10/29/2014

Trinity's Midweek Blast for October 29, 2014

Lessons from Nepal

This week's Midweek Blast comes to you from Nepal, where Sister Becky Swanson, Trinity's assistant director of Contextual Education, is traveling with representatives from Lutheran World Federation.

Dear Trinity Seminary community and friends,

This week I am traveling in Nepal with Lutheran World Federation staffers and a dozen or so other Lutherans from around the world in the first ever LWF Backstage Pass. Our purpose here is to witness what it means to be a Christian in the world, especially in a context that is highly diverse, extremely poor, and with complicated political and social structures.

We have only just started our trek, so I don't have any stories from the trail, only observations from our time in Kathmandu and Pokhara.

One thing that was stressed in our briefing of the LWF projects in Nepal was that they use a "rights based approach." This approach starts with several assumptions, all of which I find very Gospel-centered and aligned with Lutheran confessional theology:

• All people have an inherent worthiness as human beings and deserve dignity
• Communities and groups have the gifts and capacity to address the challenges they face
• Accompaniment and "being with" results in more sustainable change than "doing for"

I know you've seen this sort of concept before. What this trip causes me to wonder about is how this sort of approach might inform and form the life of a congregation and the work of congregational leaders, especially rostered leaders?

What would it mean for a congregation to accompany and be with the community in which it finds itself, helping raise up leaders to address the needs of the community? What would it mean for pastors and diaconal leaders to view themselves as "catalysts" more than as problem solvers or service providers? What would have to change about how we "do" church? What if pastors and congregations adopted the principles to decide what the important issues, projects, and programs are for the community? What if those decisions were not informed only by the people already part of the congregation's life together, but by including a wider set of voices? And what if those conversations had no ulterior motive of conversion? In other words, what if congregations had these conversations with their neighbors, not because the neighbors are Christian (or going to be) but because we are Christian?

I know with certainty that these questions are being asked in congregations across the United States. I believe that the Holy Spirit is conspiring to move us wholeheartedly into that conversation.

Can we stay curious enough about what the Holy Spirit is up to in our neighbors and neighborhoods? Can we set aside our (not unfounded) fear that exploring these questions is going to change us in some way and is going to change what the church looks and acts like in the 21st century?

Each person on this trip has come here for different reasons. Certainly there is overlap, but what would it mean if we kept our reasons, our stories, to ourselves? Our experience is made richer and more meaningful through the conversations we have and the relationships we build - even if those relationships last only for the short duration of this trip.

We have the skills and capacity already. It might take some developing -- and that can take time. We must persevere. May God sustain us in our attempts to follow where the Spirit leads.

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Becky Swanson
Assistant Director of Contextual Education