In the Coracle

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Overture I - Friday 6/13 Journal

PatJune 13, 2008

Part of the learning model in the Doctor of Ministry program at Bakke Graduate University has us writing daily journals for each in-class day. These journals describe what we saw, how we interpreted it and what we’ll do with it.

FRIDAY 6/13

Today we debriefed the past two weeks and said our goodbyes.

When we were asked to share what major themes we are taking away from our time, I had three in mind. The first theme was simplicity. I’ve felt God’s directing voice recently in this area. I want to live more simply, to divorce myself from my consumerist ways. As I’m exploring how I can craft my own Rule of Life as an individual as well as blueprinting what a new church community’s Rule might look like, simplicity is a key. In this course, I’ve thought of simplicity in my own spiritual walk and my understanding of leadership and of organizational structures.

The second item I thought of was multiplying networks. I wrote earlier this week that I awoke early with this thought in mind, and that was the day that Neil Tibbott spoke about multiplying ministries and networks. At this point I don’t know how this might look, but I’m not thinking of simply a network of house churches; I think what I’m considering is something broader than that. The concept of multiplication is easier for me to describe than what I think I might mean by networks. That may include relationships, churches, affinity groups, web communities, and many other concepts.

The third on the list was stewardship. I’m thinking of stewardship not just in the context of leadership, but also of small communities of faith using the resources that they have, not the ones that they wish they had, for Kingdom purposes.

Those three fit together for me, and as I continue to reflect on them individually and together, I expect much more depth to come.

I appreciate that the BGU staff asked for honest suggestions and feedback. I gave some, agreed with much of what was said by others. I suppose that I’ll have many more thoughts next week after things trickle into my mind and soul. I did say that I wanted to make sure that I understood what it meant to exegete the city, to do appreciative inquiry, and to do reflective leadership. Lowell helpfully revisited these topics.

After we were released, I drove to a Panera store near home to have lunch and wi-fi. I sifted through my class notes and the giant three-ring binder containing many of our lecture notes. I transcribed my notes and the handout for exegeting communities and made it into a blog entry. I made another entry on the topic of life transitions, both so that I could revisit the topic for myself at least as much as for sharing with my friends who read the blog.

The course has been helpful for me. It was especially helpful as a directory of people and resources that I can continue to tap into as I understand more about where God is leading me. I didn’t feel as though any individual lecture topic gave me all that I needed to know, but I also know it’s not designed to do that. I did get exposed to a variety of people and resources and concepts, all of which will be helpful to me at one level or another.

I plan to spend the afternoon doing some mind mapping on a few new topics: my dissertation topic, Celtic Christianity, church planting movements, and networks.

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Overture I - Thursday 6/12 Journal

PatJune 12, 2008

Jack Mboya and I led worship. Jack led us to sing a song and read Scripture about the name of the Lord being a strong tower. I led us through an abbreviated version of the morning office from Northumbria Community’s website which complements their excellent prayer book, Celtic Daily Prayer. I don’t think that my piece went as well as I would hope – the slide deck I put together displayed fonts oddly, so we missed the end of a few prayers. But I wanted to provide a different prayer experience for my peers than what we had experienced so far, to complement what we had done before.

Peter van Breda spoke to us about his experience at Bellevue Foursquare hosting space for several ethnic churches, and also blending their youth groups together. It is interesting to me to hear from people who are doing ethnically targeted ministry (one of my new friends from class does this was well), while I am specifically involved in a multiethnic church so that my family can experience ethnic and cultural differences.

Peter then spoke about the church in China. His discussion was amazing and overwhelming. He had statistic after statistic to describe the rapid transformation occurring in China now, some of which were told in story. Here are two of my favorites: First, in describing his passion as a South African living in America interested in China, he quoted the population of China as 25% of the planet, and said, “With that many people in the country, why wouldn’t God be interested in the Chinese?” The second, which I’ve heard before at BGU but caught my attention again, was the story of the migration between rural and urban areas in China. The number of people moving annually from rural areas in to the cities is the same as the entire population of Canada. The most moving portion of Peter’s talk was seeing my friend Thomas be emotionally impacted and express his love for the Chinese people and nation.

Winn Griffin then told his story and gave us an overview of the dissertation process and the research bridge. His explanation of the dissertation was particularly helpful and cleared up a lot of my questions. I still need to decide if I’m going to take my bridge course this September, which would mean that it happens in parallel with my Orthodox Trail trip, or if I should push it out to January, which would make it more difficult to plan my rapidly approaching dissertation process.

After lunch with the others who are specializing in spiritual formation, Nancy Murphy led us in a circle talk using a tradition from the Red Elk family of the Spokane nation, a Native American nation. She gave us three rules for the circle – that we listen to the person who is speaking, that only the person who could talk is the one who has the focus object (which can be anything that the Creator God made, in our case a smooth stone), and that we share something from the heart and not the head. This was a powerful experience for me as I heard each of my fellow students’ stories. When my turn came, I spoke of feeling that I am in a coracle, not able to direct myself but simply to respond to God, and seeing the fog of transition around me. I spoke of the bittersweet feeling of being in a BGU class with so many people from so many places, all of whom are doing deeply important and transformational ministries, while I struggled to know what my next task would be. It was very emotional for me to describe this state that I’m in, and that even though I trust that God is leading me through, there still is grief to process from the closing of our church plant and not knowing what is next for us in ministry.

After the students had all shared in the circle, we had communion and a simple supper together. I confirmed plans with Jack Mboya who will be staying with my family this upcoming week before he begins the journey back home to Kigali in Nairobi, Kenya.

As an introvert, this entire week for me has been very difficult. I am emotionally and physically drained, and I feel very much on edge. It is difficult to continue to engage in conversations with staff and students, and it is difficult to be patient with my young children when I return home. I look forward to this weekend and taking some time to rest and to process these experiences, but I also know that my family needs me as well. I pray that both can happen.

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Overture I - Wednesday 6/11 Journal

PatJune 11, 2008

On the drive in to work today I listened to a set of podcasts of the interviews between Krista Tippett of the Speaking of Faith podcast and Shane Claiborne, a new monastic with The Simple Way. This was the full interview set which was edited down into the Speaking of Faith podcast episode on the New Monastics. Whenever I hear Shane speak I am thrilled. He is a deeply authentic, passionate, prophetic voice in our time. He is easily the best known of the people identified as new monastics, his books are popular, and he has gained a platform. From what I can tell, however, he is dealing well with this popularity. In one question, Krista asked Shane how he handled this growing voice, and Shane laughed and said that the community that he lived with did a good job of keeping him humble. I deeply value how he lives his faith and encourages others to go deeper.

This was a wonderful introduction to a day in which we talked about two topics: organizational transformation and spiritual formation.

The day began with Grace giving us some academic how-tos. She spoke on several topics. She relieved us all when she said that a life of balance is a pipe dream, as we will never be fully balanced. However, we can choose how we spend our time and how not to spend our time. We can rethink our life mission, we can design a life lived in chapters, we can focus on our strength, and we can redesign our lives continually. This intentionality of life choices was my biggest takeaway from this discussion.

Grace then spoke on different ways to read and study, giving us a continuum of reading from scanning through in-depth study. I found this so helpful that I wrote a quick blog entry about it, and I find that I need to pre-read more often in order to understand how the book is going to flow. In addition, what this continuum doesn’t include but I want to do more of, I want to go back to review learning from the books that I finish. I need a process of harvesting highlights and quotes, summarizing the book’s impact on me and identifying any areas that I need to read more.

Finally, Grace spoke on mind mapping. It is a process that I have used before, and as she spoke I realized that I should have used mind mapping for my note taking process. I haven’t been very happy with how I’ve had to structure the notes I’m taking in the software I use for this class, and if I had it to do over again, I’d strongly consider using FreeMind instead of OmniOutliner for this task.

Ken Fong and Ray Root spoke about organizational transformation. They work together in the Genesys Institute, which does organizational consulting to help organizations and leadership transform. They described two changes an organization can make: slow death, or deep change. They described models for organizational transformation and spoke about applying them in businesses and nonprofits. While I appreciated this content for large organizations, I felt that the entire discussion could have happened in a session at Microsoft or any other large business. While Ken spoke about modifying some of the goals for the systems in ways that would be consistent with churches and faith-based nonprofits, I found this section to be very me-focused: I create vision; I change my organization; I am successful. My own goals are met. I can see this being helpful in large organizations and in nonprofits, evening large churches. However, I see this work as a community – driven process that is initiated by listening reflectively to the voice of God, and arising from the skills, gifts, hopes and dreams of the community. I also see it changing as the community changes. I recognize that this reaction is filtered by my own worldview of the church and my leadership context. But I hope that we as leaders in the church choose to lead in ways that base models more on Jesus and less on businesses.

The end of the day focused on spiritual formation with lectures by Dale Pollard and Wes Johnson. Dale presented spiritual formation as walking with God. He used a nesting doll that he continued to open and reveal another inner reality. He also used the model of asking questions that we could reflect upon. Dale referenced a wide variety of writers and perspectives on spiritual formation, using Catholic, Protestant, Celtic, Orthodox and more ancient sources. Wes gave us an experience in spiritual formation, walking us through a lectio divina process. His also gave us a model for creating a simple breath prayer that used a name of God as a prayer to meet a specific need that we have of God.

Although it was difficult for me to follow the organization of Dale’s lecture, I appreciated what he and Wes shared. I loved again hearing about ancient spiritual practices for soul care. This is the world that I’m comfortable in. I also loved seeing others experience lectio and find a powerful model for letting Scripture read them.

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