In This Issue Gary Wilkerson Named Interim CLI Director An Introduction to Donna Duensing Julie Josund: Deployed Associate for Region 1 Good Goodbyes! Jean Smith Named CLI Administrative Assistant Editor's Column: Realism, Thanks Lay Committee Thoughts Mexico City - Fall Semester Program Will You Get a Diploma? Helpful Links Internship Handbook Lay Committee Handbook Internship Forms Contact Us The Contextual Leadership Initiative staff is here to support you! Contact us with your concerns or suggestions. Previous Newsletters Want to re-read an article from a previous issue? Review previous newsletters.

Internship Newsletter: July 2007

Gary Wilkerson Named Interim CLI Director

Gary Wilkerson has been named Interim Executive Director of the Contextual Leadership Initiative, replacing Randy Nelson who retired on June 30 following 32 years of service.

Gary currently serves as Visiting Professor of Pastoral Care and Counseling at Luther Seminary. He is a veteran pastor, interim pastor, and pastoral counselor. Watch for a more extensive profile of Gary in a future issue.

An Introduction to Donna Duensing   

While CLI Associate Director Alicia Vargas is on sabbatical from PLTS in the coming months, Donna Duensing will be filling in for her and heading up CLI operations in Berkeley. Donna introduces herself!

I grew up in a German Lutheran farming community in North Central Kansas, the youngest of 7 children born to Edwin and Selma Duensing. I attended Concordia Teachers' College in Seward, Nebraska and served as an elementary teacher (in Texas, Kansas, and Mississippi) for 12 years. During that time I also gave birth to my son, Troy Boyer.

In 1979 I married the Rev. Norm Behrmann and nine months later was a grandmother of twin boys, born on my birthday! Through that marriage I was gifted with three children that I didn't have to "birth" and they have given me a total of 7 grandchildren. Norm died in February of 1991.

In August of 1993, I married Dr. Robert Smith, and received the wedding gift of three more daughters! Through them I have now 6 more grandchildren. Robert's wife had also died in 1991. We treasured the gift of our new relationship and lived life fully and abundantly with almost yearly trips to Greece until Robert's death in March of 2006.

I am very blessed to have a close, loving, relationship with all 7 of my children and my 13 grandchildren. They help me keep my focus and center through this vocation of grieving.

A 1983 graduate of PLTS, I served as a parish pastor in Richmond, California for 6 years, and as Director of Contextual Education at PLTS from 1989-1998. From 2000- 2006, I was Visiting Professor of Ministry and Director of Integrative Studies at San Francisco Theological Seminary, a Presbyterian Seminary, also in the GTU in Berkeley.

I remain active in the Association of Case Teaching, the Pacific Region of ACPE, and the Association of Theological Field Educators. I am passionate about issues surrounding leadership for change, healthy uses of power, and systems theory.

I love to travel. Greece is still my all-time favorite place. However, since none of my family members live near me, lots of flights carry me to special celebrations with them.

When at home I love to walk, garden, go to movies, work out, and visit with friends.

Julie Josund: Deployed Associate for Region 1  

Julie Josund is the CLI's new Deployed Associate for Region 1.

Julie, a 1990 graduate of Luther Seminary, was a parish pastor in Seattle, Washington for 15 years until she became the Director of the Institute for Clergy and Congregational Renewal at Pacific Lutheran University (Tacoma, WA) in 2005. Julie is adjunct faculty at the Seattle University School of Theology and Ministry, teaching in the Pastoral Leadership Program. Julie is married to Patrick Brady, with whom she parents and enjoys their five young adult children, Sonja, Peter, Morgan, Paul and Megan (the youngest just joined the others as a college graduate, whew!) and their identical twin sons, Eric and Andrew, who are heading to middle school in the Fall.

Julie has a B.A. degree in psychology from the University of Minnesota, an M.Div. from Luther Theological Seminary, St. Paul, Minnesota and a Doctor of Ministry in Pastoral Leadership from San Francisco Theological Seminary.

Good Goodbyes!    
by Jean Larson

Former Region 1 Deployed Associate Jean Larson wrote the following article for the June 2006 edition of the newsletter. It is well worth repeating now!

Most interns are into the final stretch, with 3 months or less to go. Now 3 months is a good, long time - it's the better part of an academic term - and many of you are busy with special summer programs and finishing internship projects and covering for supervisors on vacation. But it's not too early to start thinking about and preparing for a good goodbye, so that the work of closure is honored.

It's not just "the work," of course. It's the relationships that have come alive this year - the widow whose husband's funeral was your first, the confirmation kids who drove you nuts and brought forth your most creative efforts, the person on your committee who gave you confidence, your supervisor whose warts allow you to acknowledge your own and still dare to proceed - these relationships need to be honored. And so does your heart and spirit. That's what closure is all about.

Roy Oswald describes two ways to do it poorly in his Alban Institute classic, Running Through the Thistles (1978). One is to soak up all your parishioners' feelings about your leaving, and keep your own at bay. This is a recipe for depression. If you don't want to go there, take some time to be mindful about how you really are feeling about leaving. (If you're mostly happy about moving on in your call, that's fine. Own it.) Ponder, journal, pray, talk with your supervisor.

The other poor closure approach is to race through the goodbyes at the last possible minute. This is Oswald's story, the title story. When Roy was a little guy, he and his brothers would take the short-cut home from school, through the thistle patch, often barefoot. (Who says brilliant church gurus don't have a lick of sense?) They knew it would hurt, so they'd run as fast as they could, and then collapse on the other side of the patch to pull out the thistles that got stuck in their feet. Well, when we leave any important work and web of relationships, we're tempted to do the same. We know it will hurt, so we try to get it over with as quickly as possible. The wise old coot inside us knows this is a mistake. You might save a few tears in the short term, but you risk ending up with ungrieved grief and unthanked thanks, all stuffed inside with nowhere to go once you're back at seminary or into your first call. The congregation, too, is poorly served. They're left holding their own bag of unexpressed thanks and unshared toasts, and, if another intern is to follow, they might not be ready to greet your successor cleanly.

The alternative to these two forms of denial is "transformational closure," aka, practice in dying. (Need motivation?) Oswald says that the way we say goodbye is a little foretaste of the way we will die. So he gives us 5 closure tasks that parallel the 5 tasks of dying well. The first four apply to internship; the fifth to future parish leave-takings.

1. Be proactive, not passive. Start thinking now about the special people at your site who have made a big difference in your learning. How do you want to say a more personal good-bye - a visit? a card? a phone call? It's also time for your internship committee to begin making plans for the end. New committees might need a heads-up. Some liturgical rite of "farewell and Godspeed" should be part of the deal. Check out the little liturgy on our Web site (http://www.luthersem.edu/contextual_learning/internship/handbook/godspeed.asp). Talk with your supervisor about his or her plans.
2. Get your affairs in order. What loose ends need tying up - in projects as well as in relationships? Are there any housing issues you need to prepare for (utilities, cleaning)? A seasoned supervisor has said that the best way to make sure you will be talked about for months after you go is to not clean your apartment. Some interns leave a note for the next intern, the way President Bartlett did for Matt Santos at the end of West Wing. Nice idea. (sigh...)
3. Let go of old grudges. Do the work of reconciliation. Start practicing this one, because you'll make good use of these skills for the rest of your ministry. You could wait until the last passing of the peace, as I once did. It was OK. But the Spirit gives us courage, so you might as well ask for a little bigger dose than I did.
4. Say thank you. When in doubt, you can't lose on this one. Someone thanks you for the work you did on the clean-up project and you think your work was shoddy? Say thanks. Others say they'll really miss you, but you know you won't miss them as much? Say thanks. Having a hard time feeling grateful? Take it to the Lord in prayer.
5. For future reference: Be clear about your reasons for leaving. This is obvious for interns, although if you're the first intern at a site, you might need to remind the folks that leaving is part of the deal. Even so, you might run into some frustration or even anger that you have to go. See #4 above and educate.

Goodbyes can be messy. Even guys might cry. It's OK. Be mindful, be honest and you'll do ministry even here. After all, "goodbye" is shorthand for "God be with you." A blessing, at the end for your people. And for you.

Jean Smith Named CLI Administrative Assistant   

Jean Smith, a recent Luther graduate, is the new administrative assistant in the CLI office, succeeding Katherine Ostlie-Olson. Her friendly face will greet you when you visit the St. Paul office, and hers will be the voice at the end of the line when you call the main CLI office number. Welcome Jean!

Realism, Thanks   
by Steve McKinley

I never watched a single episode of the HBO television series "The Sopranos," but I do not live in total cultural isolation, so I was aware of this television saga of organized crime, and my ears are still ringing from the roar of its fans up in arms over the way the series ended some weeks ago. "Sopranos" addicts tuned in anticipating a neat, clean ending: they wanted Tony Soprano to "get whacked" or do some whacking himself or enter a Witness Protection Program or move to Portugal and enter a monastery or something dramatic like that. They didn't get it. Tony and his family were having dinner in a diner. They ate. They talked normal talk. The screen went black. End of series. Beginning of rebellion.

Perhaps I have no right to comment since I was not a fan. I was not caught up in the characters and their story. But it seems to me the true believers need to take a deep breath and remind themselves these people were fictional. They were not and are not real people. If series creator David Chase would have chosen to end the series by having a spaceship from the planet Zarkon land in New Jersey and whisk the Soprano clan off to a different universe, he would have had the right. When you are dealing with imaginary people living imaginary lives, you have the right and the power to do whatever you want to with them.

On the other hand, this kind of ending makes the Sopranos seem more like real people to me. Real life as real people really live it does not offer a lot of neat, clean, sharply defined endings. Real human conflicts and tensions do not easily resolve themselves. They are more likely to simmer, to heat up and then cool down but never get completely resolved. On television and in the movies things are neat and clean and everything gets resolved and worked out in an hour or a season or a few seasons and everybody lives happily ever after. Real life isn't like that. Real life is messy and confused and confusing and no sane person has the right not to be mixed up some of the time. We'd like to be over and done with the Iraq war, but can we just walk away and wash our hands and say that is that, the end? No. We'd like to resolve this immigration business, but when you start to get to know these "immigrants" who sound so scary when the fear-mongers talk about them you find that they are just people, ordinary people trying to get a better life for themselves and their families and willing to take great risks and work very hard to do that, and we don't really want to "send them home" at all because we would be losing some good neighbors. You sit on the porch on the 4th of July and look at your brother and you know that if anyone even said the words "dining room furniture" the two of you would go at it hammer and tongs over the way you split up Mom and Dad's furniture 20 years ago, so you talk about the Twins instead. It would be nice to have easy answers to hard problems and clear resolutions to on-going tensions, but life in the real world very seldom works that way.

On the other hand (and, for those of you who are anal enough to keep track of such things, this is indeed the third hand), while this might be a wonderful way to end a TV series, it is no way to end an internship. Most of our interns are coming down the home stretch in these days, thinking about completing their internships and returning to the classroom. Part of the important learning of internship is learning how to say good-bye. (Any pastor can tell you stories of pastors who didn't know how to say good-bye, with disastrous results for their former congregations.) What you do in saying good-bye as an intern can be helpful to you and the congregation now, and will be helpful to you in future pastoral settings. Take the time for a good good-bye. Say thank you to the people who have been important for you. Have that last meeting with your internship committee and your supervisor. Accept the fact that people will want to say thank-you to you, and receive those thanks graciously. Tie up loose ends. Grieve. And get in those final reports!

No "Sopranos" endings from interns!

Lay Committee Thoughts   

Your intern will probably be leaving soon. We want to thank you for all that you have done during this year to support the intern, to offer them feedback and to assist in their growth. You serve a very important role in the learning process. There are still two things you need to do as a Lay Internship Committee

• Help the intern plan for a "good good-bye." Encourage the intern to be thoughtful in planning for departure. See to it that the congregation has a chance to say thank you and good-bye to the intern. There will have to be a party of some kind!
• Complete the final evaluation form. Let's face it: very few people really enjoy doing evaluations. Sometimes it can be hard to be direct in speaking the truth in love. But growth comes from that kind of feedback. Do it clearly and lovingly, and make sure that all the proper paperwork gets sent in!

Then start getting ready for the next intern!

Mexico City - Fall Semester Program    

PLTS and Luther Seminary MDiv and MA students are invited to spend an exciting fall semester (Sept. 4 - Dec. 3, 2007) in theological study and cultural immersion in Mexico City.

The ELCA Lutheran Center in Mexico City, Mexico, serves as the primary location, with regular excursions into the community. Classes are taught onsite and in the surrounding area by international theological faculty. Randy Nelson, professor emeritus of contextual education, will serve in an advisory role as the professor-in-residence for the 2007 fall semester. He will be onsite for one week during each month of the semester program. Proficiency in Spanish is highly desirable but not required. Students are encouraged to participate in the optional intensive Spanish language training prior to the semester. A course in "Spanish Language for Ministry" will also be taught throughout the semester.

Program Dates: Sept. 4 - Dec. 3, 2007 (Optional intensive Spanish language training: Aug. 11 - Sept. 1, 2007. Contact the Global Mission Institute for more information or to register for language training)

Application Deadline: Wednesday, Aug. 1, 2007

Semester Program Fees: $6,680 per student (including room and board)

Tuition: $4,080 (four credits)

Additional Fees:

Health Insurance - Students must participate in the Seminarian Health Insurance Plan or pay the Insurance Waiver Fee ($250). Contact the Luther Seminary Business Office for 2007-08 insurance rates.

Airline Ticket - Students are responsible for purchasing individual airline tickets. Contact Katie Pence Dahl in the Global Mission Institute before confirming reservations (kdahl001@luthersem.edu).

Optional Intensive Spanish Language Training - Additional $1,680 includes room, board and three weeks (August 11 - September 1, 2007) of intensive Spanish instruction, educational materials, cultural activities and local excursions. Students are responsible for transportation to language school. Contact Katie Pence Dahl in the Global Mission Institute for more detailed information.

Financial Aid is available as it would be for on-campus study during the 2007-08 academic year. Contact your seminary's financial aid office to apply.

If you are interested in participating in this remarkable educational adventure, your first contact for more information is Katie Pence Dahl, assistant director of the Global Missions Institute: kdahl001@luthersem.edu.

Will You Get a Diploma?   

A member of Luther's class of 2007 had a big disappointment on graduation day. When his name was called he walked across the stage and got the appropriate handshakes and all that, but instead of a diploma, he got a note saying that he could get his diploma from the registrar after all of his internship evaluations were turned in. No evaluations, no diploma.

Don't let that happen to you! See to it that all of your evaluations are turned in promptly.