in at least one classical school of spirituality and one contemporary school of spirituality.
3. To demonstrate a basic competency in the ministry of spiritual direction and accompaniment.
4. To evaluate instances of Christian religious experience and dynamics of interior transformation as understood within the Christian spiritual tradition.
5. To identify and discuss important classical and contemporary literature in the field of spirituality.
6. To articulate the importance of spirituality and lived experience within religious traditions.
7. To demonstrate a basic competency in a multi-disciplinary approach to the study of Christian spirituality.
8. To integrate one’s personal spirituality with fundamental principles and insights from the Christian spiritual tradition.

Sankofa Institute providing education program for ministry among African Americans

Sankofa; Raising Up African-American Church Leaders


The concept of SANKOFA is derived from King Adinkera of the Akan people of West Africa. SANKOFA is expressed in the Akan language as “se wo were fi na wosan kofa a yenkyi.” Literally translated it means “it is not taboo to go back and fetch what you forgot.” SANKOFA teaches us that we must go back to our roots in order to move forward. That is, we should reach back and gather the best of what our past has to teach us, so that we can achieve our full potential as we move forward. Whatever we have lost, forgotten, forgone or been stripped of, can be reclaimed, revived, preserved and perpetuated. Visually and symbolically SANKOFA is expressed as a mythic bird that flies forward while looking backward with an egg symbolizing the future in its mouth.

Become a Transformative Leader in Your Community
Sankofa Institute programs provide opportunities for intellectual, professional, and inspirational development of transformative leadership. Resources, partnership, and cultural engagement enhance classes, lectures, symposia, worship conferences, workshops, internships and practical field education, and support our programming across North America, and include sister and brother communities from Africa.

Connect with the Leading Minds in Black Church Studies
In recognition of the web of connections and faith traditions represented in the African American Christian community, the Institute is committed to partnering with other academic and cultural institutions for our mutual benefit and for the most effective and efficient way to reach the programmatic goals of our students and the mission of the Oblate School of Theology.

Become a Sankofa Scholar
The Sankofa Institute for African American Pastoral Leadership is committed to developing and supporting pastoral leaders, men and women of all races and backgrounds, for the African American Christian community within the context of the universal Christian mission of proclaiming the Good News of Jesus Christ. The Institute aims to foster within Church leaders an understanding and appreciation of African Americans’ contributions to the entirety of Christian faith, life, and witness in North America. The Sankofa Institute will provide opportunities for the intellectual, professional, and inspirational development of transformational leadership within the African American community, offered through classes, lectures, symposia, worship, leadership workshops, internships and practical field education, as well as social outreach and cultural celebrations.

The interdisciplinary categories specific to the Sankofa Institute include:

• Black Church History
• Black Biblical Studies
• Black Theologies (including Black liberation theologies and womanist theologies)
• Sociology of Black Religion
• Contemporary Issues in the Black Church and society
• African American Christian Social Ethics
• African American Christian Education
• Black Church Worship and Nurture
• Black Preaching
• Social Justice