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The Asbury Experience: Alive and Well in Florida

Published Date: September 22, 2014

By Steve Gober

A recent visit to Full Sail University revealed an interesting dynamic. Joel Pickering, the community outreach manager, guided our tour highlighting many innovations at Full Sail. I found one particular innovation especially intriguing. Like many universities, they measure GPA as an indicator of academic success. However, they have developed a far more important measure for their context, the student’s GPS. This system provides a means to track their students’ demonstrated professionalism. Joel indicated that professionalism represented a core value of their community. The faculty, staff, and students all participate in the pursuit of professionalism that permeates all they do. Clearly, the GPS is an integral part of the culture at Full Sail.

My mind immediately shifted to the Asbury Seminary community. As a provider of graduate level theological education, the GPA is a regular measure of success. However, we recognize that academic success only portrays part of a student’s preparedness for ministry. The alumni, faculty, staff and students often may refer to The Asbury Experience. Rarely do they take time to define this expression or the unique ats-floridacampus.©mwb2013 (49 of 203)experiences that promote it. Nonetheless, The Asbury Experience becomes the way we talk about the critical elements of life and transformation in the context of the Asbury Seminary community. Though these features are not easily measured, they mark and shape our lives.

In recent years, Asbury Seminary has evolved from a single campus offering classes in a traditional residential format, to multiple campuses and delivery systems. Just as the campuses and the ways in which students can take classes have expanded, The Asbury Experience has taken on new manifestations. Reflecting on these changes, I have become convinced that the Asbury Experience is the tangible ways through which we live out the mission of Asbury Seminary. We regularly participate in this incarnation of our mission when we connect as a called community, engage in theological dialogue, or practice life-transforming habits in our relationships with one another. Whether it is in a classroom, over a meal, in a prayer room, during a commute to campus, or in chapel; every time our mission statement comes to life, we share the Asbury Experience.

Because the Florida Dunnam campus serves students who connect in many distinct ways to the life of the seminary, we can no longer solely depend on face-to-face experiences in the confines of our building. Many are blessed to share meals and join in worship as a community in chapel and we highly encourage and seek to create space for these practices. However, distance and work commitments often complicate and limit student options for this direct participation in worship and fellowship. Therefore, we are endeavoring to make these experiences accessible to everyone in our community, both on campus and online.

This spring we will introduce a redesigned schedule that will make chapel available every time classes are offered on campus. The arrangement of weekly classes, hybrid courses, weekend, and week-long ats-floridacampus.©mwb2013 (121 of 203)intensives will all be aligned with an opportunity to share a meal and worship as a community. Additionally, we are seeking to improve access to community formation resources through Asbury Seminary’s web page. Students can now connect with the Healing Academy and prayer forums, learn more about the life of the community through This Week at Asbury Orlando, or listen to chapel services through our web page.

Ultimately, all these activities simply create space for faculty, staff, and students to share in living expressions of the mission of Asbury Seminary. Community Formation and The Asbury Experience always depend on the work of God’s Spirit in our midst and the incarnation of His mission and work by those who make up our community. Formation is a cultural reality in which we continue to invite you to engage regardless of how God allows you to connect with, participate in, and disseminate The Asbury Experience.

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