prompt_front: Now, answer the following question based on the text below, only give me the answer and do not output any other words.

Question: What are the three phases of the author's preaching process?

Read the following text and answer briefly.

Context 1: // josh vajda // | a blog about theology and everything else
// josh vajda //
Sunday School Notes
Preaching Method
January 17, 2016 Josh Vajda	Leave a comment
I’m not a preacher; I’m a theologian  But now that I’ve graduated seminary I sometimes have the honor of preaching  And as someone who just barely passed the two required preaching courses while he was focused on other things, I’ve had to go back and really develop a theology and strategy of preaching  It should go without saying that it’s a work in progress, but I’m at a place now where I’m comfortable with my system—which means the next step is to share it  Maybe someone out there can benefit from what I’ve learned, but either way there’s always room for improvement and maybe you can help me see where 
Topic/Text Selection
The first and most obvious question is what to preach on  I was trained to be sensitive to what the congregation needs to hear, but not being a pastor I don’t have that kind of insight  I once heard John Piper say when he’s a guest preacher he preaches to himself that way he knows at least one person needed it  I like that better, but this early in my ministry I’ve taken to something a little less holy: what can I preach well?
This has really driven most of my sermons to-date, especially because I usually have only a few weeks’ notice  I preached on Ahab because I had just read about him in my devotions  I preached on the tree and its fruits because I had just studied the passage in the context of LGBT acceptance  Most recently, I preached on 1 Corinthians because that’s what we’ve been studying in Sunday School  The more I know something ahead of time, the better chance I have of knowing what to look for and how to communicate it 
Once I have my topic, I start running the passage through a system in the three phases we used in seminary: exegetical, theological, and homiletical 
Phase 1: Exegetical
The exegetical phase is just getting into the passage itself  First, I want to know the immediate context for the passage  Why is this here? What ideas are continuing, and which are new? How the author frames the passage is probably the most important factor in choosing how I will introduce it in the sermon  If it’s an epistle, I will also play with a structural outline to try and identify rhetorical choices 
Second, I want to try and surface issues in the Greek  I do a very rough translation, and if a word jumps out at me I take note  I’m looking for ambiguous meanings, untranslated concepts, repeated words, related words, etc  I don’t expect to come up with a better translation than the professionals; I just want to have some idea of why they made the choices they did and what might be getting lost in translation  (Note: I don’t talk about Greek and Hebrew words from the pulpit; I only explain the concepts because that’s what I expect people to remember )
Third, I take the list of questions I’ve been building and I start to do research  Who’s the referent in this verse? What does this metaphor mean? Is it used elsewhere? What’s the relationship between these two ideas? Does this command really imply that? My research is mostly based on Scripture alone, although there are times when I have to turn to historical background information to really get a reference  I see the Bible as one whole text even though it has many authors, and I’m very interested at drawing legitimate connections across books  I’ve also found Carson’s Exegetical Fallacies is a great help at avoiding common errors in biblical studies 
Phase 2: Theological
The boundary between exegesis and theology is thin and messy  I was given conflicting advice on this: some professors insisted I “bracket out” my theology, take nothing for granted; others insisted the only way to read it rightly is with Christian presuppositions 
I try to do both if I can 
Not all doctrines are equal  I refuse to bracket out core doctrines like the Trinity or salvation by grace alone through faith alone  But I feel very free to challenge other doctrines  My sense of how far to take which ideas is really very intuitive and not something that lends itself to explanation 
In short, the question raising and answering process is really the beginning of the theological phase for me  I’m looking for key ideas and trying to identify the timeless truths they communicate  Now there’s a danger here: you can use a passage to communicate all kinds of good theology  I think it’s much better when you can identify the theology the author was trying to communicate 
So one could hypothetically use Jesus’ tree/fruit analogy to talk about order in creation or a theology of arboreal imagery—and I might even do that in a teaching context  But preaching is a different task to me  I believe preaching is exhorting with the authoritative words of God  I’m not up there to educate  I’m there to press the points I believe God is pressing  If I teach anything else, it’s on my own authority  Hopefully it’s right  But if I’m going to say “thus saith the Lord,” I’d better be a sure as I can be that this is really His point; because again, not all doctrines are equal  So that’s why in this example I preached that the fruit of your life reveals the tree of your heart  I’m confident that was Jesus’ point, not mine 
Once I’m done with my exegetical studies, once I’ve done my best to figure everything out on my own—that’s when I turn to the commentaries  Just like with doing the translation, it’s not that I think I’m better than the experts; I do it because I know the text better when I wrestle with it myself  What’s more, as I wrestle with it I get a better sense of where others may have trouble, so I know to explain them more carefully or illustrate them more vividly  The only reason I even open the commentaries is for validation: did I miss anything or draw a wrong conclusion 
Phase 3: Homiletical
Throughout the whole process thus far, I’m keeping my eyes open for anything interesting, catchy, or eloquent  In some ways I’m having a conversation with the text and cross-references, and I note the parts of the conversation I like  If a crucial idea jumps out, I want to note it so I can craft a phrase around it  If an idea gets me really excited, I’ll jump out of my seat and pretend I’m preaching on it right then and there  Often those bursts of inspiration have gems worth polishing  Hopefully by the end of the exegetical process and the theological Q&A, I have a list of ideas and phrases to sprinkle in as I actually write the sermon 
One unfair advantage here is I took a course in copy writing, which is basically script for advertising  I especially liked what my professor called “fulcrum phrases,” like M&M’s famous “melts in your mouth / not in your hand ” It’s a skill I’ve tried to hone in my songwriting  If you can find that well-crafted phrase that has symmetry, it connects deeper and sticks better  I try to make sure I find at least one for every sermon  Here are some I’ve used:
It’s not yours to take; it’s God’s to give 
He who walks in humility walks in grace 
The fruit of your life reveals the tree of your heart 
You don’t have to hold on to anything for God to hold on to you 
So that’s my ideal, but I’m looking for anything at all that excites me, because if I’m excited about something there’s a good chance someone else will be, too 
Sermon Structure
At this point, I’m ready to start writing my sermon  I know what the text is about, why it exists, how it relates to the rest of Scripture, which parts are difficult to understand, and which parts are exciting  But before I can build content, I need a skeleton 
At Dallas Seminary I learned that a good introduction has the same essential parts, and I use the acronym INSTeP to remember them: image, need, subject, text, and preview  As someone with some creative writing background, I didn’t like this at first  But truth be told, a good sermon borrows from both storytelling and essay  The story draws you in, but the essay keeps you grounded  And just like a good essay, you need a thesis statement and its essential supports to help prepare people for what’s to come 
In my mind, the most important aspect of the introduction is the boring stuff: what’s the subject, what problem does it solve, where is our passage, and what are the main points  The image serves that  As a student I wanted to pick a great image that really stood out and captured people’s attention  But right now I’m in a place where all I care about is getting people interested in the need  If I have an image that raises the need, great; if not, I’ll try to explain my way to it  If you get through the introduction and people still don’t know what you’re talking about or why they should care, you’re about to fight an uphill battle 
The preaching style taught at Dallas and many other evangelical schools is sometimes called “Big Idea” preaching  The short version is that every sermon should have a well-crafted thesis statement  The way it’s taught, it’s everything; your exegesis is all about finding it, your homiletics are all about driving it home  In some cases the thesis becomes more important than the passage itself, which I think is going too far 
But I do think there should be one main idea tying everything together  It shouldn’t replace the passage, but it should drive the passage  As I go through my study process I’m making a list of possible thesis statements  If I haven’t found it by the end of the study process, I keep working toward it  There’s no point in writing the sermon until I have that unifying thought because I’m interested in every detail, every rabbit trail  I need that thesis to give my writing purpose, to tell me what to cut and what to emphasize 
Once I have the thesis, I try to take the existing structure of the passage and relate it back to that thesis  I know there are many different structures you can play with, but I find I do a better job of preaching the passage when I follow its structural cues  When I try to write a novel structure, I tend to make the passage just a series of illustrations for my own points; I’m sure better preachers are skilled at avoiding this problem 
Once I have the thesis and the structure, I write a draft of the whole sermon, weaving in those phrases I had stored up 
Somehow application seems to be the most contentious part of the sermon  Some preachers try to draw out every possible implication while others see application as purely the Holy Spirit’s job and provide nothing  While there are many possible applications, I try to find one that the text emphasizes more than the others and make that the whole deal  So while I really wanted to say something in my last sermon about how we should love unconditionally just as God does, that wasn’t Paul’s application  It’s true and we should do it, but Paul’s application trumps mine because it’s his passage  So I talked about boasting in the Lord 
Once I have my application, I take it in two directions—and I consider this my own secret sauce  I’m sure I’m not the first person to think of it, but I didn’t hear it anywhere else  My professor always told us “give them something to do!” In fact, he would say to give them something concrete to do that very day to maximize the chances that they will actually apply the sermon  I love it! It takes no time at all to forget a sermon 
But then I discovered there are some who take issue with this entire method of application, among them one of my favorite preachers, Tim Keller  For them, giving people something to do inspires legalism, and that endangers the Gospel  Instead they strive to show how Jesus already fulfilled the command of this passage, and the application is just to believe in Him, to adore Him, to marvel at Him  I love this, too! I absolutely believe that every passage properly understood relates to Christ in some way, and every application can be used to point to His perfect example and finished work 
So I try to do both  And here’s why: both are true  Christ has given us new life and yet we are called to live out a new life  The work is done in one sense, and yet we labor in another  So I always begin with showing how Christ has perfectly applied the passage and inviting people to believe in Him and rest in His finished work  Then because of what Christ has done, I call us to imitate Him by applying it ourselves 
At this point all I have to show for my labor is a rough draft  In order to make it presentable, I have a few more steps I go through, and these typically take me a week all by themselves  My goal is to make the sermon sound as natural and engaging as possible 
First, I read the sermon out loud and mark anything that doesn’t sound like me  Maybe I was copying someone’s tone, or more likely my tone was too formal or too informal for the moment  I also italicize the words I want to emphasize  It’s all about the sound 
Second, I memorize the sermon  (Yes, the whole thing ) This is what they trained us to do in seminary, and I thought it was overkill  Yes, you can get better eye contact, step away from the podium, I get that  But what I’ve discovered is that when I memorize my work it polishes the sermon like nothing else  If I can’t remember what I’m about to say, how can I expect the congregation to remember? Memorizing forces me to find the best words for the job 
It also helps me on a structural level, because if I can’t remember what I was about to say next, it shows that there’s a weak connection between the two points  In a compelling script, the next thing has to follow the last  Once you know why the two are married, you can go back and make it more obvious to the congregation 
As I memorize, I boil down the transcript into a preaching outline, which has just enough structure and content to cue me if my mind goes blank in the pulpit  It will have the necessary structural elements, markers for key phrases, and all condensed so that it fits on just a few pages on the platform  (One danger is if I don’t use it in practice, it’s less helpful on Sunday )
Third—and frankly this is the step I’m most likely to skip—I try to choreograph my movements  I believe good preaching is theater, but not in the sense that you’re dramatizing the text  Your whole body is communicating whether you want it to or not, so your gestures should be purposeful  Use the space to organize thoughts, repeat certain motions when you repeat the same thought, make sure you’re not sending mixed signals  Usually I run out of time before I get here, so I have plenty of room to grow in this area 
As I reflect on my process I realize that it’s uniquely tailored to me  My background as a writer, my love for theology, and my unique skills all lead me to emphasize different things  For someone with a different background and skill set this might be like trying on another man’s armor  How can you leverage who you are to preach better?
Of course, I didn’t do this from scratch; I was given a great model in seminary and have observed some great preachers thanks to modern technology  The key for me is molding this process to fit my unique mix of strengths and weaknesses, and that’s sure to be a never-ending project 
Annual Meeting in Review: ETS 2015
November 22, 2015 Josh Vajda	2 Comments
Last week I made my usual pilgrimage to the place where all the evangelical seminary geeks converge: the Annual Meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society  This year was the second time Atlanta has hosted since I began attending, and it was fun reliving early autumn just before the snow arrived back home 
Over the years I developed a strategy: make plans to attend nonstop papers, then throw out those plans when relational opportunities arise  This year the program was a bit light, but thankfully the people made up for what was lacking 
When reflecting on the meeting I was reminded of just how good last year’s meeting had been  This year had none of the same “aha!” moments, but I did enjoy many rich times of reflection after various papers 
As is my usual habit, I attended a number of friend’s papers (e g , Ford on Ignatius, Roeber on historiography, Svigel on the Didache)  But then I also stalked a few of the theologians I’ve come to admire in recent years: Al Mohler, Carl Trueman, and Anthony Bradley  Of course the problem there is that once you begin following someone you have the ever-increasing experience of anticipating what they are going to say on a given subject  This is especially true of Mohler, whose two podcasts have been my intellectual lifeline this year in times when babies and house projects and service commitments have prevented deeper study 
Analytic Theology
What came as an outright disappointment was the afternoon I spent in the Analytic Theology section  For those of you who don’t know, “analytic theology” is a recent movement to apply the tools of analytic philosophy to the questions of theology  I’ve been thrilled about this from the moment I heard of it, but what I saw really didn’t reflect what I think the movement is capable of  The thinking seemed lackluster and the questions unhelpful  Crisp and especially Rae were there asking insightful questions, but I think being overly kind to the presenters  I suppose you can’t be too inhospitable if you want guests to come back next year 
Avoiding the Marriage-and-Family Theme
The theme this year was “Marriage and Family” but it’s clear the real interest was continued discussion of how to deal with LGBT-related doctrines  In the past year I’ve read numerous books, taught two classes, and delivered a regional paper on the subject  That was enough for me  Maybe there were some missed opportunities here, but I’m ok with that 
Reflection on 2015
One of the things I’ve been forced to do each year—and rightly so, I think—is to reevaluate my purpose and progress in the intellectual community  This occupied much of my reflection in private, some with friends, and significant portions of the drive time from Michigan 
Here are a few conclusions I reached:
Even though I can’t justify a doctorate for my career, I am coming to the conviction that I can justify one for ministry  It may even be something I must do 
Even though I have the tools for self-study, I can accomplish much more with a cohort of like-minded individuals  I need to find a group of theologians I can run with or I will fall behind 
Even though I feel as though I’ve hardly studied this past year, (I recall reading only two theology books!), I’m reminded that I’ve still accomplished quite a bit with my LGBT studies, weekly Sunday School prep, church doctrinal formulations, and ministry strategizing  It’s different work, but I haven’t been as lazy as I feared 
Even though I have been working to be useful to our local church congregation and open to correction about my academic bent, the fact remains that right beliefs are a crucial part of our walk with Christ  Theology matters 
I used to journal incessantly, but have cut back quite a bit this year to focus on getting stuff done  All that to say the time was ripe for some reflection 
Lately I’ve referred to my calling as a “ministry of ideas ” As I chart a course for 2016, the question of what that ministry looks like looms large  The plans are still up in the air, but my time in Atlanta this year has been enormously helpful in the process 
See you next year in good old San Antonio, TX!
Sanctify Us with the Truth
July 9, 2015 Josh Vajda	Leave a comment
I’ve been a big fan of the Bible all my life  As a child I was amazed by the miracles God did  As I got older it was His character that captivated me  These days I’m intrigued by His wisdom  I want to know how He thinks, what He’s planning, how to make sense of His creation  The Bible is at the center of my relationship with God, and it always has been 
But the Bible isn’t God, and the Bible isn’t the whole of my relationship with God  So why is it that I always come back here? I believe that God reveals Himself in Creation and in the Church; I believe I have His Holy Spirit  So why does my relationship with Him keep coming back to a book?
One passage that gives us some clues is John 13–17—known as the Upper Room Discourse  It’s Jesus’ last teaching time with His disciples before He goes to the cross  It’s a time of transition 
Up until now, having a personal relationship with God was as easy as ever  You just spend time with Jesus—the Jewish guy  You want to talk to God? Just go find Jesus  You want an answer from God? Ask Jesus a question  You need divine intervention? Call Jesus for help 
In fact, not only is Jesus God in the flesh as the second person of the Trinity, but we see that He also manifests the Father and is indwelt by the Spirit  This goes beyond the perfect unity of the Trinity: all three persons are present in unique ways 
But in the Upper Room, Jesus is about to leave  He won’t be there to answer questions, to heal the sick, to right the wrong  And if He’s gone, so is the manifestation of the Father, and so is the Holy Spirit within Him 
So what does a personal relationship with God look like when God leaves the building?
First and most importantly, God hasn’t really left  Even though God incarnate has ascended into heaven, He did not leave us alone  The Holy Spirit is God’s special presence in this age 
“And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him  You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you ” (John 14:16, 17 ESV)
The same Spirit that indwells Jesus will indwell His disciples, and if we skip ahead to Acts, we can see that this Spirit of Truth indwells all believers  He is described as a Helper—which should come as no surprise from the God who just washed His disciples’ feet  And at least one aspect of His ministry is to point back to Christ 
“But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me ” (John 15:26 ESV)
But it’s not as though the Spirit is a consolation prize  Even though His ministry is all about Christ, Jesus seems to say the Spirit’s ministry will be better than His!—at least for the next phase of God’s plan 
“Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you  But if I go, I will send him to you  And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment: concerning sin, because they do not believe in me; concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father, and you will see me no longer; concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged  I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now  When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come  He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you  All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you ” (John 16:7–15 ESV)
There’s a lot to unpack here, but first I just want you to notice: when we lost the Savior, we gained the Helper, and He’s exactly what we needed next  Even though Jesus fully paid for our sins, we need a Helper to teach us the perfect obedience that Jesus modeled, to realize the change that Jesus purchased for us 
Now we get a fuller picture of what the Spirit of Truth has come to do  To the unbelieving world, He is a source of conviction, confronting sinners with the reality of who Jesus really was and what He did  To believers, He is a source of wisdom and knowledge 
This is a ministry of words and truth  We usually call Him the Holy Spirit, which rightly emphasizes His character and the work that He does in our hearts, but He is also called the Spirit of Truth  He draws us back to the words Jesus spoke, which bear the Father’s authority 
The Sanctifying Word
These days we’ve become cautious about putting our trust in words or staking claim to truth  We’re allowed to have our own truth, and we’re expected to have our own interpretations  But to go beyond this is to invite conflict 
Some of us have also grown weary of knowledge because we’ve seen people devote themselves to a dead orthodoxy that devours truth and then does nothing with it  So we associate the Christian walk with a ministry of love and compassion and holiness—which it is—and try not to get too distracted by the rest 
But it’s clear that Jesus spent a good deal of time ministering in words and teaching truth, and that the Holy Spirit is also committed to a ministry of words and truth 
“Whoever does not love me does not keep my words  And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father’s who sent me  These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you  But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you ” (John 14:24–26 ESV)
When Jesus prays, He even emphasizes this before the Father:
“Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you  For I have given them the words that you gave me, and they have received them and have come to know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me ” (John 17:7, 8 ESV)
It’s a precious thing to have the words of God  They came from the Father, through the Son, and by the Spirit  These words have been compiled in Scripture—the Bible—and it’s not God’s leftovers  At the heart of the Trinity’s ministry is a message  When we put our faith in Christ, we confess and believe specific realities 
“I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world ” (John 17:14 ESV)
But this word is not some passive collection of propositions to be absorbed  Just as the Holy Spirit is also the Spirit of Truth, so the true words and message of Scripture are given to make us holy 
“Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth  As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world  And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth ” (John 17:17–19 ESV)
This truth has a purpose  God’s message—the words of the Father—they are to make us holy  They are to wash us and set us apart  We are to be purified by this message, and at the heart of these instructions is love 
“If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love  These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full  This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you ” (John 15:10–12 ESV)
God has not left us alone  We have the Holy Spirit of Truth, and we also have the words of the Father 
I think this must be what Jesus alluded to in John 4, when He told the Samaritan woman at the well about those who would worship in spirit and in truth  Jesus clearly leaves us here with His Spirit and His truth  These are the twin lights guiding us on our pilgrimage  These are the two ways God is present with us today  Even though He is not with us physically, He is with us personally, spiritually, and verbally 
Truth is good for its own sake, and sanctification is, too  But we must not forget that our relationship with God as Spirit and through the Word draws those two things together  We pursue truth in order to be sanctified  We are sanctified by the truth 
When we talk about how we relate to God, our first thought is often the Cross, and that’s not wrong  Without Jesus’ work on the Cross we could have no fellowship with God  But even though it is what made a relationship with God possible, our relationship with Him goes much deeper  God is specially present in the world today by His Holy Spirit, Who indwells each and every believer  And the words of the Father have come by the Son and the Spirit to us in the form of the Bible  It is the Holy Spirit of Truth together with the Holy Words of God that mark God’s presence in our lives  They are what guide us and sanctify us 
This is why we can’t get away from Scripture  This is why our relationship with God depends so much on our relationship with this book  Creation reveals God by what He has done, but it does not offer His words to us  The Church is united and empowered by the Spirit of God, but it cannot speak His words either  The Bible is how the Holy Spirit speaks to us; it is one of the means by which God has chosen to sanctify His people  Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God 
The Story of Death (2/15/15)
February 18, 2015 Josh Vajda	2 Comments
Intro: The Matter of Life and Death
Death as Punishment
Death and God
Chinks in Death’s Armor
For Now We Wait
Closing Thoughts: Ash Wednesday
Introduction: The Matter of Life and Death
A friend once told me that Christianity is a “culture of death ” This was of course a reversal of Pope John Paul II’s 1995 condemnation of the modern culture of death, which sees the weak as useless at best—a burden to be eliminated  He pointed to the crucifixion, the Old Testament sacrificial system, and the way we seem to look forward to death so that we can go to heaven 
In a strange sense my friend was right: Christianity has a lot to say about death, and sacrifice is central to our theology  Of course, in context Christianity is anything but a culture of death, but if we’re not careful we can definitely sound the way my friend described us  We sometimes get confused about the role death plays in God’s plan 
So today we examine what the Bible says about death and reconsider what role it plays in our lives 
It’s interesting: there’s a way in which you could read the Bible as a book about death  That’s obviously not all it talks about, but the “story arc” of death spans the entire book 
Let’s take a stroll, shall we?
The first mention of death is in the second chapter of the Bible: “in the day you eat of [the forbidden fruit] you will surely die” (Genesis 2:17)  This promise was the center of the debate between the woman and the serpent in Genesis 3, and they ate of the fruit  But they didn’t die  God was gracious not to put them to death physically, but there is a kind of spiritual death that took place then  Since the Fall, mankind has been unresponsive to God 
But make no mistake, physical death was coming  We know from Romans that death entered through Adam’s sin—it wasn’t part of the original created order  And as proof, we see in Adam’s genealogy the reign of death: each one dies  We read “and he died” over and over here  Romans 3:23 tells us “the wages of sin is death ” All sinned, so all die  Death had become a part of life 
But Genesis is just getting warmed up! Because next comes the Flood where—you guessed it—everybody dies  Then the Patriarchs die  Then the book ends with the death of Joseph  Who ends a book that way?!? This is not a happy ending 
But then there’s Exodus, where the Egyptians die, Leviticus where animals die, Numbers where unbelieving Israel dies, Joshua where the Canaanites die  Death is everywhere! It’s all over the Pentateuch 
Why would this be? Because death is the punishment for sin  All crimes against God are capital offenses  That doesn’t mean He immediately smites everyone the moment they sin—but technically speaking, He could  That would be just  And if it doesn’t feel just then maybe we don’t understand sin as well as we thought we did 
In Ezekiel, God tells us He gets no pleasure from the death of the wicked  Does this surprise you? He would much rather see the wicked turn from their ways—to repent and live  But those who will not get what they deserve 
Sometimes if we’re not careful this is a way that we distort God’s character, as though God somehow hungers for death and blood  God isn’t pleased by animal sacrifice, but He requires some recompense for sin  God didn’t send the Flood on a whim but because evil on the earth had become unbearable  If we take death out of the context of grace and patience and kindness, we get a very wrong view of God 
But because death is part of life in a fallen world, we sometimes get confused about our relationship with death on the one hand and God’s sovereignty on the other  The author of Ecclesiastes notes that people are just as dead as animals in the end  The wise man for all of his wisdom still ends up just as dead as the fool  The nice thing about being dead is you don’t have to live in fear of death anymore! It’s a bleak way to look at things, but not wrong  What’s the point of life if the only thing we can be sure of is death?
If this is getting depressing, good! Sin is serious business and so is death  Christianity has a lot to say about death because it takes sin seriously 
But there’s a whole lot left to be said 
It turns out contrary to popular belief, death can be undone  Yes, you heard me: the end might not really be the end after all  Elijah and Elisha are both able to raise the dead  Jesus raises the dead  Jesus’ disciples raise the dead  Of course, these were all temporary  But it’s a start!
God promises us that it gets better than this  In Isaiah 25, He promises to swallow up death forever  How is this possible?!? The wages of sin is death  A holy God can’t just get rid of death 
He’d have to get rid of sin somehow 
This is where everything gets turned on its head  This is that part in the movie where you fly through the black hole and end up in a different dimension, or where Alice jumps down the rabbit hole  God swallows up death by letting death swallow Him up  Jesus, being fully God, lives a perfectly sinless life—a life not meriting death—and dies on our behalf, paying for all the sin of the world 
Let that sink in for a moment: God dies  But the death of God becomes the death of sin, and the death of sin becomes the death of death  And death’s final defeat is announced through the resurrection of God back from the dead  The God of life is alive! And He offers eternal life to all 
As Tim Keller likes to put it, Jesus died the death we deserved so that we could live the life He deserved  Because Jesus submitted to death on our behalf, our relationship with death gets really complicated  It’s still the enemy  It’s still the wages of sin  It’s still not good  But every good thing—salvation, resurrection, eternal life, peace with God—these all came from one great death: the Crucifixion 
So now all death is bad, but that one death brought us everything good  We praise the God of life, but we celebrate His death  God took a horrible, terrible, rotten, no-good thing and redeemed it 
I suppose that shouldn’t surprise us either 
We may sometimes look like we’re rejoicing in death itself, but really we rejoice in that one death that God used to bring eternal life  Our problem isn’t that we sing about death too much—we probably don’t sing about it enough! But we have to keep it in the context of the bigger story  We can’t make any sense of the Crucifixion apart from the Fall, the Resurrection, and Return of Christ 
This is the theme we see in the Book of Acts: God raised Jesus from the dead  It’s all about resurrection now! We baptize in the likeness of His death—and resurrection  We take the bread and cup to remember His death—all the while waiting for His return 
In Romans, death takes on a whole new meaning: since our sins were buried with Christ, we are now alive to God and dead to sin  Spiritual death is over now  Death has become just a metaphor for our relationship with sin 
But make no mistake, death didn’t just die spiritually  We might think that because we still see death all around us  Christians still die  But at the very end of the Bible we see that when Christ returns, death will finally be thrown into the lake of fire and be no more  All the dead will come to life—but this time never to die again 
I can’t help but think of John Donne’s Holy Sonnet X: Death Be Not Proud:
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou thinkst thou dost overthrow
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow
And soonest our best men with thee do go
Rest of their bones and soul’s delivery 
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppies or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke  Why swellst thou then?
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die!
Today we sit knowing that we are no longer spiritually dead, and instead we are dead to sin  Christ has risen from the dead, but He has not yet returned  Physical death is still a reality  It’s still cruel  But it’s not the end 
I have another friend, a learned scholar who is emphatic about how much he hates death  He doesn’t want to die  Yet Paul almost seems to disagree  In Philippians he writes, “To live is Christ and to die is gain ” Is death gain? Is there something good about death—our deaths? Is my death-hating friend overreacting?
Insofar as my friend is only talking about death, he’s right  You can’t really hate death enough  And our hope is in the resurrection, when we get our new bodies and live with Christ forever  Paul’s not saying that death isn’t really so bad after all  He’s saying Christ means so much to him that he would even suffer death to be with Him  It’s not that death is lesser; it’s that Jesus is greater 
This is how we make sense of Paul’s taunt in 1 Corinthians 15, which talks at length about the resurrection: “Death is swallowed up in victory  O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” Ultimately he’s talking about the end of death when we are raised, but there’s a sense in which death’s sting is tempered by the sweetness of life with Jesus 
When we lose a loved one, it’s hard  If he or she is a believer, we’re comforted by the fact that even though they died they enjoy the sweetness of Christ’s presence  Don’t let anyone take that away from you  Just don’t forget: that’s not the end of the story  It gets better!
They won’t stay dead 
Who is this God who can even bring good out of death?
Today is Ash Wednesday  Many Christians will receive ash on their foreheads and be reminded, “You are dust, and to dust you will return ” Not a message we particularly like to hear  We often think of ourselves as souls who just happen to be in bodies, that our parts are interchangeable—maybe even expendable  But these words are the words God Himself spoke to Adam after the Fall  You are dust  A sobering thought  Our bodies are a part of us, and our reflection is a daily reminder that we’re not as strong as we think we are 
That’s not the whole truth about us, but it’s a part we can’t afford to forget  Considering our frailty and our mortality shouldn’t lead to despair; it should bring us to our knees before our Savior  We confess how much we need Him, and how grateful we are that we have Him  Recognizing our insufficiency is just one way we deepen our appreciation for all we have in Christ  We humble ourselves not to make Him greater but because He is greater! He has brought us forgiveness and eternal life, sent us His Spirit  If we were left to our own devices, we would have no hope  But because of His love, rich in mercy, we have this gift from God 
Bonus: Christ is Risen by Matt Maher
We Didn’t Stay Perfect (2/1/15)
February 2, 2015 Josh Vajda	Leave a comment
The Unfolding of the Fall
Fractured Relationships
Total Depravity—but not Extreme Depravity
Comparing Theories [new! not discussed in class]
So What Do We Do Until Then?
Bonus Thoughts
We all know the story of the Fall from Genesis 3  Perfect woman with perfect husband in perfect garden meets talking snake  He tempts her to disobey God and eat the forbidden fruit, then she hands some to her husband who does the same  God comes and gives them a spanking and sends them out of the garden 
Ok, so the details might be a little off… maybe even a little forgettable  But the story is familiar and the consequences tragic  We live in those consequences  So what does this story have to tell us about the world today and our lives in it?
You can learn a lot about sin and humanity by really chewing on the details here  Consider:
The serpent (we’re later told it’s also Satan) begins with questioning what God has said 
The question overgeneralizes and invites a conversation 
The woman adds to God’s commandment 
The serpent challenges God and offers a desirable half-truth 
The woman (although perfect) is tempted  That temptation draws her to inspect the fruit 
Looking at the fruit, the woman focused on the positive side of the equation 
She risked her life trusting the serpent over God, because eating the fruit should have meant certain death 
The man ate without any signs of a struggle 
Their eyes were open  Before they knew only the good; now they knew good and evil 
Their first response to sin is to cover up, which indicates fear and probably shame 
Their response to God (their creator whom they knew personally!) was to hide  Apparently they either didn’t know or forgot that God is everywhere and knows everything 
God asks the man a question for effect 
The man blames his wife and even seems to accuse God 
The woman blames the serpent and even seems to deflect by saying she was tricked 
At this point God punishes the serpent, the man, and the woman by cursing all creation  Work will be hard, childbearing will be painful  But there is hope in the promise of One to come who will crush the serpent 
I love how the Good News glimmers even in that first dark moment 
It’s so tempting to read more into the story because there are so many more details we wish we had  The gaps in the story invite our imaginations to jump in, but we need to be careful not to put words in God’s mouth 
One theme we see in the Fall is one broken relationship after another  We noted last week how we were created to need one another and how that’s a good thing  But after the Fall we see husband and wife blaming each other  Worse yet, we see them hiding from God  After creation is cursed there’s really nothing left: man’s relationships with God, with others, with creation, and even with himself are all broken  And so our need for each other grows even greater, but our incapacity to find what we need and be who we need to be for others makes meeting this need impossible 
But let’s be honest here: the biggest problem is this broken relationship with God  He is their Creator and Sustainer  He knows them personally, guides them, and has given them all they need  What’s more, He’s perfectly good  This fall into sin was an act of rebellion against a God who had been nothing but loving and giving  Everything depends on Him 
Is it any wonder He warned them they would die?
Now the astute reader will note they didn’t drop dead  Does this mean the serpent was right? Not hardly! This broken relationship with God is sometimes thought of a “spiritual death,” a state of unresponsiveness to God  I’m generally fine with this idea—after all, they certainly became separated from God! What else could you call a state apart from the God of life? Death makes sense 
But we know that this is where physical death enters the picture  Mankind wasn’t supposed to die  YOU right now reading this: you were never supposed to die  Now we tend to say death is a part of life  It wasn’t supposed to be that way  Death was never a part of life  Death is a reality we have to live with, but it’s not good 
So I think spiritual death metaphorically happened, but physical death literally happened  And the only reason they walked out of that garden alive has to have been God’s grace and mercy 
Another observation we can make is that Adam and Eve weren’t immediately as bad as they could have been  This is sometimes what we think when we talk about “total depravity ” If you want a really bleak picture you have to turn ahead a few pages to the state of the world before the Flood  It took a long time to get there 
No, extreme depravity wasn’t the result of the Fall, but total depravity still is  Total depravity is the doctrine that says sin bent every part of man  Sin pollutes man’s reason, man’s emotions, man’s willpower, man’s desires, man’s imagination, man’s memories, man’s senses, man’s body, and even man’s conscience  Nothing is safe  Nothing is pure 
And this is intimately wrapped up in the image of God  Remember that man was made in God’s image, unique among all creation  But sin now pollutes that image  It’s still present—we still can’t help but “image” our Creator when we act rationally, make wise decisions, love others selflessly, and so on  Instead the image is defaced but not erased  What should normally reflect God’s character instead reflects a mixture of good and evil 
Comparing Theories
Now if we take a step back, we all recognize that we live in a broken world  Very few people would argue that everything is perfect, that sin, suffering, and death somehow don’t exist or aren’t really bad  We (generally) all agree that there’s a problem  But there’s little agreement about why it is the way it is 
People who don’t believe in a literal Adam and Even tanking the human race are generally stuck  For example, if you only believe in the natural world, evil is just a part of nature  Death is a part of life  Suffering is a biochemical response to destructive conditions  And if you’re just one organism out of millions competing for resources, all you can really say is that you don’t like these things  They are distasteful  Maybe you’re hard-wired to show empathy with others because of some evolutionary imperative, but objectively speaking what can you say?
Well, you can say lots I suppose, but you can’t be consistent without ending up a nihilist 
Other religions have the same problem: either evil belongs as some part of the bigger cosmic plan or it’s an illusion  Either way, it’s hard to take evil seriously  Either it belongs in some way, or it doesn’t exist at all  Either way it’s hard to justify our natural reactions to injustice, suffering, and death 
But let’s forget about consistency and get to work: what problems can we name and how do we fix them?
If the problem is society, the cure is social change 
If the problem is pride, the cure is humility 
If the problem is bad decisions, the cure is right decisions 
If the problem is lack of love, the cure is love 
If the problem is a broken relationship, the cure is forgiveness 
If the problem is rebellion, the cure is submission 
If the problem is demons, the cure is their destruction 
If the problem is illusion, the cure is truth 
If the problem is original sin, the cure is death of the old self 
If the problem is doubt, the cure is faith 
If the problem is in every part of us, the cure is a new creation 
If the problem is death, the cure is eternal life 
Of course this just scratches the surface  But what I want you to notice is that for all of these problems, Christianity offers the solution  And for all of these problems, the solution is the same: that one seed of woman that God promised, the One to come that would crush the serpent  His name is Jesus 
Some of these things were addressed in His first coming, when He died on the cross for our sins and rose to life to offer us eternal life  But the work isn’t done yet  He’s coming back to finish the work, to make all things new  Think about that  We’ll explain further another time 
As a wise poet named Tom once wrote, the waiting is the hardest part  If we as Christians are a new creation (we are), have eternal life (we do), are filled with the Holy Spirit (yup), and are no longer slaves to sin (seriously!), then why is the world still messed up? And more to the point, why are WE still messed up?
Frankly, we still suffer the effects of sin in all our faculties  Our wills have been freed from slavery, but they’re still polluted  We won’t be fully free from the effects of sin until Jesus comes back 
So we’re no longer slaves, but we’re still polluted and live in a polluted world  We have the Holy Spirit, but we still choose to disobey  In theory you should be able to live a perfect life after you’re saved, but because we’ve already been marked by sin in our lives and live in an imperfect world, we will never be perfect under our own power 
What do we do then? Give up? Of course not! We beat our bodies into submission  We learn right and wrong from Scripture, and we challenge our motives day to day 
But if we want to go the extra mile, we can’t do it alone 
There will be times you trick yourself into thinking you’re doing what’s right  There will be times you misread Scripture and misunderstand what God expects  And to guard against those times you need to surround yourself with fellow believers  You need people who know you, who know the Word, and who are committed to following Jesus with you  They can provide that outside check to make sure sin isn’t getting the best of you 
Because let’s face it: some days it’s hard to tell the difference between the Holy Spirit’s promptings and our own desires  Nothing can do better to counter that than other Spirit-filled people who bring a different perspective 
We ended up talking a lot about sanctification today, but that’s because it’s how we cope with the effects of the Fall in our lives  I don’t ever want to teach about sin and suffering and death without also pointing to the hope we have in Christ! The sin we as Christians struggle with is our bad choices day to day  If you’re saved, all you can do is persevere in what’s right and help others to do the same  We’ll say more about suffering and death another time 
My challenge to you is this: who do you have in your life who can give you that outside angle to your struggles and decisions? Where can you go to make sure you’re on the right path? If you’re not sure, start looking!
We need each other more than ever 
Isn’t it interesting how hard it is to remember the details of a story we’ve heard dozens of times? Our memories aren’t perfect  It sure helps having other people to lean on…
Historically speaking, the discussion of the effects of the Fall gets really fun with Augustine and Pelagius  In a nutshell, Augustine argued that we are always in need of God’s grace, but Pelagius believed we didn’t suffer from original sin and could become perfect if we try hard enough 
Regarding different relationships with sin, Augustine put it this way: God is not able to sin, Adam was created able not to sin, the Fall left us not able not to sin, and those in Christ are back where created Adam was: able not to sin 
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Context 2: The major actions taken by the board of directors and council during the national meeting in Chicago were reported in C&EN, April 30 (page 32) 
The Society Committee on Budget & Finance met on Saturday, March 24, to review the society's 2006 financial performance  The society ended 2006 with a net contribution from operations of $12 2 million, on revenues of $424 0 million and expenses of $411 8 million  This was $7 8 million favorable to the approved budget 
After including the results of the Member Insurance Program and new ventures, the society's overall net contribution for 2006 was $11 5 million, which was $7 4 million favorable to the approved budget  The favorable variance was primarily attributable to higher than budgeted electronic services revenue and investment income, as well as expense savings from lower than budgeted health care costs and reduced IT spending  In addition, the society ended the year in compliance with the board-established financial guidelines 
The Society Committee on Education (SOCED) received an update from President Catherine Hunt on the thematic programming featured in Chicago focusing on the sustainability of energy, food, and water  President-Elect Bruce Bursten solicited input from the committee pertaining to the central role of education in his agenda  SOCED received a presentation from the Membership Affairs Committee on its white paper on membership requirements 
Committee members strongly support the proposal to include undergraduates as members of the society, but they requested that financial arrangements be clearly spelled out in the petition to ensure that the highly successful Student Affiliates program remains intact  The committee discussed the Education Division programs that were reviewed in 2006 and those that will be reviewed in 2007, under the auspices of the Program Review Advisory Group  SOCED received an update from the Committee on Professional Training regarding the draft ACS guidelines for approval of bachelor's degree programs in chemistry 
Committee members discussed the report prepared by the Globalization Task Force, focusing on those sections relevant to education  The committee suggested initiatives related to the new ACS strategic plan, including a potential program that would engage retired chemists in the K-12 classroom  SOCED created a task force to consider the role of online, or "virtual," simulations in the chemistry laboratory, recognizing the value of online/virtual experiences as a supplement to, but not a replacement for, hands-on laboratory experiments 
The committee ratified two interim actions taken since the Dec  3, 2006, meeting: to remove the financial restriction of the ACS Petroleum Research Fund (ACS PRF) Supplement for Underrepresented Minority Research Programs (SUMR) and to contact nominators whose nominations for the Volunteer Service Award had expired and to invite them to reactivate their nomination packet for the 2008 Volunteer Service Award 
Acting under delegated authority, the committee voted to accept the recommendations of the ACS Petroleum Research Fund Advisory Board (February 2007 meeting) for funding grants totaling $5 2 million; voted to recommend to the board a screened list of six nominees (due to a two-way tie for fifth place) for the 2008 Priestley Medal; voted to recommend to the board a screened list of five nominees for the 2008 Award for Volunteer Service to ACS; on the recommendation of the ACS Committee on Frasch Foundation Grants, voted to recommend to the board that it recommend to the trustee (US Trust) of the Frasch Foundation 12 grants for research in agricultural chemistry for the period of 2007–12; voted to recommend to the ACS Board of Directors that a new national award be established, the "ACS Award for Affordable Green Chemistry," sponsored by Rohm and Haas; and voted to recommend to the ACS Board of Directors that a new endowment be established, the "Affordable Green Chemistry Endowment Fund," to support the award 
The committee also reviewed the final report from the Special Board Task Force on the Review of the ACS National Awards Program, chaired by Ronald Breslow; established a Canvassing & Selection Subcommittee; and reviewed a list of external awards for which ACS may want to nominate candidates  The committee agreed to include the list of significant external awards in the awards locator database that is being developed 
The committee was updated on efforts to reconcile ACS's technical divisions' desires to leverage national meeting content using the Internet with our journal editors' concerns about prior publication issues  A conference call on this issue was scheduled for April 21, 2007 
The committee received a presentation on the recent actions of the ACS Board of Directors International Strategy Group (ISG)  The group's charge is to develop recommendations for a short- and long-term international strategy for the society 
The committee was updated on the status of the activities of the Board Oversight Group on Leadership Development (BOG)  Potential solutions for the unexpectedly high cost of facilitator training and transitioning from the current Leaders Conference format to the newly designed curriculum were presented to the committee 
The committee reviewed plans for conducting the 2007 Membership Satisfaction Survey  Preliminary results are expected in May or June with a final report to be delivered to the board at the 2007 Boston national meeting 
The committee received a briefing on the status of the MORE Project: Multidisciplinary Opportunities though Resource Enhancement  Twenty-eight proposals were received, and a decision on which proposals to support will be made in early May 
The chair led a discussion on draft 2007 committee goals, and committee members offered several suggestions related to successfully meeting them  One suggestion was to modify a communications goal to make it more completely reflect the duties of the committee outlined in the board regulations  The chair and committee members will examine the suggestion and revisit the question after the board retreat where board committee duties will be examined 
ACS President Hunt discussed her 2007-08 Presidential Task Force on Enhancing Science & Technology, which is charged with developing advocacy best practices that can enhance ACS's attainment of its public policy priorities  The task force is composed of a diverse set of ACS members as well as former U S  Representative and chairman of the House Science Committee, Sherwood Boehlert, who will cochair the task force 
• Results of the 2007 Public Policy Priorities Survey, which resulted in a four-tiered ranking of ACS's 2007 public policies  The ranking will help focus staff resources in conducting outreach and advocacy on behalf of ACS members 
• The hiring of a communications consulting firm for 2007 to assist ACS in implementing the initial phase of the ACS Strategic Communications Plan 
• Creation of a pilot ACS state government affairs advocacy program  Committee members agreed to the creation of a pilot, and staff will propose an initial list of states, policy focus, and a budget to carry out the program 
The committee met in executive session on March 23 and in open session jointly with the Joint Board-Council Committee on Publications and the Division of Chemical Information on March 26 
The committee heard from Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) management on a range of issues including a report on continuing database building efforts, product enhancements, and CAS's centennial celebration plans 
The Committee on Chemical Safety (CCS) provides advice on the handling of chemicals and seeks to ensure safe facilities, designs, and operations by calling attention to potential hazards and stimulating education in safe practices 
CCS has several publications (many downloadable), including the flagship publication, "Safety in Academic Chemistry Labs" (SACL)  Work has recently started on the translation of SACL into Arabic  This is in addition to the online Spanish version of SACL  Also online are the "Student Lab Code of Conduct for Secondary Science Programs" and a security vulnerability analysis checklist  A K-12 restricted hazardous substances list is under development  The third edition of the "Chemical Safety Manual for Small Businesses" will be ready soon 
The committee's Task Force on Laboratory Environment, Health & Safety is working on a new edition of "Laboratory Waste Management " Task force members also commented on the recent Environmental Protection Agency Proposed Rule for Hazardous Waste in Academic Laboratories  Our Video Safety Resources Task Force is developing video resources to be distributed over the Web 
CCS has been involved in collaborations for the updating of publications like "Prudent Practices in the Laboratory" and "ACS Guidelines for the Teaching of High School Chemistry " Along with other ACS units, CCS is exploring participating in the EPA's School Chemicals Cleanout Campaign 
The Committee on Chemists with Disabilities (CWD) met at the 233rd ACS national meeting, Chicago, on Monday, March 26  Judy Summers-Gates reported on the Joint Subcommittee on Diversity meeting  This subcommittee is made up of representatives of the five committees that support people in chemistry (as opposed to a category of the profession): CWD, Committee on Minority Affairs, Committee on Technician Affairs, Women Chemists Committee, and Younger Chemists Committee, and its goal is to develop ways to coordinate the efforts of the five groups 
The CWD Ambassador Program that was announced at CWD's 25th anniversary celebration at the Washington, D C , meeting was discussed  Zelda Wasserman reported on the status of the letter from CWD to the ACS Board regarding captioning of ACS video materials  Janelle Kasper-Wolf, of ACS staff, discussed adding new questions to the ACS annual employment salary survey to obtain information for the committee 
At the Chicago national meeting, the Committee on Community Activities (CCA) partnered with the ACS Education Division and the Office of the President to host "Chemistry In Action—It's Easy Being Green" at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum on Saturday, March 24  More than 250 children participated in the hands-on activities focused on recycling  ACS President Hunt presented a Salutes to Excellence plaque to the museum for its dedication to community outreach 
The Chemists Celebrate Earth Day celebration occurred in 120 local sections with 138 coordinators leading the efforts within their communities  This represents an increase of more than 30% in local section and coordinator participation from 2006 
CCA was featured in C&EN's April 16th issue on page 53  A shortcut to CCA's homepage was created: chemistry org/committees/cca html 
During the Boston national meeting, CCA and the Office of Community Activities will celebrate National Chemistry Week's 20th Anniversary and its theme, "The Many Faces of Chemistry " A special outreach event is being planned for Sunday, Aug  19  Hands-on activities will focus on health and wellness 
The Committee on Corporation Associates (CCA) advises and influences ACS to ensure that its products and services are of value to industrial members and their companies  CCA vice chair, Roslyn White (SC Johnson), provided an overview of recent interactions between Corporation Associates and the U K -based Society of Chemical Industry (SCI) 
CCA gave feedback to a recommendations report from the ACS Board Committee on Professional & Member Relations Task Force on Globalization  Presentations were also received from the ACS Green Chemistry Institute and SCI 
Staff reported on the Department of Industry Member Programs' activities since the San Francisco meeting  The report covered the Regional Industrial Innovation Awards, the World Congress on Industrial Biotechnology, the Analytical Pavilion sponsored by C&EN, and the ACS/Pharma Leaders Meeting 
The Awards/Finance & Grants Subcommittee reported that CCA received two funding proposals that total $7,500  Funding was provided to the following: The Committee on Economic & Professional Affairs at $3,000 for the Chicago symposium on "Benefits Trends for the Chemical Workforce" and the Office of Graduate Education and the Department of Career Development & Management at $4,500 for a workshop on "Preparing for Life after Graduate School," to be held in conjunction with the 39th Central Regional Meeting 
The subcommittee also requested that ACS staff provide CCA with an official annual statement of Corporation Associates' financial reserves as of Jan  1 of each year 
The Programs Subcommittee reported on planned programming activities in 2007 and beyond between CCA and SCI  The subcommittee gave an update on a Boston symposium cosponsored by Corporation Associates and the Medicinal Chemistry Division featuring past ACS Heroes of Chemistry from the pharmaceutical industry 
By request of the subcommittee, representatives from Chemical Abstracts Service gave an overview on AnaVist—a tool with potential applications for CCA's efforts to provide member companies with industry-relevant information and reports  The subcommittee also requested that CCA earmark approximately $20,000 of Corporation Associates funds in 2008 for its activities 
The Educational Outreach Subcommittee reported on its decision to collaborate with the Graduate Student Symposium Programming Committee of the Chemical Education Division on a graduate student industry roundtable program in Boston 
The subcommittee requested $5,000 in support of this effort  The subcommittee also discussed a request for corporate executive support of an American Association of Physics Teachers initiative to promote undergraduate research 
The Committee on Environmental Improvement (CEI) continues to be focused on the sustainability of the chemical enterprise  In Chicago, the committee introduced a multiyear effort to make ACS meetings more sustainable  This effort is designed to take advantage of the large size and diverse programs of the society to lead in the sustainability arena by "walking the talk "
The committee held a dialogue with representatives of the U S  Environmental Protection Agency who are trying to "green" federal conferences and work with the travel and tourism industry to change practices and shrink the environmental footprint of meetings  The committee also used advertising and student volunteers to engage individual meeting participants in a campaign to increase recycling by asking "Are you sustainable?" Moving forward, CEI looks forward to working closely with the Committee on Meetings & Expositions to advance this agenda 
CEI was also pleased to participate in the meeting theme on sustainability through the ACS presidential programming  CEI cohosted the Monday presidential luncheon to discuss sustainability issues with the Committee on Science and is leading the follow-up to that luncheon, which will include recommendations on advancing sustainability in the three focal areas of the meeting—energy, food, and water 
The committee also continued its dialogue with the Committee on Corporation Associates about a collaborative workshop  This activity, tentatively slated for the New Orleans meeting, will seek additional insights from chemical and allied products companies about public policy barriers that limit adoption of more sustainable products and practices as well as policy incentives that would lead to increased sustainability in the chemical enterprise 
At its Chicago meeting, the committee welcomed the president of the Jordanian Chemical Society and the past-president of the Arab Union of Chemists 
The committee was briefed on Pittcon 2007, where, with financial support from the Society of Analytical Chemists of Pittsburgh, ACS coordinated participation of a scientific delegation from Adriatic nations 
The committee heard reports on the 2007 Frontiers of Chemical Science III: Research & Education in the Middle East meeting; the 2007 Transatlantic Frontiers of Chemistry meeting, which was jointly sponsored by ACS, the German Chemical Society, and the Royal Society of Chemistry; planned workshops to engage U S  and Chinese early-career scientists in chemical biology, supramolecular, and new materials chemistry; and ACS Discovery Corps U S /Brazil Research Collaboration Project in Biomass Conversion to Biofuels, Biomaterials & Chemicals 
The committee discussed Latin American engagement opportunities created through Puerto Rico's involvement in three key chemical science events there: the 2009 ACS Southeast Regional Meeting, the 2008 Federation of Latin American Chemical Associations (FLAQ) meeting, and the proposed IUPAC 2011 Congress & General Assembly 
The committee heard reports on letter-writing efforts by the ACS president to government officials in Libya and Mexico expressing concerns about challenges to the scientific freedom and human rights of scientists there 
The Committee on Minority Affairs (CMA) approved new vision, mission, and values statements at the Chicago national meeting  The mission of CMA is to increase the participation of minority chemical scientists and influence policy on behalf of minorities in ACS and the chemical enterprise 
An aggressive new strategic plan was approved by CMA to guide its activities over the next three years  By the end of 2009, CMA will increase the number of ACS Scholars that graduate to 100 per year, add 100 new minorities to leadership positions in ACS, engage in several collaborations, and increase the number of minority members of ACS by 5,000  CMA will focus initially on increasing minorities in ACS leadership  In working toward this goal, CMA began work on two new leadership-development programs for minority chemists 
CMA continues to support the work of the Joint Subcommittee on Diversity (JSD) in developing programs, products, and services to ensure full participation of all members in ACS  In Chicago, JSD premiered a diversity booth at the meeting exposition hall and cosponsored symposia 
The Committee on Patents & Related Matters (CPRM) discussed proposed legislative and regulatory changes to the U S  patent system as well as open-access legislation and the potential effects such matters might have on industry and academia as well as on ACS 
CPRM also continued its work on several new educational tools to assist and inform members on patent issues and other intellectual property matters important to a successful career in the chemical enterprise  Many of these tools are now available on the committee's expanded website, membership acs org/C/CPRM/ 
At the March 2007 meeting, the Committee on Professional Training (CPT) reviewed 42 new and additional information reports from ACS-approved chemistry programs  CPT held conferences with four schools seeking approval, discussed three updates and five site visit reports, and approved three new schools  The total number of ACS-approved chemistry programs is now 642 
The committee released the full draft of the ACS guidelines for review and comment  Copies of the draft were distributed to the department chairs at all ACS-approved schools, the chairs of all ACS committees, and the chairs of all ACS technical divisions 
Several CPT members met with the ACS technical divisions during the Chicago meeting to present an overview of the draft and obtain feedback  The draft guidelines document is available on the CPT website, and the committee invites any comments to be sent to cpt@acs org 
In other business, the committee continued development of the two workshops with minority-serving institutions that will be held in 2007  The committee reviewed the editorial policies for the 2007 edition of the ACS Directory of Graduate Research, which is using a new protocol for retrieving research publication titles in an effort to improve the accuracy of the directory 
C&EN finished 2006 with an exceptionally strong editorial package  The first months of 2007 are proving to be equally successful in fulfilling the magazine's mission of keeping its readers informed  On the advertising side, revenues in 2006 increased for the second year in a row, and the early months of 2007 show continuing positive signs  The most significant editorial achievement was the successful launch of the redesign of the print edition of C&EN with the Oct  16, 2006, issue 
The Subcommittee on Copyright has successfully updated the Copyright Module on the ACS Publications website  The subcommittee is looking into the possibility of conducting copyright programs at future ACS national and regional meetings 
The final monitoring reports for Chemistry of Materials, Journal of Agricultural & Food Chemistry, and Molecular Pharmaceutics were presented and accepted by the committee  Journal of Chemical Information & Modeling, Organic Letters, Accounts of Chemical Research, and the Journal of Chemical Theory & Computation will be monitored next 
3  Examining the scientific basis of public policies related to the chemical sciences and making recommendations to the appropriate ACS units



ground_truth: The three phases are exegetical, theological, and homiletical.

prompt_front: Now, answer the following question based on the text below, only give me the answer and do not output any other words.

Question: How many people attend the 233rd ACS national meeting?

Read the following text and answer briefly.

Context 2: 
In the first of these areas, ComSci partnered with President Hunt and the Committee on Environmental Improvement in planning and hosting a sustainability luncheon that featured roundtable discussions centering on a key sustainability question  At the Boston national meeting, ComSci will deliver a full-day program on the subject of "Partnerships in Innovation & Competitiveness "
Regarding the second thrust, ComSci will present two programs in Boston: a box lunch that will feature two speakers taking opposing sides on the subject of "Genetic Screening & Diagnostic Testing: Do You Really Want to Know?" and a symposium titled "Creating & Sustaining International Research Collaborations "
In support of the last thrust, ComSci is planning two events for 2008: "Balancing Security & Openness" will gather data to determine if the recent emphasis on security is hindering scientific progress and "Transitioning Chemical Science to Commercially Successful Products "
The Women Chemists Committee (WCC) hosted more than 70 attendees at its open meeting recently in Chicago, where representatives from Iota Sigma Pi, Women in Science & Engineering, the Association of Women in Science, and the Chicago local section helped WCC celebrate the committee's 80th anniversary 
The Women in Industry Breakfast was also highly successful with a new format of speed networking  More than 100 participants had the opportunity to practice their elevator speeches and make several professional connections  A related workshop will be offered by WCC in Boston 
In Chicago, WCC sponsored two symposia, "Women Achieving Success: The ACS as a Platform in Leadership Development" in honor of Madeleine Joullié's 80th birthday and the ACS Award for Encouraging Women into Careers in the Chemical Sciences: Symposium in Honor of Bojan H  Jennings 
More than 225 ACS meeting attendees were present for the biannual WCC Luncheon and heard the keynote speaker Laura Kiessling, 2007 Francis P  Garvan-John Olin Medal Recipient  Twelve women presented their research at this meeting with funding by the WCC/Eli Lilly Travel Grant Award  WCC members also spent time educating expo attendees on programs offered by the ACS Office of Diversity Programs at its new booth 
In Chicago, the Younger Chemists Committee (YCC) welcomed its new committee members with an information session centered on YCC's charter as well as on its strategic plan: to make ACS relevant to younger chemists, to involve younger chemists in all levels of the society, and to integrate younger chemists into the profession 
In January, YCC again hosted a Leadership Development Workshop during the ACS Leaders Conference  There were more than 80 applications for the 15 awards, which covered travel and registration for the conference  YCC plans to again fund the travel awards and provide leadership training for young chemists in 2008  YCC also solicited applications and selected a new graduate student representative on the Graduate Education Advisory Board 
During the Chicago meeting, YCC programs included "Starting a Successful Research Program at a Predominantly Undergraduate Institution," "Career Experiences at the Interface of Chemistry & Biology," and "Chemistry Pedagogy 101 "
In addition to these programs, YCC cosponsored five programs with various committees and divisions  YCC continues to reach out to ACS committees and divisions and has initiated liaisonships with 11 technical divisions to encourage technical programming that highlights the contributions of younger chemists  Looking forward to Boston, YCC is planning symposia including "The Many Faces of Chemistry: International Opportunities for Chemists"; "Being a Responsible Chemist: Ethics, Politics & Policy"; and "Changing Landscapes of the Bio-Pharma Industry "
The Committee on Committees (ConC) conducted its annual training session for new national committee chairs at the ACS Leaders Conference in January 2007  ConC's interactive session for committee chairs in Chicago served as an opportune follow-on and a forum for informative interchange among seasoned and new chairs 
ConC began developing its recommendations for the 2008 committee chair appointments for consideration by the president-elect and chair of the board  ConC continues to focus efforts to identify members with the skills and expertise specified by the committee chairs using the councilor preference form 
The form will be sent to councilors in May  ConC also seeks the names of noncouncilor members for consideration for service on council-related committees, especially those with no prior appointment 
As part of ongoing activities with the joint CPC-Board Governance Review Task Force, ConC has collected data on committee liaisons to other committees  This information will be distributed to committee chairs  The number of liaisons indicates that unofficial but strong communication channels exist within the ACS committee structure 
On Sunday evening, the Committee on Nominations & Elections (N&E) sponsored its fifth successful Town Hall Meeting for President-Elect Nominees  An estimated 200 people attended this session  This forum facilitated communication among the 2008 president-elect nominees, councilors, and other members  N&E will hold another Town Hall Meeting featuring the candidates for director-at-large at the fall meeting in Boston 
Now that voting over the Internet has become an accepted procedure for ACS national elections, the ACS technical divisions and local sections have expressed strong interest in using this method for their elections  N&E has developed protocols for elections for local sections and divisions  This document will be forwarded to the appropriate committees for their review and distribution 
N&E is responsible for reviewing annually the distribution of member populations within the six electoral districts to ensure that the districts have equitable representation  According to bylaw V, section 4(a), the member population of each electoral district must be within 10% of the result of dividing by six the number of members whose addresses lie within these districts  The committee is happy to report that the six electoral districts are in compliance 
The committee has developed a petition on election procedures for president-elect and district director  The proposed election mechanism provides for a preferential (ranked) ballot and an "instant runoff " N&E continues to address the areas of campaigning and the timing of our national election process  Between the Chicago and Boston meetings, the committee plans to sponsor online forums for input from councilors and other interested members on these issues 
In response to member concerns regarding the collection of signatures for petition candidates, N&E reviewed the society's bylaws  The bylaws state that an endorsement is required, but does not stipulate the method of endorsement  N&E has determined that original or electronic signatures are acceptable and will establish appropriate procedures for receipt of electronic signatures 
The Committee on Constitution & Bylaws (C&B), acting for the council, issued new certified bylaws to the Corning Section, the Portland Section, the Division of Colloid & Surface Chemistry, and the Division of Chemical Education  The committee reviewed new proposed amendments for the Division of Medicinal Chemistry, the Columbus Section, the Detroit Section, and the Southern Arizona Section 
Three petitions were presented to council for action at this meeting  Regarding the "Petition on Election Procedures 2006," a motion to separate the petition was approved, and the petition was divided  Provisions affecting bylaw V, sec  2d, bylaw V, sec  3c, and bylaw V, sec  4f, which deal with election procedures and the timing of run-off elections, were approved by council and will become effective following confirmation by the board of directors 
The second part of the petition regarding bylaw V, sec  2c, and bylaw V, sec  3b, which deal with signature requirements for petition candidates for president-elect and director-at-large respectively, was recommitted to the Committee on Nominations & Elections, which has primary substantive responsibility for the petition 
The Committee on Nominations & Elections was asked to reconsider the signature requirements, procedures for acceptance of electronic signatures, and recommendations from the Governance Review Task Force on election procedures 
The second petition presented to council for action was the "Petition on Rules for Nominating Members of N&E for National Offices " This petition was not approved by council  The third petition, the "Petition on Multiyear Dues," was amended by incidental motion on the council floor, calling for the petition to become effective when technical components are instituted to track payments, but no later than Jan  1, 2010  Council approved the incidental motion and then approved the petition 
The committee reviewed one petition for consideration, the "Petition on Local Section Affiliations," which will be submitted to council for action at the fall 2007 meeting in Boston 
The committee met with representatives of the Committee on Membership Affairs and the Governance Review Task Force to continue discussions on proposals currently being formulated on membership requirements and student membership  In addition, the committee discussed election issues of concern to the Southern California Section 
We hope you enjoyed the presidential and division thematic program, "Sustainability of Energy, Food & Water" in Chicago  A small, dedicated group of volunteers and staff labored tirelessly to create and coordinate this programming; to them the Committee on Divisional Activities (DAC) offers sincere thanks 
DAC has committed to transfer the process of choosing and organizing future national meeting themes to a body that represents all divisions  We made substantial progress in Chicago, where division, secretariat, and committee representatives convened to discuss national meeting program concepts  They proposed themes for the 2008 Philadelphia national meeting as well as a framework for a future national programming group 
Divisions have successfully served their members fortunate enough to attend national meetings  To maximize benefits to division members, DAC encourages divisions to consider extending the reach of the content they deliver at national meetings through Internet-based distribution channels and will support worthy efforts in this direction via Innovative Program Grants 
The committee voted in Chicago to propose modifications to the division funding formula that will more greatly reward interdisciplinary programming  The new formula will also be simpler and more transparent to divisions  DAC will present the revised plan to council for action in Boston 
The Committee on Economic & Professional Affairs (CEPA), working with ACS staff in the Departments of Career Management & Development and Member Research & Technology, continues to update and implement its strategic plan to address the career needs of society members 
Specifically, the committee reviewed and revised existing workshops and materials to help ACS members get jobs  CEPA is developing new programs to address the needs of mid- and late-career chemists to ensure their continued competitiveness in the workplace and to ease their career transitions  New initiatives in these areas include the development of workshops, online training, surveys to assess member needs, suggested changes to public policies, and updates to professional and ethical workplace guidelines  As a result of discussions at the Public Policy Roundtable, which was held in San Francisco, a background paper is being developed on trends in health care issues 
The newly revised "Chemical Professional's Code of Conduct" was presented to council, which approved it  The Standards & Ethics Subcommittee is preparing a revision of the "Academic Professional Guidelines" to be presented to council for consideration in Boston 
CEPA reviewed the Globalization Task Force Report  As our science diffuses around the globe, we want to make sure that our members are aware of the economic and professional challenges they will face and that they have the tools they need to succeed  Therefore, CEPA made a commitment to work with other committees, divisions, and ACS staff to develop programs and policies that position our membership to compete in the global workforce 
CEPA heard and discussed a presentation on the proposal from the Membership Affairs Committee on broadening the requirements of membership  CEPA supports the spirit of this proposal and encourages further detailed studies to assess financial impacts on local sections and student affiliates chapters 
The Local Section Activities Committee (LSAC) recognized local sections celebrating significant anniversaries in 2007, including Savannah River (50 years), Northeast Tennessee (75 years), and the St  Louis and Syracuse local sections (both celebrating 100 years) 
LSAC hosted the local section leaders track in conjunction with the ACS Leaders Conference in Baltimore on Jan  26–28  A total of 135 delegates from 124 local sections participated in the weekend leadership conference 
LSAC also hosted a Local Section Summit on March 2–4 in Arlington, Va  The summit focused on practical operational issues that will support local sections' long-term success  Specific areas that were discussed include the development of a multiyear plan to expand or develop programming for local sections, opportunities to encourage innovation and experimentation within and among local sections, and capitalizing on existing opportunities to facilitate partnerships between local sections and other ACS groups 
Following the San Francisco national meeting, LSAC launched a local section Science Café minigrant program  Fifty-five local sections accepted LSAC invitation to host Science Cafés in 2007 
A DVD entitled "ACS Close to Home: Local Sections Connecting Chemistry & the Community" was released earlier this year  The video provides a seven-minute overview of the many outreach and educational programs sponsored by local sections and the critical role they play in positively influencing the public's perception of chemistry and its practitioners  Copies of the DVD were sent to all local section officers 
The Committee on Meetings & Expositions (M&E) reported that the 233rd ACS national meeting hosted 14,520 attendees  This included 7,152 chemical scientists, 5,059 students, 1,283 exhibitors, 119 precollege teachers, 573 exposition visitors, and 453 guests  The exposition had 424 booths with 268 companies 
The 10 2006 regional meetings set a new standard for excellence with attendance exceeding 8,000, a 30% increase in average meeting attendance compared to the 2005 meetings  A total of 4,717 abstracts were submitted  A region summit was held in February at which the final report of the ReACT study group was reviewed 
The practice of tracking the number of presenter no-shows continues  M&E will collaborate with the Committee on Divisional Activities to study options for addressing this problem  Suggestions will be presented at the Boston meeting for implementation in 2008 
It is the intent of M&E to pursue the goal of making our meetings "greener " We will communicate with staff and governance units to identify actions for both the short and long term 
The American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) and ACS will hold their 2008 spring meetings simultaneously in New Orleans  An ad hoc working group consisting of members from M&E, DAC, and AIChE are actively exploring joint programming opportunities for this meeting 
The Committee on Membership Affairs (MAC) met in executive session on Saturday and Sunday in Chicago and reported that the ACS closed 2006 with 160,491 members, our highest year-end membership count since 2002  Of the 17,857 applications processed in 2006, more than 1,000 came from the Member-Get-a-Member campaign in which many councilors participated  The society's retention rate in 2006 remained strong at 92%  The committee also reported that recruitment for the first two months of 2007 netted 2,844 new applications—729 more than for the same time period last year 
MAC continues to work with deliberate speed on the proposed new bylaw language for members, student members, and society affiliates-the three ways to connect to the society  The committee received input from the Governance Review Task Force and its action teams, the Council Policy Committee, the board of directors, the Committee on Constitution & Bylaws, and several other committees between the San Francisco and Chicago meetings  These interactions have resulted in the current bylaw change recommendations 
In Chicago, representatives from MAC attended several committee meetings and all seven councilor caucuses to summarize the current proposal for membership changes, answer questions, and seek input  In addition, all committee chairs were invited to have their respective committees review these bylaw changes and respond to MAC—if possible—before council met on Wednesday  MAC received 11 responses: eight supported the proposed changes as is, and three supported the proposed language with specified changes or considerations 
The comprehensive petition will likely represent the most significant and voluminous change in the ACS bylaws that has occurred in decades, and MAC is proud to be among the leaders in its development and in efforts to get it right the first time  Hundreds of individuals have contributed to this major effort, since MAC began such discussions at the spring 2004 national meeting 
The Committee on Ethics met in Chicago and discussed the possibility of organizing and scheduling a committee retreat in the near future to enable the committee to move from the current stage of exploring the needs and interests of ACS members to setting priorities for the next few years 
The Project SEED program offers summer research opportunities for high school students from economically disadvantaged families  Since its inception in 1968, the program has had a significant impact on the lives of more than 8,400 students  At the selection meeting in March, the committee approved research projects for 340 SEED I students and 98 SEED II students for this summer in more than 100 institutions 
The 2006 annual assessment surveys from 300 students indicate that 78% of the Project SEED participants are planning to major in a chemistry-related science, and 66% aspire to continue to graduate education  This program is made possible by contributions from industry, academia, local sections, ACS friends and members, the ACS Petroleum Research Fund, and the Project SEED Endowment 
The committee formally submitted a request to ConC to amend the Project SEED acronym and the committee duties described in the Supplementary Information of the "ACS Charter, Constitution, Bylaws & Regulations "
In Chicago, the committee's agenda focused on the ACS Strategic Plan and how Project SEED fits into it, the Program Review Advisory Group (PRAG) review of the Project SEED program, the committee's review of an online application form, and planning of the 40th anniversary celebration to be held at the Philadelphia meeting in the fall of 2008  The committee selected a task force to review the criteria for selection of the Project SEED ChemLuminary Award 
3  Making ACS relevant to technicians 
Last year, CTA, along with the Division of Chemical Technicians, the Committee on Economic & Professional Affairs, and ChemTechLinks, started the Equipping the 2015 Chemical Technology Workforce initiative  This year, the initiative awarded six $500 minigrants to activities and programs that support the educational and professional development of chemical technicians 
We are pleased to announce that the winners of the minigrants are the ACS Division of Environmental Chemistry; the Chemical Technician Program Chair for the 39th ACS Central Regional Meeting in Covington, Ky ; Delta College, University Center, Mich ; Grand Rapids Community College, in Michigan; Mount San Antonio College, Walnut, Calif ; and Southwestern College in Chula Vista, Calif 
The winners are collaborating with industry, academia, and ACS local sections on such activities as chemical technology career fairs for high school students, discussion panels on employability skills for technicians, and technical programming at regional and national meetings on the vital role technicians have in the chemical enterprise 
Because of the enthusiastic response to the minigrants, Equipping the 2015 Chemical Technology Workforce will be supporting another round of minigrants to be distributed in the fall  Details will be available on the website  For more information, go to www ChemTechLinks org and click on "Equipping the 2015 Chemical Technology Workforce "
CTA has also joined with the Joint Subcommittee on Diversity, formerly known as the Collaboration of Committees Working Group  Because this group is focused on increasing diversity in ACS and the chemical enterprise, we believe that this is an opportunity to raise awareness of the value of technicians  CTA looks forward to collaborating on the promotion of traditionally underrepresented chemical professionals 
In 2007, CTA will be placing renewed focus on distribution of the ACS Chemical Technology Student Recognition Award  The award recognizes academic excellence in students preparing for careers as chemical technicians  For more information on the award, please visit the CTA website at chemistry org/committees/cta 



ground_truth: There are 14,520 attendees, including 7,152 chemical scientists, 5,059 students, 1,283 exhibitors, 119 precollege teachers, 573 exposition visitors, and 453 guests.

prompt_front: Now, answer the following question based on the text below, only give me the answer and do not output any other words.

Question: What award did Brooksley Born receive in 2009?

Read the following text and answer briefly.

Context 3: Brooksley Elizabeth Born (born August 27, 1940) is an American attorney and former public official who, from August 26, 1996, to June 1, 1999, was chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the federal agency which oversees the U S  futures and commodity options markets  During her tenure on the CFTC, Born lobbied Congress and the President to give the CFTC oversight of off-exchange markets for derivatives, in addition to its role with respect to exchange-traded derivatives, but her warnings were ignored or dismissed, and her calls for reform resisted by other regulators <ref name="nytimes">Goodman, Peter S  The Reckoning - Taking Hard New Look at a Greenspan Legacy, The New York Times, October 9, 2008 </ref> Born resigned as chairperson on June 1, 1999, shortly after Congress passed legislation prohibiting her agency from regulating derivatives 

Early life and education
Born graduated from Abraham Lincoln High School (San Francisco, California) at the age of 16  She then attended Stanford University, where she majored in English and was graduated with the class of 1961   She initially wanted to become a doctor, but a guidance counsellor at Stanford advised her against medicine, so she majored in English literature instead 

She then attended Stanford Law School, one of only seven women in her class   She was the first female student ever to be named president of the Stanford Law Review  She received the "Outstanding Senior" award and graduated as valedictorian of the class of 1964 

Legal career
Immediately after law school Born was selected as a law clerk to judge Henry Edgerton of the U S  Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit  It was during this time that she met her first husband, Jacob C  Landau, who was a journalist covering the Federal courts at the time  Following her clerkship, she became an associate at the Washington, D C -based international law firm of Arnold & Porter  Born was attracted to Arnold & Porter because it was one of the few major law firms to have a woman partner at that time, Carolyn Agger, who was the head of the tax practice  Born took a two-year leave of absence from Arnold & Porter to accompany her first husband to Boston, where he had received a fellowship  During that time she worked as a research assistant to law professor Alan Dershowitz 

Born's early career at Arnold & Porter focused on international trade law, in which she represented a number of Swiss industries and the government of Switzerland  She developed a practice representing clients in numerous complex litigation and arbitration cases involving financial market transactions  Among her high-profile cases was the matter of the Hunt Brothers attempt to corner the market in silver in the 1970s  She made partner at Arnold & Porter, after moving to a three-day schedule to help raise her second child, and eventually rose to be the head of the firm's derivatives practice 

Born was among the first female attorneys to systematically address inequities regarding how the laws treated women  Born and another female lawyer, Marna Tucker, taught what is considered to have been the first "Women and the Law" course at Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law  The class exclusively concerned prejudicial treatment of women under the laws of the United States, past and present   Born and Tucker were surprised to discover that there was no textbook on the issue at the time   Born is also one of the co-founders of the National Women's Law Center  Born also helped rewrite the American Bar Association rules to make it possible for more women and minorities to sit on federal bench 

During her long legal career, and into her retirement, Born did much pro bono and other types of volunteer work  She was active in the American Bar Association, the largest professional organization of lawyers in the United States   Initially Born was named a member of the governing council of the ABA's Individual Rights Section, eventually becoming chairperson   Born and Tucker founded the ABA Women's Caucus, the first organization of female lawyers in the ABA   She held several other senior positions in the ABA, including being named the first woman member of the ABA's Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary   As a member of the Judiciary Committee, Born provided testimony and opinion on persons nominated for federal judgeships  In 1980 she was named chair of the committee   As chair of the committee, Born was invited to address the U S  Congress regarding the nomination of Judge Sandra Day O'Connor to the U S  Supreme Court 

In 1993, Born's name was floated as a possible candidate for Attorney General of the United States, but Janet Reno was nominated 

In July 2009, Nancy Pelosi appointed Brooksley Born as a commissioner to the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) 

Born and the OTC derivatives market
Born was appointed to the CFTC on April 15, 1994, by President Bill Clinton  Due to litigation against Bankers Trust Company by Procter and Gamble and other corporate clients, Born and her team at the CFTC sought comments on the regulation of over-the-counter derivatives, a first step in the process of writing CFTC regulations to supplement the existing regulations of the Federal Reserve System,  the Options Clearing Corporation, and the National Association of Insurance Commissioners  Born was particularly concerned about swaps, financial instruments that are traded over the counter between banks, insurance companies or other funds or companies, and thus have no transparency except to the two counterparties and the counterparties' regulators, if any   CFTC regulation was strenuously opposed by Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, and by Treasury Secretaries Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers  On May 7, 1998, former SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt joined Rubin and Greenspan in objecting to the issuance of the CFTC's concept release  Their response dismissed Born's analysis and focused on the hypothetical possibility that CFTC regulation of swaps and other OTC derivative instruments could create a "legal uncertainty" regarding such financial instruments,  hypothetically reducing the value of the instruments  They argued that the imposition of regulatory costs would "stifle financial innovation" and encourage financial capital to transfer its  transactions offshore  The disagreement between Born and the Executive Office's top economic policy advisors has been described not only as a classic Washington turf war, but also a war of ideologies,  insofar as it is possible to argue that Born's actions were consistent with Keynesian and neoclassical economics while Greenspan, Rubin, Levitt, and Summers consistently espoused neoliberal, and neoconservative policies 

In 1998, a trillion-dollar hedge fund called Long Term Capital Management (LTCM) was near collapse   Using mathematical models to calculate debt risk, LTCM used derivatives to leverage $5 billion into more than $1 trillion, doing business with fifteen of Wall Street's largest financial institutions   The derivative transactions were not regulated, nor were investors able to evaluate LTCM's exposures   Born stated, "I thought that LTCM was exactly what I had been worried about"   In the last weekend of September 1998, the President's working group was told that the entire American economy hung in the balance   After intervention by the Federal Reserve, the crisis was averted   In congressional hearings into the crisis, Greenspan acknowledged that language had been introduced into an agriculture bill that would prevent CFTC from regulating the derivatives which were at the center of the crisis that threatened the US economy   U S  Representative Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) asked "How many more failures do you think we'd have to have before some regulation in this area might be appropriate?"  In response, Greenspan brushed aside the substance of Born's warnings with the simple assertion that "the degree of supervision of regulation of the over-the-counter derivatives market is quite adequate to maintain a degree of stability in the system"  Born's warning was that there wasn't any regulation of them   Born's chief of staff, Michael Greenberger summed up Greenspan's position this way: "Greenspan didn't believe that fraud was something that needed to be enforced, and he assumed she probably did  And of course, she did "  Under heavy pressure from the financial lobby, legislation prohibiting regulation of derivatives by Born's agency was passed by the Congress   Born resigned on June 1, 1999 

The derivatives market continued to grow yearly throughout both terms of George W  Bush's administration  On September 15, 2008, the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers forced a broad recognition of a financial crisis in both the US and world capital markets   As Lehman Brothers' failure temporarily reduced financial capital's confidence, a number of newspaper articles and television programs suggested that the failure's possible causes included the conflict between the CFTC and the other regulators Faiola, Anthony, Nakashima, Ellen and Drew, Jill  The Crash: Risk and Regulation - What Went Wrong, The Washington Post, October 15, 2008 

Born declined to publicly comment on the unfolding 2008 crisis until March 2009, when she said: "The market grew so enormously, with so little oversight and regulation, that it made the financial crisis much deeper and more pervasive than it otherwise would have been " She also lamented the influence of Wall Street lobbyists on the process and the refusal of regulators to discuss even modest reforms 

An October 2009 Frontline documentary titled "The Warning"  described Born's thwarted efforts to regulate and bring transparency to the derivatives market, and the continuing opposition thereto  The program concluded with an excerpted interview with Born sounding another warning: "I think we will have continuing danger from these markets and that we will have repeats of the financial crisis -- may differ in details but there will be significant financial downturns and disasters attributed to this regulatory gap, over and over, until we learn from experience "

In 2009 Born, along with Sheila Bair of the FDIC, was awarded the John F  Kennedy Profiles in Courage Award in recognition of the "political courage she demonstrated in sounding early warnings about conditions that contributed" to the 2007-08 financial crisis   According to Caroline Kennedy, "Brooksley Born recognized that the financial security of all Americans was being put at risk by the greed, negligence and opposition of  powerful and well connected interests     The catastrophic financial events of recent months have  proved them [Born and Sheila Bair] right "  One member of the President's working group had a change of heart about Brooksley Born   SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt stated "I've come to know her as one of the most capable, dedicated, intelligent and committed public servants that I have ever come to know", adding that "I could have done much better  I could have made a difference" in response to her warnings 

In 2010, a documentary film Inside Job further alleged that derivatives regulation was ineffective from the Clinton administration on  Along with fellow whistleblower, former IMF Chief Economist Raghuram Rajan, who was also scorned by the economic establishment, Brooksley Born was cited as one of the authorities arguing that financial derivatives increase economic risk 

 Personal life 
Born is married to Alexander E  Bennett (also retired from Arnold & Porter)   She has five adult children - two from a previous marriage to Jacob Landau and three stepchildren  Notably, Born was named a partner at Arnold & Porter while working part-time so she could raise her two young children   When both of her children were school-age, Born returned to practice full-time 

References

External links
Attorney profile at Arnold & Porter
Brooksley Born (2009 Winner) of the Profiles in Courage Award, with acceptance speech transcript and NECN video

Profile at MarketsWiki
Speeches and statements
"Testimony Of Brooksley Born Chairperson of the CFTC Concerning The Over-The-Counter Derivatives Market", before the House Committee On Banking And Financial Services, July 24, 1998 
"The Lessons of Long Term Capital Management L P ", Remarks of Brooksley Born, Chairperson of the CFTC, Chicago-Kent-IIT Commodities Law Institute, Chicago, Illinois, October 15, 1998 
 Interview: Brooksley Born for "PBS Frontline: The Warning", PBS, (streaming VIDEO 1 hour), October 20, 2009 
Articles
Manuel Roig-Franzia  "Credit Crisis Cassandra:Brooksley Born's Unheeded Warning Is a Rueful Echo 10 Years On", The Washington Post, May 26, 2009
 Taibbi, Matt  "The Great American Bubble Machine", Rolling Stone'', July 9–23, 2009

1940 births
American women lawyers
Arnold & Porter people
Clinton administration personnel
Columbus School of Law faculty
Commodity Futures Trading Commission personnel
Heads of United States federal agencies
Lawyers from San Francisco
Living people
Stanford Law School alumni
21st-century American women
Stanford University alumni



ground_truth: In 2009, Brooksley Born received the John F. Kennedy Profiles in Courage Award.