pat loughery

WEDNESDAY 6/4

Worship was led today from the theme of Revelation 7, which depicts the worship of God occurring in every language and across the full spectrum of creatures. We read part of the passage in our own language, and it’s wonderful to hear the variety being spoken.

We debriefed the previous day’s experiences. I chose to listen more than speak, and hear what others saw in our city. I was fairly surprised that they described a city which was ecologically healthy and which was relatively free of homeless people.

H Spees spoke from his experience in Fresno, California where the city was revitalized in a very short period. His discussion of community development was like a fire hose to me, and it will take quite a while to unpack what it means for my community.

At this point I’m feeling a deep disconnect in two areas. The first area is a result of me looking last night at the BGU class about preparing our dissertations, and I realized just how practically-focused these are. I know the benefit of this encouragement, but I also know that in the liminal space I find myself in, and the several directions that I can see my thesis landing in, I find myself to be in the same fog that Grace spoke of yesterday. It’s a fog of not knowing how what I’m doing will work itself out in my life. The second area complicates this issue; it is the tension I feel between feeling planted in my suburban neighborhood and our focus on urban ministry. I spent time in the sanctuary trying to pray about this issue, but they were setting up for a wedding. Then I tried a second time in the courtyard where there’s a Celtic cross, but maintenance men came out with ladders. It’s one of those times that God is allowing me to continue to feel tension.

As Ray began to speak about consulting the city, he asked how we were processing this time. I told Ray I felt like I was feeling like a fire hose, and I’m disoriented trying to find my place in this. Ray was very gracious, and spent much of his time talking about how a pastor can connect with the city he’s in. Ray put flesh to the systems that H discussed, and I also found his invitation inviting that I keep unpacking this through the course. I’ve felt, last night and today that I needed to take some time with somebody on staff to talk through thesis options and get a sense of direction. I’m going to make time to meet with Ray to tell him a bit of my story and hopes, and see what wisdom he may have for me.

We transitioned out of the process of consulting a city and into discussion of Jon Sharpe spoke next about incarnational leadership. It was difficult to follow the structure of Jon’s lecture, but there were several positive points for me. Jon’s definition of leadership is concise: Bringing a positive, Godward change for people, places and systems. He discussed Philippians 2 as a classic text for the incarnational leader. In the midst of this, he referenced Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s book Life Together, which is one of my favorites of all time. I have been thinking for the last couple of days about what I’d like to read after this class and before I have to ramp up for the next class – the time during which I can choose what I want to read. I’ve had a few options in mind (I need more Thomas Merton in my life right now, and I also want to check out Jesus for President by Shane Claiborne). But I think it’s time to re-read Life Together for my own spiritual formation and to remind myself about community, calling and position. I walked to the closest Barnes and Noble at lunchtime to pick up a new copy and began to read it over lunch.

After lunch, the leadership topic was global and contextual leadership, led by Dave Hillis of Northwest Leadership Foundation in Tacoma, Washington. Dave’s foundation looks at what it means to serve people in need, and what it means to develop a new generation of leaders. Dave proposed that the postmodern generation is driven not by duty but by desire, and so organizations that seek to interact with postmoderns should consider what it means to fulfill desires. He gets this theory from the work of Rene Gerard, an anthropologist. I’m not sure that the postmodern generation is driven by desire so much as I see it wary of abuse of power and issues of trust. I do though see that the pomos are not driven by duty and obligation – although perhaps it’s because I’m pomo that I see this transition as a positive thing.

Dave brought two leaders from his network’s daughter ministries. Kenneth Young spoke about Actsix, which is a four-year leadership scholarship for urban youth who are identified by their community as leaders. I was amazed at this agency for a variety of reasons: they scholarship students for all four years of school. They do eight months of training with students before they go to college in order to prepare them for the academic, cultural, and emotional issues ahead. The students are chosen partly on the basis of an audition before a professor who does not have the student’s GPA or SAT scores, so they professor responds based on classroom potential. I am a graduate of one of the sponsoring schools (Gonzaga University). When I attended school there from ’87-’91, there were only three African American students in the entire student body of 3000. I also went through my own culture shock as a rural student transitioning to the city for the first time, and I can imagine that the preparation that these students get is precious. The first two cohorts of students graduated 100% of their members in four years.

The second leader spoke about their theology roundtable, which was a deliberate attempt to bridge theology and the newspaper. This was described as a Bible study that then sought to apply the theological discussion to the news events of the day. I found myself wonder why they didn’t do it the other way around – searching the Scriptures to try to understand how to deal with today’s news stories, which seems more vibrant to me.

Lowell Bakke led us in the final exercise of the day, which was an interactive experience around “appreciative inquiry”, a form of active listening. Lowell asked us to pair up with another student that we didn’t know well, and using a set of four questions we were to find out about the skills, values and dreams of our partner. After this inquiry, we then got into groups of four and share what we’d heard, and then from those four peoples’ talents, we were to draft a mission for a mythical non-government organization which could serve the city at large, given the skills that we had. Lowell made the point that Christian organizations often are consumed with stewarding the resources that they don’t have (by getting more), and by doing so we often forget to steward what we do have. Lowell’s goal was for us to discover ways to find out the resources in a community and then using those resources, meet the community’s needs. This kind of exercise always makes me nervous and withdrawn. As a confirmed introvert, it is hard to engage in this manner, but as a student I have to push myself into arenas that I’m not comfortable in. Interestingly, my partner was the same way, but the process of answering questions let me tell me story easily, and time went by faster than I expected. I love this exercise in active listening.