So, I've joined a club.

After six years of blogging, I've joined an after-school club for teachers who want to to learn how to blog. Lest you think I have too much time on my hands (ha!), or I've lost it (well, maybe I have), the reason I've joined the blogging club is to learn how to best use a blog professionally. Until now, my blogs have been personal ones, including the ones I maintained for the children's homes.

And thus, I joined the club.

Maybe it will also provide me with the impetus to write on my personal blog more frequently again. While living in Kenya, I blogged almost daily. In the past year, I wrote a total of 20 posts. There are several reasons for this, and I won't bore you with them. But come to think of the reasons, maybe I won't be writing more over here after all... Especially since I spend my evenings poring over my dissertation.

Maybe I'll continue on this one-entry-a-month streak on this blog, but start building a professional site instead. One where I can post my resume and some of my professional writing, seeing that I am officially doing a job search. Yet again. Officially as of an hour or so ago, when I submitted the message to my school that I will not be continuing on as a preschool teacher next year. I simply cannot do it. I am not a preschool teacher. (I'm checking to see if anyone will notice this not-so-surprising bit of news if I hide it in a really long & boring paragraph.) I want to thrive in my job once again. Ultimately, I want to be teaching at a college level again. And I'm at the complete opposite end of the spectrum, I know. It was OK for a season. I believe I've learned what I had set out to learn. This season will indeed become part of my dissertation. So I want to move on. I'll tell you more in a different post someday. Or read my book someday. End of rambling.

Oh, yes, as I was saying... so I joined the blogger club, to learn from the dad of one of my students, a colleague who knows far more than I do about doing a professional blog. Or a really cool blog, for that matter.

I'll most likely move all the materials on this site someplace else, and keep my URL for the professional side of me. For those of you who have an aversion to change, consider this your warning.

I'm Adele, and I have a lot more to learn.

Are we relevant?

Last night, I listened to a Podcast I had downloaded while in the US. It was from a pastor from one of the churches we visited during class--the one church that actually got my blood boiling for the arrogant way in which they were doing inner city ministry. (Basically a we-have-arrived mentality. OK, there were actually many things beyond the we-have-arrived mentality that saddened and frustrated me about our visit to their brand new, very expensive campus. But I won't go into that now. It's just not necessary.)

So I decided to download at least one Podcast from their guru pastor, so I could actually hear him teach and decide if my assessment of the said church may have been wrong.

It wasn't.

Other than making a completely inappropriate comment about how he hopes they have "lots of hand sanitizer" at their new inner-city campus (?!), he proceeded to teach a lesson from a Q&A series. The specific lesson was on the emerging church.

What he said about this movement was good and true and solid as far as I my understanding goes. In fact, I learned a good amount about different streams within the movement.

It was the pastor's introduction to the sermon that really, really rubbed me the wrong way.

"Since you guys are all here at [our church], it means you really don't care about the emerging church. Which is good. You shouldn't! So just bare with me while I answer this question and then we might get into something useful..."

What really saddens me about this attitude is that a pastor (or anyone in a Christian leadership position, for that matter) would actually tell his people that they should not care about one of the fastest-growing phenomena in the Christian church. Regardless of whether or not you agree with what's happening in any of the groups within the emerging/emergent church, we should live informed lives if we want to be relevant. If we don't know what the different groups within this movement believe, we will either condemn the good along with the bad, we'll embrace the bad along with the good, or we'll simply not care.

As far as I understand our role as Christians, none of these options are really an option. We should in fact care. It doesn't mean that all of us need to become experts on every topic, but we should at least care to know enough so we can have an informed opinion. Or know enough to say "I don't know enough about this topic to have an informed discussion," and listen to what our friends have to say, then, in our study times, compare it to what the Bible teaches before we set out to simply argue with friends.

If we simply live life in the "I'm 'in,' so I don't have to care about what's going on 'out there' lane," we would become not only irrelevant, but we're missing the mark. Completely.

I've missed the mark many times in my life. I thank God that he's not given up on me, but opening my eyes daily to areas where I do, in fact, need to care more.

The journey is long. There's so very much to learn. God forbid that we'd ever not care to learn more.

President for Sale

Justice, my classmate from Zimbabwe, stopped by this morning saying, "We are looking for someone who might want to buy a new President. Zimbabwe's ready to sell theirs." I'm couldn't help but smile. Which made one of our profs walk up and say, "What are you up to today? You tend to have this grin on your face which makes it seem like you're up to no good..."

I really am enjoying this class. I'm enjoying my classmates, too. This is most likely the only class we'll take together, but we're still seen as a cohort. The rest of the class will travel to China together, but since I took that specific class requirement in Ethiopia, I won't be going with them.

As I was getting ready for bed last night, it struck me again what a profound impact my classes can have on how I do life and ministry. As long as I implement that which I'm learning, and I have every intention to do so. It's already impacted the way I think about missions, my community and our role as Christ-followers. And there are some components built into the program that keep us accountable to doing, not just learning. I'll share more about that as time goes by.

Our class this morning is on Contemplative Leadership. Interesting concept.