Parish Archives - ��Ƶ of Theology & Psychology

Resilience, Trauma, and the Hope of the Church

��Ƶ — Wed, 15 May 2019 16:11:05 +0000

On this episode of text.soul.culture, we’re talking all about resilience—not just as a theoretical idea or buzzword, but as a very real set of practices and resources that ground us in our vocation and help sustain meaningful work. Shauna Gauthier, Alumni Outreach Coordinator, talks with Kate Davis, Director of the Resilient Leaders Project (RLP), and Laura Wade Shirley, Circle Leader for RLP, about how they learned to recognize the need for resilience in their own lives, and about what they’re learning now as they develop new ways to help other leaders foster resilience.

If you’ve ever worked in ministry or a helping profession—or any work that requires your full self—you know this matters: the rate of burnout is too high, and the cost too steep, to not take seriously the need for resilience. We launched Resilient Leaders Project to help leaders and communities respond to that deep need in the midst of a changing church and fragmented culture.

Kate: “Resilient Leaders Project is about trying to come alongside leaders in their context to help them construct lives that support their good work, instead of feeling like their lives are at the cost of their work.”

In reflecting on what drew them into this work, Kate and Laura Wade share about their histories with the Church and how they came to believe it could be a space that would welcome them fully and unequivocally, in all of their brokenness and trauma. Because it turns out that it’s impossible to talk meaningfully about resilience without also talking about trauma.

Kate: “There’s a depth of experience that you must learn to narrate in your own life if you’re going to integrate the really hard pieces of your life. It’s not simply bouncing back to the shape that you were before something hard happened, it’s saying ‘How did this really difficult situation, this suffering that I went through, actually form me to be in some way more human, more compassionate, and therefore more divine?’”

“There’s a depth of experience that you must learn to narrate in your own life if you’re going to integrate the really hard pieces of your life.”

Laura Wade: “Resilience, to me, is finding healing and freedom and voice in the midst of those harmful places, and being able to meet the Spirit and meet God there to be different, to be more of who we are created to be. That’s the linking of resilience and trauma. I don’t think you can have resilience without some level of trauma.”

Shauna: “And maybe you can’t be a human and not have trauma.”

As we gather to reflect together on the trauma of Christ—the violence, betrayal, death, and resurrection—in the Church we might also find space to reflect on our own trauma, to lean into a community of others who can help us find language and meaning for that which is beyond words. This is a beautiful hope, that reflecting on the wounds of Christ in community might help us heal from our own wounds, but it is also a risky, vulnerable hope—one from which it is all too easy for many leaders to shy away. The rigorous demands and unspoken expectations of leadership often mean that leaders—especially in church, ministry, and nonprofit settings—are left feeling as if they cannot disclose experiences of trauma or uncertainty, and like there is not room for them to receive care.

Kate: “Wounded healer is language that we usually use, but we gloss over the wounded part, which means that we often have healed wounders in those roles.”

“Wounded healer is language that we usually use, but we gloss over the wounded part, which means that we often have healed wounders in those roles.”

Toward the end of the conversation, Kate and Laura Wade share about their experience in the first full year of RLP, inviting leaders into intentional connection, thoughtful reflection, and new practices that create room for their full selves—including their trauma, doubt, and brokenness—to be present in their work and relationship. This integrative work is a central part of building resilience, and it is a gift to journey with leaders as they step into that.

Kate: “My hope for the Church is that God’s not done. And it might not look like the church that it looked like in our parents’ or grandparents’ ages, it might not be focused on Sunday morning worship, but I think God’s not done in gathering people in a certain type of way. I want to be part of making that happen, and I want to be part of helping resource the creative and courageous people who are stepping into this unknown territory.”

Resources to Go Deeper

You can learn more about the Resilient Leaders Project—including our newsletter, upcoming events, and the application process for our next cohort—at theseattleschool.edu/rlp.
Kate shares a poem by an anonymous survivor of rape, which reads in its entirety: “I can’t forget what happened, but no one else remembers.” When she was a student at ��Ƶ, Kate wrote this moving reflection about the installation and about church as a community that remembers and holds.
Laura Wade recommends a book about integrating the feminine and masculine parts that live in each of us. The book is by Tami Lynn Kent.
One of the practices Laura Wade mentions that she has returned to because of this work is running. You can read her reflection about how running helps her return to spiritual health in this blog.
For more on resilience, you can watch Nikkita Oliver’s stunning talk from our 2018 Humanity Through Community gathering, and you can listen to Nikkita’s conversation with Shauna Gauthier from an earlier podcast episode.

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Place as Teacher

Dr. Dwight J. Friesen — Mon, 22 Apr 2019 17:39:34 +0000

All this month on the blog, we’re exploring how internal transformation compels outward service. Our individual processes of healing must eventually draw us toward the movement of healing in the world around us. We believe, then, that calling is intimately connected to identity, and that our work in the lives and communities we serve should look as unique as our own stories. That’s why we love hearing about particular ways students are involved in their communities, and it’s part of why we’re committed to developing innovative and collaborative learning opportunities, like Engaging Global Partnerships and our MA in Counseling Psychology with a Concentration in Trauma & Abuse.

We’re reminded of the power of place every year when we host —a gathering of hundreds of leaders and practitioners from around the world, grounded in the conviction that the nature of our service should be shaped not only by our individual identities and callings, but by the very particular stories of the places we serve. Dr. Dwight Friesen, Associate Professor of Practical Theology, is one of the organizers of Inhabit, and he helps equip ��Ƶ students to explore the intersections between their stories, the story of God, and the story of the places they inhabit.

“Part of my work here at ��Ƶ is to attend to what it means to be located. We are not just souls, and we’re not just bodied souls. Our bodies are actually placed somewhere,” says Dr. Friesen. “In fact, I would say that one of the greatest teachers God gives us is the place where we are, the ecosystem that gives us life and invites us to attend to what our presence looks like, what our footprint is in the everyday stuff of life.”

“One of the greatest teachers God gives us is the place where we are.”

The intersection of those threads—your story, God’s story, the story of your place—is where transformative relationships happen, and it’s where we are most able to step into the sort of wise, creative, and hospitable service that our world so desperately needs.

“When we hide behind doctrine or ideology or even an ‘issue,’ it allows us to become almost adversarial toward those who do not hold the same view. When you stay located in place, however, all of a sudden those issues are not issues. Those issues are actually people, people with names who you are encountering. It takes it out of abstraction and into relationship. That’s what we try to do here at ��Ƶ.”

We’ll be diving into this April 26-27 at the Inhabit Conference, two days of inspired teaching, energizing stories, and thought-provoking workshops.

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The Ambivalent Gardener: Eco-theology, Community, and Flourishing in the Relatio Project

B. Mason Judy — Wed, 10 Apr 2019 14:00:05 +0000

We’re honored to partner with for Relatio—a contextual learning opportunity in which ��Ƶ students live in intentional community on St. Luke’s campus, using their education, skills, and gifts to serve the Ballard neighborhood through supporting existing ministries and designing new initiatives. Here, MA in Counseling Psychology student B. Mason Judy writes about how his time in Relatio has intersected with his learning at ��Ƶ, and about the gift of living in a community that welcomes and affirms all of its neighbors.

I’ve never enjoyed gardening.

The thought of tending a plot of land is rife with childhood memories of aching knees and fingers, straining to feel the pull of the weed’s roots instead of the snap of the stem. As an adult, traveling in Poland, I signed up to stay at a purported organic farm, part of the WWOOF network (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) where travelers exchange labor for room and board. Instead, I lodged at a rustic Airbnb with a few modest garden plots and painted bedrooms for four days straight. I stayed dry from the drizzling rain, sure, but I also stayed ignorant of how to garden. My hosts’ English was limited, and upon learning that I actually wanted to learn about plants, the patriarch of the home took me on a walking tour of the garden plots, politely pointing out various plants and saying their Polish names, all the while sipping on some home-brewed liquor, and then asked me, at the end, to repeat everything he had just said. Frustrated when I couldn’t, he drove me to an agricultural museum on the outskirts of their village. While I enjoyed looking at rustic farm implements and dodging roaming turkeys, I still learned little about what to do, or how to feed myself from the earth. I left two days later, as my host’s drinking started earlier and earlier, and my reluctance to work any more reached its zenith. My desire to garden remained in Poland, dashed on the rusty implements of that agricultural museum.

But my thoughts about gardening have started to change as I’m learning there’s a lot more to it than growing food. Taking Triune God and Creation, a class on ecotheology from an ecofeminist perspective, in my last term at ��Ƶ, I’ve been forced to confront my human-centric view of the world (anthropocentrism) and acknowledge the looming global catastrophes, warming oceans, shrinking glaciers, dying species, super storms, toxic pollution, humanitarian crises related to economic inequality, and the list goes on (all in my last term!). Ecofeminist thought stresses the contextual significance of each individual and the way that knowledge is informed principally by one’s experience, and scholars stress the interdependence of all life and the necessity of acting in right relationship with all of the natural world. Ecofeminists argue that exploitation of the land is inseparable from exploitation of people and that if there is going to be justice it needs to be for all. And I’ve started to learn about these principles through one particular garden, the S.L.U.G.

St. Luke’s Urban Garden (S.L.U.G.) is adjacent to my residence—two shotgun-style cottages on the property of in the Ballard neighborhood. The cottages have been my home for two years, and in that time I’ve seen the comings and goings of local gardeners, some church parishioners, and other folks with a green thumb and a desire to grow their own food. I live on the property as a part of the Relatio program, a partnership between ��Ƶ and St. Luke’s. Produce from the SLUG is shared with the church’s meals ministry, Edible Hope, and the space is also a hangout spot for local residents and neighbors, both housed and unhoused. Along with the SLUG, St. Luke’s has an apiary on its roof and the largest rain garden in North Seattle, and lives out its ecumencial beliefs by renting space to The Bridge, a ministry of Quest Church, and the historic chapel to Pangea, a Brethren in Christ Church in the U.S.

Gardening sustains the community and brings people together in ways that are oriented to work and to social activities. It is both a concrete reality, supplying food, and a metaphor for a way of living that aims at a just, viable relationship with the earth and the surrounding community. Ecofeminist Sally McFague writes about metaphor as a bridge between knowing that is both symbolic and embodied. In this way, being a part of Relatio has helped me realize that the community I’m living in is living out the values and the ways of being that are needed to address the catastrophes at hand. Not only is the land and the earth respected, people are welcomed in and loved, regardless of their social status, gender, race, or sexual orientation. At St. Luke’s all bodies are considered good, and the way this is communicated is through the act of feeding, body and soul. As a part of my resident project I’ll be hosting an art show featuring ��Ƶ artists, an act that further feeds the soul.

“At St. Luke’s all bodies are considered good, and the way this is communicated is through the act of feeding, body and soul.”

I’m still not at a place where I want to sink my hands in the dirt, plant seeds, wrestle with the hellish expanse of weeds. But I am more mindful, and grateful, for the opportunity to live in a community that is supportive of life, rejects hate, and actively works against oppression. Gardens are a space where life grows and where abundance can flourish in a way that acknowledges the interdependence of the biosphere on a local, personal level. This is a flourishing that isn’t at the expense of the other. And this flourishing is indeed more, an abundance that is personal, communal, and spiritual—in short, an embrace of the desire for more that is often directed to material aims. I think of the garden when I read the words of queer ecotheologian Whitney Bauman who writes, “We ought not deny our desire for more, but channel those desires into using wealth to create a more ecologically viable and just world.”¹

¹Bauman, Whitney A. “Queer Values for a Queer Climate: Developing a Versatile Planetary Ethic.” In Meaningful Flesh: Reflections on Religion and Nature for a Queer Planet, edited by Whitney A. Bauman, 103-123. Earth, Milky Way: Punctum Books, 2018.

We are currently accepting applications for Relatio. If you are interested in moving in at any point in the 2019-20 Academic Year, contact program director Kate Davis, kdavis@theseattleschool.edu.

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Liberating Fire: A Short Film with Dr. Bob Ekblad

Dr. Bob Ekblad — Mon, 25 Mar 2019 16:00:40 +0000

All through Lent we’re exploring the idea that the affirmation of humanity is an act of resistance. This is especially true when the humanity being affirmed is attacked, belittled, or marginalized by systems of power. In these conversations, we are often inspired by Dr. Bob Ekblad, Associate Professor of Old Testament Studies, whose work with and has helped many people live into new, liberating ways of reading Scripture and practicing their faith.

https://vimeo.com/305151148

If you’ve ever met Bob, you know that he is a man of apparent contradictions. He speaks with a calm gentleness, meaning you might miss the pointed fierceness of his indictments of oppressive powers. One moment he’s decrying the injustice of nationalistic capitalism, and the next he’s leading a charismatic prayer for healing.

But the more you get to know him, you realize these aren’t contradictions for Bob. His political and social convictions are intimately connected to and informed by his vibrant faith in a God who is near and active in human affairs, especially in places of injustice and marginalization. It wasn’t always this way, though. In the post-9/11 atmosphere of fear and distrust of outsiders, Bob often felt like his faith had nothing to offer those who most needed good news. He was intrigued by Christians who spoke of miracles and prayed for healing, but he knew that those more charismatic circles were so often connected with harmful conservative and nationalist politics. The chasm between Christianity and social justice felt devastatingly vast.

“The evangelical and charismatic churches would be promoting the Reagan and Bush administrations’ policies, always dismissing everything we had to say,” says Bob. “We’d speak in churches and people would just oppose us. So we were getting more and more frustrated and feeling quite antagonistic toward the United States.”

Bob’s journey of working to reconcile that divide is chronicled in this documentary from the , a short film series “exploring the crossroads of God’s presence in our lives and justice on the earth.” The film offers an overview of Bob’s story, documenting the progression of his faith, his encounters with both liberation theology and the charismatic movement, and his work in Washington and around the world.

“The places of deepest brokenness and marginalization everywhere in the world require a united body of Christ.”

This is a beautiful, compelling film, and it reminds us that a meaningful pilgrimage is not just about leaving home embark on something new; there is, eventually, a return to service. For Bob and Gracie Ekblad, that meant returning to the United States to work within the Church instead of outside it, helping to foster reconciliation in places that had been divided for too long.

“In our ministry, God is doing a work where word—reading Scriptures for good news at the margins—spirit—the gifts of the Holy Spirit, moving in the power of the Holy Spirit—and street—justice, advocacy, peacemaking, confronting the powers, standing with the downtrodden—those three pieces we feel called to champion together, in a united way,” says Bob. “We see that the places of deepest brokenness and marginalization everywhere in the world require a united body of Christ. So we feel called to a ministry of reconciliation, and there’s a need for repentance on lots of fronts. We needed to repent of all of our judgements, harsh judgements against evangelicals and charismatics. And churches that endorse the status quo need to repent of that and be about Jesus and the kingdom of God. Without that happening, we’re going to see increasing division and ineffective ministry, because the body of Christ isn’t going to be trusted around the world.”

Our thanks to filmmaker Fred Sprinkle and the Wind Vane Project for helping tell Bob’s story, and for offering a compelling picture of a vibrant, active faith that does not shy away from the darkest injustices in our world. You can learn more about their project , and more about Bob and Gracie Ekblad and their work .

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Ten Thoughts on Sustainable Pastoral Ministry

David Rice — Wed, 16 Jan 2019 14:00:30 +0000

Stewarding a vision that cares for others and fosters community is difficult, draining work—work that leaves too many exhausted and burned out. That’s the need that motivates our Resilient Leaders Project, an ongoing initiative to develop tools for pastors and leaders to care for themselves over the course of long-term, sustainable ministry. (Applications are now open for our 2019-20 cohort of Resilient Leaders!) Here, David Rice (Master of Divinity, ‘10), Lead Pastor of in Michigan, offers 10 thoughts to help support and sustain pastors in their ministry, grounded in the conviction that our capacity to care for others will only go as far as our care for ourselves.

Serving in local church ministry is one of my deepest joys in life. It’s also one of my deepest heartaches.

I think anyone who works with people in any personal way knows the deep joy and deep heartache that comes from knowing the stories of those people, and having your own story interact with theirs.

And yet, people are given to us pastors to love, to guide, to listen to, to challenge, and to remind them (and ourselves) that God is always inviting us into something deeper, something next. Our work is to cultivate the ability to pay attention, and to respond accordingly.

Pastoral work is hard. It’s painful. But the beauty of this work has begun to seep into my bones, and mark me in ways I’m sure I’m not yet fully aware of.

This work still takes much out of me, which is why I’ve had to learn the hard way so often to take care of myself, and limit myself, as I live into this strange and wonderful vocation.

As I continue to grow and learn and make mistakes as a pastor, here’s a few things I’m learning that are saving my life. If you’re in pastoral ministry, or if you’re thinking about doing this work, I hope this helps.

Ten Thoughts on Sustainable Pastoral Ministry, from a Novice

1) God made you with limits, and your invitation is to honor those limits, whether they are physical, emotional, or family-based. To live out of your limitations is to honor how God created you.

2) Developing a regular rhythm of Sabbath (weekly for my family) will save your life. Sabbath isn’t about keeping rules, but acknowledging limits, and trusting that as you deliberately take time to be unproductive, God will continue to do the work that only God can do to make your life and ministry fruitful and productive.

“To live out of your limitations is to honor how God created you.”

3) Your kids will only get one childhood, your spouse will only have one marriage with you. Arranging your life so that these relationships will thrive is what your ministry faithfulness needs to come out of, not be in spite of.

4) You are worth knowing, you are worth taking care of yourself, you are worth asking for the help that you need, because you are made in the image of God. You are worthy of love and belonging.

5) When you begin to live into these sorts of ideas, there will be people around you that might feel threatened, because they don’t live this way. Tread carefully, but trust that sometimes people need to have far less influence in your life than they do. God will always bring the people into your life that you will need to help you get to the next phase of what God is inviting you into.

6) You cannot do this work alone. You simply cannot. You need friends who will love you, who will listen and care, but who will tell you the truth. You need guides and elders who will give you relationship, who will mentor you and give you appropriate feedback. You need coaches and therapists and spiritual directors who will help you with your work, help you with your emotions and story-work, and who will continually invite you to consider where God is in the middle of your life. Building into these relationships in your life will help set the foundation by which you can begin to thrive.

7) There will always be people who don’t like you. There’s nothing you can do to avoid that. It’s up to you to determine how best to respond to these folks. You can ignore them. You can defend yourself against them. You can get in the mud and wrestle with them. You can passive-aggressively needle them. I’ve done all of these things, and I’m never better off for having done them.

I’ve learned from Brenè Brown that it’s good to hear from and learn from folks who are critical of you, but it’s not helpful for you to give everyone equal weight in your life with their words and ideas. If the critic isn’t in the arena with you, working to birth the thing you’re working to birth, their words don’t count as much. They may FEEL strongly, but if they’re not committed to the same dreams, the same goals, and the same future as you and your partners are committed to, then be kind, but pay little attention. Ask, “What is there in this for me to learn?” and then continue doing your work.

8) Take your own spiritual formation as a child of God more seriously than you do anything else in your life and leadership. You are only as good as your deep connection to God. Your own growth, your own health, and your own formation will directly correlate to how you lead others into spiritual growth and health.

9) You are not simply growing an organization, you are creating the conditions where the lives of those whom God has entrusted to your care can begin to grow and change. Spiritual growth is a funny thing. It’s difficult to pin down. How does it work? How do we do it? Sometimes, I have no idea. Most of the time, I know it has to do with intention, quiet, solitude, silence, service, generosity, hospitality, study, prayer, and healthy relationships.

Take one thing at a time. This will take years, but do it anyway. You, and those around you, will be grateful for decades, even though most will never know all the work you’ve put into becoming a healthier, more spiritually mature person.

10) In your pastoral work, it’s best to see yourself as a farmer. Of course, what I mean by this is a small-scale farmer growing a diversified crop plan, using mostly organic methods. These kinds of farmers know that they don’t grow anything, they only create the conditions whereby the seeds they put in the dirt can begin to grow.

Good farmers know they don’t grow melons or tomatoes, or raise pigs or chickens. Good farmers know they grow soil. They know the health of everything they do is directly connected to the health of the soil they’re working with. If the soil isn’t healthy, good farmers know that the fruit they harvest (if any) won’t be healthy either. Good farmers are dirt farmers.

And over time, while making daily investment into the care of their dirt, they plant seeds in the ground that will eventually begin to sprout. And as they care for these fledgling seedlings, they know that one day, months away, they will reap a harvest this is grace upon grace upon grace.

Pastors are farmers. We put the mess of life into the ground, believing that the impossible can happen. That the Maker will, through Mystery and Grace, take that mess and make it a rich compost, teeming with life and goodness that will, one day, produce so much life beyond itself.

Pastoral work is a mystery. Over time, as you add up all the meetings, the study, the prayer, the sermons, the leadership, the leading change, the invitations, the money management, the administration, the people—so many disparate things—over time, as you do this work faithfully, God will begin to help this work take root in the soil all around you, in ways you couldn’t have planned for or expected. This work will certainly change lives. Your own life will change the most.

Peace to you on this journey toward a fuller spiritual transformation that will lead to a more sane and robust life in ministry.

May it be so.

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��Ƶ Receives $1 Million Grant for Ministry Leadership Initiative

��Ƶ — Wed, 17 Jan 2018 15:00:51 +0000

��Ƶ of Theology & Psychology has received a grant of $1 million to help establish its new Resilience for Sustainable Leadership program. The grant is part of Thriving in Ministry Initiative, which supports programs that help pastors flourish in their communities and navigate key leadership challenges in congregational ministry.

“The Resilience for Sustainable Leadership program reflects ��Ƶ’s foundational conviction that to be successful in a rapidly changing environment, leaders must become competent at reading the cultural context and responding to complex human needs,” says Dr. Craig Detweiler, President of ��Ƶ. Such work requires sustainable practices, integrative thinking, and emotional resilience. To that end, the program will contribute to an understanding of the challenges facing the church and will clarify the characteristics and skills of resilient leaders.

This work is informed by ��Ƶ’s alumni, who continuously expand institutional awareness of the beauty of work in ministry and healing professions as well as the challenges: loneliness, burnout, lack of denominational support, the necessity of bi- or tri-vocational work, and the need to pastor outside of traditional church settings. A robust connection to its thriving network of more than 1,000 alumni allows ��Ƶ to hear from churches and communities throughout the world for on-the-ground perspective and insight.

The program is also heavily informed by research and conversations with leaders in denominational and nonprofit settings. It contributes to an ongoing conversation about the tension between innovation and sustainability—which ��Ƶ has observed firsthand as the Pacific Northwest continues to grow at unprecedented rates.

The first phase of the Resilience for Sustainable Leadership project has been to conduct research to identify leaders’ needs and to develop a program to respond to those needs. This summer, ��Ƶ will be launching the pilot year of this program. (MDiv, ‘15) has been selected as the Project Manager, working under the leadership of , Academic Dean and Senior Vice President of Academics.

“This marks not only the beginning of our partnership with Lilly Endowment, but a new opportunity to further the mission of ��Ƶ,” says Dr. McNeil. “We are thrilled for the funding of this project and the opportunity to deepen our relationship with pastors around resilience and community leadership.”

“This marks a new opportunity to further the mission of ��Ƶ.”

Lilly Endowment has pledged more than $20 million in grants through the Thriving in Ministry Initiative. ��Ƶ is one of 24 organizations taking part in the initiative from a wide variety of Christian practices and traditions.

“Many pastors are seeking role models and wise colleagues who can guide them through professional transitions and challenges encountered in particular ministry contexts,” said Christopher L. Coble, Lilly Endowment’s vice president for religion. “Our hope is that this grant will support a new wave of efforts that help clergy thrive and lead their congregations more effectively.”

Lilly Endowment Inc. is an Indianapolis-based private philanthropic foundation created in 1937 by three members of the Lilly family—J.K. Lilly Sr. and sons J.K. Jr. and Eli—through gifts of stock in their pharmaceutical business, Eli Lilly & Company. The Endowment exists to support the causes of religion, education, and community development.

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