Written by: United Theological Seminary December 21, 2020

Movies for What Ails You: Reflecting on Holiday Favorites.

Around winter holidays, one of the most beloved traditions is staying in, bundling up, and watching a favorite movie or television show. Eventually, the media we are drawn to once becomes something we might return whether after many years or on a regular annual basis. Movies, like other forms of art, both entertain us and give us insight that we can describe as not only culturally relevant but theological, ministerial, or even prophetic. At United Community, we are committed to the role of art in our collective ministry, and so this year, some of our faculty and staff have opted to share about our favorite holiday movies, the lessons we’ve learned, and blessing we can draw from them.

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National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation

Our family has inadvertently made it a tradition to watch this movie every Christmas Day when we gather for our extended family get together of games, food, drinks and stories. There are always laughs and shouts of our favorite movie lines, and so many happy memories.

While it might not be theological reflections exactly (I’ll leave that to the professors), there are a few good sense themes that can be picked out of this classic movie.

First, don’t be a snotty, materialistic, money hungry jerk. Karma’s a bitch, and when it comes knocking you might find an expensive stereo destroyed mysteriously by something wet, or you might find yourself kidnapped by an employee’s crazy cousin Eddie.

Second, don’t put unreal expectations on yourself or expect everything to go perfectly as planned. Clark’s wife points this out to him in the beginning of the movie, setting the stage for “Sparky’s” unrealistic plans and subsequent failures. However, when things do get hairy, you can take his dad’s advice and get some help from your friend Jack Daniels.

Third, it’s ok to just roll with it when the unexpected happens. The odd cousin may show up, the family cat may get wrapped up for a Christmas present, the Pledge of Allegiance is said in place of the dinner blessing, you may get stuck in the attic while everybody is shopping, the turkey may be overcooked, or you may nearly get killed on your way to choose the Christmas Tree. Life is what you make of it, and sometimes you just have to roll with whatever happens and all you can do is laugh.

Finally, we all have quirks that make us unique, but the holiday season is about showing love and compassion for all family, friends, and humanity in general.

“Hallelujah! Holy Shit! Where’s the Tylenol?”

–Hillary Vamstad, Registrar and Academic Advisor Title IX Coordinator

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Tokyo Godfathers

Tokyo Godfathers is a 2003 animated film by the late director Satoshi Kon. The “godfathers” of the film are three people who are experiencing homelessness: the gambling, alcoholic Gin; the transgender and former drag queen Hana; and Miyuki, the runaway teen daughter of a police officer. These three, a kind of assembled family, discover an abandoned baby on Christmas Eve. Hana wants to raise the child, but the three realize they don’t have the means to raise her, so Hana agrees to help the others find the baby’s parents on the condition that the parents explain how they could abandon their child. What ensues is a manic adventure full of humor, hijinks, and heartfelt realizations, where miraculous coincidences occur, and where each of the “godfather’s” utterly human backstory is unveiled. Meanwhile, the buildings, streets, windows, graveyards, and alleyways of Tokyo become characters in their own right, animated as a brightly lit, snowclad, and constantly shifting as they aid the trio on their quest.

As a queer person myself, I return to this movie every year for its complexification and celebration of “family” beyond the most traditional or heteronormative notions. I love how the film asks what we owe our neighbors and strangers along with our blood relatives. I also learn from and relate to its portrayal of a gender-non-conforming character in Hana who bears some of the greatest hurts of the characters while nonetheless acting as source of poetry and direction for the three misfits. And I love that none of the characters are of the saccharine Hallmark variety. Rather, they are warted, petty, hyperbolic, foolish, angry, and apathetic in turns, just like all of us. And within each character is a well of love, just like in all of us.

The figures of Hana, Miyuki, and Gin reinterpret for a modern context the heart of the Biblical Nativity Story, with its refugees, poor shepherds, and “suspect” women. For Satoshi Kon, the miraculous is in the mundane, the mundane beams with vibrancy, moments of time and space explode with color, gesture, emotion, and music only to realign into a clarity of revelation. May we all be like the Tokyo godfathers and glimpse from the chaos, fear, and confusion of our lives a sense of wonder; may we search for what is right, even if it takes us onto strange and winding paths; and may we foster such love between one another, reimagining family into its most expansive possibilities.

–Max Yeshaye Brumberg-Kraus ’20, Alum

The Lord of the Rings Trilogy

My favorite holiday movie is not a holiday movie. Every year one was released, right around Christmas time, my family went and saw The Lord of the Rings Trilogy movies. We never saw movies in the theater as a family, but for some reason, we went to these – I think because my dad loved C. S. Lewis, and Tolkien was associated with Lewis, so we could talk him into liking TLOTR, and if dad was in, we all were.

Tolkien had a gift for weaving the traditional themes of good vs. evil and the Hero’s Journey with beautiful stories of friendship, respect, wisdom, deep connection with creation, and history. He also helped us see the need for not only a single individual or community to stand against evil, but for a network – or system – of communities to collectively overcome the powers of hatred, fear and death.

For me, Frodo’s intentional, purposeful and inexorable plodding trudge to Mordor is a powerful depiction of the Jesus event of overcoming death by entering into death – not just for one’s self, but for the entire world. This is the trilogy’s key lesson: that we cannot avoid or reject evil and death, we have to enter into the vulnerable places, the shadow side of ourselves, our church, our communities and our world with intention and purpose and embrace our own death/loss/brokenness; in doing so, we enact redemption for ourselves and for at least our little corner of God’s beloved creation.

I pray that people around the world use this time of pandemic, social unrest and isolation to embark on their own courageous adventure toward embracing their shadow side and unearthing their True Self, the Self that leads us all toward wholeness and life abundant.

–Emily Meyer, Ministry Lab Executive Director

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The Nightmare Before Christmas

One of the benefits of The Nightmare before Christmas (1993) is that it can be ceremoniously viewed at both Halloween and Christmas. In it, the protagonist Jack Skellington, king of Halloween Town, has grown tired of his role and after stepping through a door deep in the woods, discovers the enchanting Christmas Town, and then hatches a plan to give Santa a break. Hilarity, screams, several musical numbers, and eventually disaster ensues. What I’ve always appreciated about the film (besides the aesthetic, the stop-motion animation, and Danny Elfman’s voice) is Jack’s struggle to articulate something ineffable about Christmas. His eureka moment comes in a song called “Jack’s Obsession,” during which he uses scientific equipment to study various Christmas-related objects. He seems to lament:

Christmas time is buzzing in my skull
Will it let me be? I cannot tell
There are so many things I cannot grasp
When I think I’ve got it, and then at last
Through my bony fingers it does slip
Like a snowflake in a fiery grip

The elusiveness of the meaning of Christmas frustrates and compels Jack. He describes it as a process of remembering or recognition:

Something’s here I’m not quite getting
Though I try, I keep forgetting
Like a memory long since past
Here in an instant, gone in a flash
What does it mean?
What does it mean?

But the pursuit is as enjoyable as it is futile, and perhaps it is precisely that delight that spurs Jack on:

These dolls and toys confuse me so
Confound it all, I love it though

When his calculations and material examination of decorations fail to produce anything, he begins to understand that there is more to Christmas and in fact it is accessible to everyone:

It’s simple really, very clear
Like music drifting in the air
Invisible, but everywhere
Just because I cannot see it
Doesn’t mean I can’t believe it

While this song concludes with Jack thinking he’s understood Christmas, from which he goes on to orchestrate the kidnapping of Santa Claus and the hijacking of Christmas, in the end, Jack realizes he had indeed failed to fully understand what Christmas was about, and in the process comes to appreciate Halloween Town anew. No doubt theologians and seminarians can especially relate to Jack’s attraction to and struggle with understanding and articulating the unknown. During this season of wintry stillness and anticipation, may we experience joy in the pursuit of the ineffable divine.

–Dr. Jennifer Awes-Freeman, Assistant Professor of Arts and Theology; Program Director for Theology and the Arts

May these movies bring you blessings for the new years. And may take time to enjoy the movies, visual art, television shows, music, books, food and company that make this season special for you!

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June 25, 2026

Activism Alums immigration justice Liberation Theology

Alum Rev. Todd Lippert (’03): Living a Public Ministry

As Rev. Todd Lippert was growing up, his life was dominated by two constants: music and church. Both of his parents were music teachers. His dad was the high school choir director, and his mom was the elementary school music teacher. Though his family had been Baptist for generations, they ended up attending a United Church of Christ (UCC) church where his mom was hired to play the organ. It was also much closer to home than the nearest Baptist church. “I always took Christian faith very seriously,” Todd asserts. “The church was a sacred and holy place to me.” In seventh grade, Todd remembers talking to his father. “I was at the bottom of the stairs talking to my dad at the top of the stairs. And that was when I said for the first time, ‘I wonder if I might want to be a pastor someday.’” But, Todd adds, “the idea was really terrifying to me,” so he put it out of his mind. At the University of Iowa, he pursued a music degree. During a philosophy class toward the end of college, a professed atheist professor began asking some of the same questions about faith that Todd was confronting. “I was wrestling with whether I was a Christian or not.” Deciding on Seminary The turning point came one Sunday morning after graduation when Todd and his wife were at church. At the time, he was selling Yellow Pages ads and contemplating an MBA. “I hated it,” Todd confesses. “I was miserable.” Watching the preacher at First United Methodist Church in Iowa City, he thought, “Maybe I could do that, and maybe I need to pay attention to this call to ministry that keeps bubbling up.” United was the first UCC seminary that came up on the computer, and when Todd visited, “it felt like home for me as soon as I arrived.” Since his wife was doing graduate work at the University of Minnesota, they moved to the Twin Cities. “At United,” Todd recalls, “I had the space to figure out how Christianity was meaningful and how this faith fit together for me.” Professors who welcomed and encouraged his questions were key to his faith formation, and the “liberation theology that moved through the curriculum, with its focus on justice, was extremely appealing to me.” Todd was also inspired by his classmates. “I saw the student body deeply engaged in the political and social questions of the day.” At United from 2000 to 2003, Todd experienced the Bush v. Gore lawsuit, 9/11 terror attacks, Minnesota senator Paul Wellstone’s tragic death, and the Iraq war launch as he was earning his MDiv. Public Theology Justice-seeking activism, Todd asserts, “really cemented my understanding that the body of Christ is about bringing the realm of God into being wherever it is. And that was something that would have to make my life better and make my community better.” Since graduating, Todd has worked as a UCC pastor, a Minnesota state legislator (2018–2022), a community organizer with ISAIAH, and a community minister with Creekside Church. The clergy organizing work during Operation Metro Surge was especially impactful and reconnected him with United. Todd went through “nonviolent direct action training with Dr. Rita Nakashima Brock, one of the authors I read.” He also worked with Rev. Dr. Carolyn Pressler, his former Hebrew scripture professor. United, notes Todd, equipped him “to be able to understand what is going on in our world, and in our communities, and I had the tools to get better and better at that, reading the present through a biblical and theological lens.” He is extraordinarily proud of the way the church showed up in Minnesota and grateful for United. “I really want,” Todd concludes, “the love-your-neighbor values of the church to be a force in our public life, not an afterthought. I want it to be a force in our political life.”

Rev. Dr. Andrew Packman Promoted to Associate Professor of Christian Ethics, supported by the McVay Endowment

Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States, June 24, 2026 —United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities is delighted to announce that, effective July 1, 2026, Rev. Dr. Andrew Packman will become the Associate Professor of Christian Ethics, supported by the McVay Endowment, and Director for Formation. This promotion to an endowed chair follows Rev. Dr. Justin Sabis-Tanis’ appointment as the inaugural Wilson Yates Chair in Theology and the Arts. Announced during Commencement in April, the McVay chairship reflects the esteem with which United’s board and faculty members regard Professor Packman. In February, Dean Kyle Roberts proudly reported that Dr. Packman was being promoted from assistant to associate professor and transitioning from a three-year contract into a tenure-track position. Dr. Packman joined United in July 2021 as a Louisville Institute Postdoctoral Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor of Theological Ethics and Practical Theology. At the Spring 2022 Convocation to welcome and bless our new faculty member, Dr. Packman—who holds an MDiv and PhD from the University of Chicago—presented on “The Atmospherics of Theological Education.” By December 2022, Dr. Packman’s “teaching, mentoring, and other stellar capabilities” prompted United to offer him a contract to continue teaching past the terms of his Louisville Fellowship. Since then, he has co-authored an article in The Oxford Handbook of Friedrich Schleiermacher, had a paper (“The Consolation of Studying Theology”) published in the Christian Century, and presented at the September 2025 Schleiermacher Kongress in Kiel, Germany. Spiritual and personal formation is a vital component of Packman’s work with students, and he will continue in his role as the director for Formation. In May of 2025, he began a new initiative, the Formation Pilot Program, to gauge the foundational axis points of students’ formation at United. “This is a remarkable moment in theological education,” Dr. Packman explained this spring, “where what it means to be a theological learning community is being reimagined in real time. This pilot program is designed to interrogate this question from across the life of the seminary, and to build up our community in the process.” “Dr. Packman’s doctoral studies,” observed Dean Roberts in his April announcement, “focused on Christian theology and ethics, and his current research explores questions about racism, intransigent evil, and Friedrich Schleiermacher’s philosophical and theological ethics. Combined with his MDiv studies in pastoral formation, these make Dr. Packman well-suited to occupy this chair while he continues…serving as the Director for Formation.” President Molly T. Marshall reflects, “Dr. Packman brings academic excellence and pastoral sensitivity to his teaching, collegial relationships, and community involvement. His theological depth suffuses his courses in ethics and formation, seeking to form good human beings as transformative agents for a world in travail. I am delighted by this appointment.” As Dr. Packman shared when he was offered a chance to continue teaching at United past his Louisville Fellowship, “It’s such an immense gift to get to do this work, and it’s an honor to get to do it with folks like you. I’m so eager to see what we build together!” Now, as a new chapter begins with his elevation to the McVay Chair, we are overjoyed that such a prodigiously talented scholar and teacher can continue to journey with our dedicated and curious students. About United Founded by the United Church of Christ (UCC) as a welcoming, ecumenical school that embraces all denominations and faith traditions, United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities has been on the creative edge of progressive theological thought and leadership since it was established in 1962. Today, United continues to educate leaders who, through the eyes of faith, engage in the dismantling of systems of oppression, exploring multi-faith spirituality, and pushing the boundaries of knowledge. Contact Nathanial Green (he/him) Director of Marketing and Communications press@unitedseminary.edu • 651.255.6138 Admissions and Enrollment admissions@unitedseminary.edu

Rev. Dr. Tim McGregor (’26) Finds Hope for Healing in Exploratory Theology

Rev. Dr. Tim McGregor (’26) has been a chaplain, pastor, and church planter for years. How did he find this well-trodden path? Tim says his mother introduced him to Christ. “She was very devout,” he explains. Unfortunately, she was also very sick, so Tim spent more time in hospitals than in church as a child. Still, he recalls one incident during communion when he was 11. Tim shares that he “had a very out-of-body experience with the divine while I was in church, and it touched my soul.” Tim grew up and pursued a BA at Tuskegee University. While there, he experienced another out-of-body experience when he was robbed at gunpoint and stabbed. “At that point,” he reflects, “I decided to rethink some of my living and some of my decisions. It reignited my spiritual walk.” As he changed the way he lived, Tim felt a spiritual nudge. Others observed that they “saw the calling” on his life. And dreams about preaching began to recur. “Before I ever preached a sermon, I dreamed I was preaching…in the same church where I ended up preaching later on.” Christian Theological Seminary Though Tim identified as National Baptist, he decided to attend Christian Theological Seminary (CTS) in Indiana—a progressive school aligned with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). It helped that Dr. Edward Wheeler, an ordained Baptist minister whom Tim knew when Wheeler worked at Tuskegee, was CTS’s president. During a United chapel service this March, Tim described his experience at CTS as “quite grueling,” but also that he “learned a lot.” As he clarified more recently, he had to “let go of a very fundamentalist perspective,” and that sort of deconstruction was difficult. “It was a crucible situation,” Tim asserts. Chaplaining and Church Planting After earning his MDiv in 2003, Tim spent years in Mississippi and Texas planting churches and working as a hospital chaplain. Since returning to Minnesota, he’s been a chaplain at Regions Hospital, Abbott Northwestern, and the Minneapolis VA Medical Center, and pastored at Family Bible Church. He suspects that the time he spent with his mother in hospitals likely inclined him toward hospital chaplaincy. When he decided to pursue a DMin, Tim reviewed his options. Only United, he found, had the interreligious chaplaincy program and liberal ethos that made his MDiv work transformational. Plus, he could attend onsite or online as his schedule allowed. “It was a great benefit,” Tim attests, “to do both.” United and Nat Turner Tim credits Dr. Jessica Chapman Lape, former director of the Interreligious Chaplaincy program, with positively shaping his education. Her theological knowledge and emphasis on her African American heritage impressed him. Dr. Munjed Murad’s Comparative Theology course elevated Tim’s intercultural acuity. Munjed is an assistant professor of World Religions and Intercultural Studies, supported by the Johnson-Fry Endowment. Tim describes his dissertation, “The Exploratory Theology of Nat Turner and Its Effects on African and African American PTSD,” as “a labor of love.” Why Nat Turner? “I appreciate his passion and his desire to live and fight for the rights of his people,” Tim explains, “and his willingness to do so in the name of his religious beliefs.” In addition, “I’m always interested in people that…have been misunderstood or written off as villains.” Shepherded with vital support from Rev. Dr. Andrew Packman (assistant professor of Theological Ethics and Formation), Tim’s dissertation studies Nat Turner, his traumatic experiences as a slave, and his burgeoning theology. It also traces links to the moral injury, trauma, and PTSD endemic to military service, especially for African American veterans. Tim wants to “understand more about…how to be an asset to my community.” He feels that “United was a really good place for that” and is a rich resource for “clergy…and spiritual caregivers” who are going to help us “keep pressing toward better understandings.” Tim is grateful for United’s role in honing his academic and spiritual voice.