Life on the Fault Line: An Exciting Place to Be
Do you remember when “paradigm shift” was all the rage? Everyone, it seemed, was talking about “shifting paradigms.” In business, government and technology, paradigms were being shifted. Self-help gurus advocated personalparadigm shifts. Eventually, the phrase landed beneath our steeples, as even churches began talking about paradigm shifts in worship, education and mission. All that shifting made many of us feel like we were living atop the San Andreas Fault.
Shifting ground, of course, is a familiar place for many pastors. For those of us who serve in denominations with itinerant ministry, it is the very ground we live on. As a pastor in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, I lived for almost the past nine years with both the expectation and the reality of frequent moves and new beginnings. For my wife and me, new places, new faces and new challenges were the norm.
As routine as such constant change had become, however, I have recently been feeling as though I am once again back atop the San Andreas Fault. My new work with the SPE Grant Coordination Office required me to move from Florida to North Carolina. But even more, it required me to think again about “paradigm shift,” both mine and yours. For me, I have had to rethink and shift my entire vocational paradigm, from pastoral ministry to institutional ministry. As I settle in to my new position, I am beginning to grasp the paradigm-shifting nature of the work you are doing.
Fortunately, this SPE fault line, this quaking ground that you and I stand upon, is an exhilarating place to be. After reading your annual reports and talking with many of you, I am overwhelmed and excited by your work and the untapped possibilities that exist for the SPE family. The sustained peer learning, coaching and Sabbath spaces you have created are giving new life to pastors and helping them do excellent ministry. As a pastor, I know your work is monumentally important for the church and its future. Several years ago, I was able to take advantage of similar programs and was strengthened in my calling and my ministry. Pastoral ministry can leave one spiritually, mentally, physically and emotionally parched. Through your programs, you point pastors to the wells they have been seeking. You give them courage to drink from life-giving waters.
For all of us in the SPE Grant Coordination Office—Janice Virtue, Jodi Porter, me, and others—our role in that task is to be a resource for you, to help you in any way we can. What will we be doing in the days ahead? Here are four strategies that we’re working on to guide us into our future:
- Coaching – We want to provide coaches who will work with select projects in such areas as program evaluation; resource identification; “storytelling” and communications; and sustainability.
- Connecting – We will stay in touch with you and share what we are thinking and learning—and we ask that you do the same, sharing your knowledge and wisdom with all the SPE community.
- Convening – We will continue to gather to learn from one another and from those who can help us build capacity for our work.
- Awarding mini-grants – We will continue to offer small grants to encourage collaboration and best practices across projects.
Though much of this agenda will be familiar to you, we hope that you also see some evidence of “shift.” Rather than having our annual gatherings for information sharing and fellowship, we will instead be convening for much more targeted purposes. Our meeting this summer, for example, will be aimed at strengthening the skills of SPE leaders in one specific area, “Faith and Fundraising.” Scheduled for Aug. 11–14 in Indianapolis, this meeting will be a rare opportunity to learn about philanthropy and the role it can play in helping SPE programs become self-supporting. Best of all, we’ll be learning from some of the most knowledgeable experts in the field, faculty from the Lake Institute on Faith and Giving at the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. You can read more about the meeting elsewhere in this issue of the SPE newsletter and in the written invitation that is being sent to all the SPE programs. Space is limited, but we encourage you to attend.
Everything around us shifts: our family lives, our careers, the political and economic realities in which we find ourselves. Science teaches us that the ground under our feet is shifting even as winter melts into spring, spring warms into summer and summer slowly yields to autumn. Everything changes, but our priorities as citizens of the in-breaking kingdom of God remain the same. Jesus says to us in the midst of it all, “But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well (Matthew 6:33 NRSV).”
As we go forward, please stay in touch. All of us in the coordination office—and the entire SPE community—want to know about your ideas, stories, hopes and challenges.
The Rev. William H. (Bill) Lamar IV is a managing director of Leadership Education at Duke Divinity and director of the Sustaining Pastoral Excellence Grant Coordination Office.
