episcopal chaplains' gathering

Dear all,

As many of you know, I am back from the great Pacific Northwest – Seattle to be specific – where I spent several days attending the annual national gathering of Episcopal chaplains. Lay and ordained chaplains ministering to students in a variety of campus settings came together to reflect on our work and connect with one another. This year, we were privileged to welcome Sharon Daloz Parks as our keynote speaker. (More on her in a moment.) We were also privileged to welcome a chaplain from South Africa who is looking to build partnerships with campus ministries here in the States! Unfortunately, we did not get to spent as much time as we would have liked with Odwa, as his daughter was born prematurely during the second day of the conference. A collection was taken to help Odwa return to South Africa immeadiatly. Fortunately, we have received a report that he returned safely and that his daughter is doing well. In addition to our Anglican brother Odwa, we also welcomed a representative of the Episcopal Church in Honduras. The Diocese of Honduras was recently granted funds by the Office for Ministry in Higher Education for a campus ministry start up at the University of Honduras that will focus on HIV/AIDS and domestic violence education and prevention. This model of doing campus ministry is exciting for the Episcopal Church of Honduras and the rest of us! I am pleased to report that our sister campus ministry at Cal State Channel Islands is another recipient of a generous start up grant that will aid to strengthen its presence on this new university campus just down the road from us!

The theme of this year’s gathering focused on the word RENOVATE. Sharon Daloz Parks, the speaker at our conference, writes on adaptive leadership. She has held faculty and research positions at the Harvard Divinity School, Harvard Business School and the Kennedy School of Government. Today, she is Director of the Leadership for the New Commons, an initiative for the Whidbey Institute in Clinton, Washington. Sharon challenged the chaplains to strive for leadership that is less personality oriented and technical and more responsive to complex problems of organizations. Technical problems are the types of problems that we know how to fix according to a conventional formula. Adaptive challenges are the types of issues where outcome is difficult to know. Unlike the high, hard ground of technical problems, adaptive challenges are the swamp-like issues—swamps renew life, but they sure are smelly and we often don’t like to wade in them!

In keeping with the theme of renovation, Sharon sent us off to “the swamp” to meditate on the following questions after one of her sessions with us:
1. What is so beloved that is worth preserving?
2. What do you fear losing?
3. What do you do to thwart the transformation that you want and long for?
These questions are ones worth asking ourselves as individuals and as members of the groups to which we belong, i.e. our own church context!

Sharon also presented us with five practices to be considered and applied in our own contexts during a time in which we are faced with such complexity in the world and when our institutions, including the church and the university, are in such flux.

1. The practice of RECOGNITION: Seeing what is AND what we might become, getting out of cultural comfort zones to include for example more students/faculty/administrators, diverse opinions and contexts in our campus ministry.

2. The practice of DISCERNMENT: Helping students and young adults to use critical thought processes to ponder: what is; what is needed; what should be shed; what we need to attune ourselves to; exploring possibilities; incorporating new patterns; and finally embodying our new knowledge.

3. The practice of the HEARTH: Incorporating both motion and stability, Sabbath in time and space; joining in conversation in a way that helps it be more productive; contemplation and action in renovating ourselves and our organizations.

4. The practice of the TABLE: Based on the fact that we become a group when someone brings food; sharing at the table, both receiving and giving (Benedictine type of hospitality); engaging in civil conversation that draws people into communion and receives people as the Christ.

5. The practice of the COMMONS: Helping our students to connect to the fabric of life through service in community, helping their initiation into suffering and wonder, helping students answer in community the question “Who do I or we want to become?”

Sharon Daloz Parks is a Quaker who is spiritually grounded in her concepts of learning and leadership. I left the conference with a copy of her book "Leadership Can Be Taught" and I look forward to delving into her work on young adults, adaptive change and the sociology of higher education.

Our time together as chaplains was a blessed one. I left feeling renewed and excited for our future here at St. Michael’s. Our several days together not only included conference time, but also communal worship time, a reception hosted by the Diocese of Olympia with Bishop Nedi Rivera (Suffragan Bishop of Olympia) and Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, a community dinner at St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Medina, time to explore Seattle and an opportunity to attend the wildly popular Sunday evening Compline Service at St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral, during which the Cathedral fills to the brim with Young Adults who gather to rest and meditate for the half hour traditional sung bedtime prayer service.

I missed you all during my time away—It’s great now to be back! Nicole+