In This Issue New Focus for CLI Director's Role U2charist a Hit! Where are They and Why are They Going? For the Lay Committee: Time to Address the Tough Questions Prayer and Meditation How Wide are the Fences? Mid-year Evaluation Forms Helpful Links Internship Handbook Lay Committee Handbook Internship Forms Evaluation Questions Subscribe to Ministry in Context! 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: January 2008

New Focus for CLI Director's Role
By Gary Wilkerson, Interim Director

Dear friends of CLI,

A significant clarification has been approved by the Western Mission Cluster Board regarding the CLI Director's job description. We have been looking at the numerous responsibilities of the past director and have simplified and focused the job. The next CLI Director will focus upon internship and Clinical Pastoral Education.

This will allow much closer attention to the whole internship process, including more consistent training of Lay Internship Committees. We can also be more intentional about the place and importance of CPE in one's seminary education. The clarification of the CLI Director's job description allows the search committee to resume its process of filling the position.

We have also recognized the long faithfulness and abilities of Laure Schwartz at Luther Seminary, who has been in her position for fourteen years, by changing her title to Assistant Director, CLI, effective January 1, 2008. Dr. Alicia Vargas, PLTS, continues as the Associate Director, CLI.

May your New Year be filled with the powerful presence of the Holy Spirit of God!

U2charist a Hit!  

On Nov. 18 CLI intern Jen Kuntz participated in a U2charist service at Trinity Lutheran Church in Lynnwood, Wash. Jen had been part of the planning committee. Part of this involved conversation with a local paper, the Everett Herald, that ended up producing an article on it, which we have reprinted below with permission. They raised $5400 for the AMREF (African Medical Research Foundation).

Jen reported that it was a great service to be a part of and she was glad she got involved. They have received many positive comments and there is talk of doing something similar again.

Benefit for world hunger: Rick Steves and U2 lyrics
Churches gather to aid global health efforts
By Lukas Velush, Herald Writer

LYNNWOOD -- This concert was about the message behind the music.

Three local churches sang, recited and listened to the songs and words of U2 on Sunday evening to raise money for charities that the band supports. They also wanted it to be painful for the more than 300 people to not take action.

"We're focusing on millennial goals through the G8 summit," said Jen Kuntz, intern pastor at Trinity Lutheran Church in Lynnwood, host of the ceremony.

All the proceeds will go to the United Nation's eight goals, including ending extreme hunger, ensuring all children finish primary school, eliminating gender inequality, reducing child mortality, improving maternal health, combating HIV/AIDS and other diseases, ensuring environmental sustainability and helping Third World countries build their economies.

"Hopefully this service is going to make people uncomfortable -- maybe they'll say I can't just sit here and not do anything," said Paula Best of Edmonds. She was standing in the reception area with her week-old daughter Adia. Inside, more than 300 people listened to a cover band sing the U2 song "Pride (In the Name of Love)." The song provided the theme for the evening.

Edmonds-based travel writer Rick Steves was also looking to make his audience do something about the world problems he sees as a world traveler. "(Around the world) 225,000 kids die a week hungry," Steves said. "It's not even worth a headline."

For Best, the proceedings were a call to action. "The song 'In the Name of Love' talks about 'what is love?' For me, it means: Figure out what it takes to take action." She said one thing she will do is consume less resources and be friendlier to the environment. "I think it starts with how I care for myself," Best said. "If I do that, I can love others."

The crowd stood with the cover band played the U2 hit, and many people sang along. "I'm just so thrilled that we've had such a good turnout," Kuntz said. "I think people are really excited to learn about what's going on in the world. They need to realize that the little things that they do make a large impact."

A donation basket was passed through the room. The proceeds will be sent to the African Medical Research Foundation, where they will be spent in the field helping to meet the United Nations goals, Kuntz said.

The ceremony was held at Trinity Lutheran Church in Lynnwood and sponsored in part by the Church of the Beloved and Gloria Dei Lutheran Church.

Where are They and Why are They Going?  
By Rod Maeker

At least 120 students and faculty from PLTS and Luther Seminary will head to seven locations around the United States and three international settings during January for their January Term 2008 Cross-Cultural Experience.

The CLI seeks to provide Cross-Cultural Experiences that immerse students in contexts where they can observe congregational models and learn from engagement with current leaders in vital cross-cultural ministry. It is hoped that these experiences will assist students in learning leadership skills for the cross-cultural realities of future ministry.

Where will they be going?

Seven United States Sites

Hmong Culture and Ministry in St. Paul: The St. Paul and Minneapolis area is home for the largest population of Hmong people in the United States. Pastor William Siong will lead students in cultural encounters with members of Hmong Central Lutheran Church, the largest Lutheran Hmong congregation in the United States. This experience provides essential history, knowledge and skills for ministry among growing immigrant contexts.

Minneapolis: Eleven students will explore the ministry of St. Paul Lutheran Church in the Phillips neighborhood and primarily engage the vibrant Hispanic community there. In addition, Pastors Lisa and Patrick Cabello Hansel will assist them in exploring the multicultural realities of urban ministry. This experience provides insight into the growing reality of exciting immigrant ministry in our area.

Church-Based Community Organizing in St. Paul: Twelve students will learn about developing an intentional culture of church in urban and multicultural settings. It explores the model of church-based community organizing of ISAIAH. Pastor James Erlandson, Lutheran Church of the Redeemer, will lead this exploration with a set of disciplines that build relationships, train leaders (lay and clergy), and develop ecumenical, intercultural and collaborative ministry.

Shalom Hill Farm and Rural Iowa: This site will introduce eleven students to the exciting rural ministry happening in Southwestern Minnesota and Western Iowa. Pastor Mark Yackel-Juleen will lead students in viewing rural communities as a distinct culture that seek to do creative ministry on a changing landscape. Of special significance is the formation of congregational clusters which have committed to developing a vital ministry in the face of declining population and/or shifting demographics. This rural experience is especially important since more than half of seminary graduates will probably accept calls in rural contexts.

SCUPE in Chicago: Thirteen students will experience the "windy city" of Chicago, under the leadership of Dr. Yvonne Delk, Instructor for SCUPE (Seminary Consortium for Urban Pastoral Education). Chicago will be a multicultural global laboratory as students visit different ethnic communities in order to experience cultural divides and diversity of ministries in the metro Chicago area. Themes of justice, liberation, fellowship, and risk will be explored. Students will examine a variety of approaches to the gospel in an urban setting.

Pine Ridge Reservation: Thirteen students will live and work on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Pastor Larry Peterson, staff member of the South Dakota Synod, will lead this very popular experience helping students explore and examine Native American culture and spirituality. Highlights include a visit to Wounded Knee, the Red Cloud School, listening to Tribal Elders and frequent assignments at the Sue Anne Big Crow Youth Center. Since many reservations and concentrated Native American communities are located near congregations in the Midwest, this experience is a high priority for ministry in Minnesota, the Dakotas and Wisconsin.

Los Angeles Spanish Immersion: Six students will live with Hispanic families in the heart of LA and meet daily at Angelica Lutheran Church to learn Spanish from teachers from Cuernavaca, Mexico. Pastor Brian Eklund, Pastor Scott Fritz and Pastor Jim Lobdell provide leadership that allows students to not only learn a language, but experience immersion in the largest Hispanic culture city of the United States.

Three International Sites

Mexico City: Three CLI students and Laure Schwartz will be joining 15 other students from four other ELCA seminaries. Facilitators for this experience are Prof. Bill Avery from Gettysburg and Kim Erno, pastor in Mexico City. They will do home stays in Mexico City and Cuernavaca as well as visit various ministry sites in these cities. This experience provides essential background for ministry among the fast growing population of Latino/Hispanic peoples in the United States.

Guatemala: Ten students, along with Luther Seminary's Dean of Students Patricia Lull, will visit San Luca Toliman, a Roman Catholic parish located in the highlands of Guatemala. They will live, serve, and worship with members of this community of faith. This site will provide students with foundational knowledge of Latino/Hispanic peoples.

The Holy Land: Twenty students and guests will travel with Gary Simpson to Israel/Palestine, where they will encounter conflicted cultures and explore the struggle between Palestinian and Israeli peoples. This context provides unique opportunities for examining current Mideast and cross-cultural realities that have global ramifications for life and ministry.

The Contextual Leadership Initiative staff is excited about facilitating these varied learning experiences in all parts of our world! Please ask students to share their learning with you when they return!

For the Lay Committee: Time to Address the Tough Questions  
By Sherwood Glover

By now most lay internship committees will have developed a rhythm that has enabled regularly scheduled meetings and workable agendas. As the relationship with the intern develops and committee members get more comfortable with their role, it is important to recognize that this point in the year is where the intern’s experience and the committee’s work really begin to take on a deeper and wider focus. The intern’s work intensifies, and the committee may begin to sense issues that need to be addressed which do not always at first glance fit into the categories of the internship evaluation form.

A word about those issues. Because this is a learning experience, and because committees are charged with helping to shape interns into their roles as rostered leaders, it is important that things which may be nagging members of the committee be addressed. These might include, but are not limited to, such things as lack of exercise or obesity, workaholism, issues of dress or language, tendencies toward perfectionism or the need for approval, failure to observe parish policies or appropriate patterns of communication, patterns of depression, poor work habits, or any number of other things. Nothing is off the table. The issues may not always be easy to talk about, but if done honestly and with transparency, encouragement, and confidentiality by people who obviously care, these questions can be important for the professional development and personal formation of the intern. The goal is, after all, to help the intern succeed over the long haul as a rostered leader. Don’t avoid the tough questions! Be honest about what is seen and felt!

Lay committees should also be starting to think about those six-month internship reports. It is difficult to write a report by committee (lay committee members: preview the form questions), but if the task of pulling together the various perspectives of committee members falls to one person or a small group within the committee, the whole committee should still sign off on the final version. The reports do get read - and not just by the Contextual Leadership Initiative staff and faculty advisors! As one involved in the Candidacy process, all reports on interns from the synod I serve are in the candidate’s file and are seen by the Candidacy Committee members. (They can get a glimpse of some of the same development of the intern that Lay Internship Committee members, supervisors, and the interns themselves experience over the course of the internship placement.) All this is to say that what you write and how you write it is important, not just to the intern and seminary, but to the whole ELCA.

Thanks again for your efforts in this critical piece in the education of future rostered leaders.

Prayer and Meditation   

At a recent CLI staff gathering, administrative staffer Jean Smith shared this devotion, which we now share with all of you.

Mary's Song

Blue homespun and the bend of my breast
keep warm this small hot naked star
fallen to my arms. (Rest …
you who have had so far to come.)
Now nearness satisfies
the body of God sweetly. Quiet he lies
whose vigor hurled a universe. He sleeps
whose eyelids have not closed before.
His breath (so slight it seems
no breath at all) once ruffled the dark deeps
to sprout a world. Charmed by doves' voices,
the whisper of straw, he dreams,
hearing no music from his other spheres.
Breath, mouth, ears, eyes
he is curtailed who overflowed all skies,
all years. Older than eternity, now he
is new. Now native to earth as I am, nailed
to my poor planet, caught
that I might be free, blind in my womb
to know my darkness ended,
brought to this birth for me to be new-born,
and for him to see me mended
I must see him torn.

- Luci Shaw

How Wide are the Fences?   
By Steve McKinley

I have pictures of myself from the 1970s wearing a leisure suit. It was, as I recall, burnt orange in color. I had a colorful floral print polyester shirt to go with it and a really natty wide white belt and white shoes and classy looking, very long sideburns. At the time I thought I looked great. Thirty years later, I look back and am appalled. (If you haven’t had that experience yet, be patient. You will. I have one word for you: Tattoos.)

About that time I was teaching confirmation using a curriculum produced by "the church" that today I would consider the equivalent of a leisure suit. I am embarrassed by some of the materials we were using then. But I remember one truly excellent lesson.

At the beginning of the chapter there were two pictures. One picture showed a man in a black suit standing in a grave. He could barely move. The other picture was of some beautiful horses running free in a fenced-in field. The topic of the chapter was confessionalism. How do you experience the confessions of the church? Does it feel like you are in a grave with no room to move around? Or does it feel like you have the freedom of movement within a fenced-in field?

Personally I like to think of the confessional nature of the Lutheran church as setting some limits, but also giving a good deal of freedom of movement within the fences. I am wary of those who are ready to define "Lutheran" narrowly.

Every year some interns have the challenging experience of going out to serve in congregations that represent a very different kind of Lutheranism than they have previously experienced. High liturgy people find themselves getting acquainted with praise bands, while lifelong praise band people enter the world of chasubles and incense. Every now and then an intern will wonder if this congregation, this supervisor, is "really Lutheran." After all, they don't see things the same way that old home congregation or that beloved seminary professor saw things.

Seems to me that what said intern is experiencing might just be a Lutheranism that is more at home in a different part of that large fenced-in field than said intern has visited previously. It also seems to me that this is a healthy experience and a wonderful learning opportunity. Some of our best learning takes place in settings that make us uncomfortable as we deal with people who challenge us.

So if you are an intern feeling a little tense about the Lutheran bona fides of your internship congregation or even your supervisor, lighten up! Lutheran confessionalism is a broad field, and there is room in it for many different expressions of faith within the fences. If somebody tries to narrow your fences, resist!

And no, I will not show you those pictures of me in a leisure suit.

Mid-year Evaluation Forms   

It’s hard to believe a new year is here! A year ago, as prospective interns, you were waiting to see which internship sites would be available, where they were and which ones you might be interested in. Today, as interns, mid-year evaluation forms will be due soon.

Mid-year forms differ from the evaluations done at the three-month mark. The mid-year forms are detailed and the intern’s competency in various areas is rated. Another difference is the involvement of the committee. The mid-year evaluations are submitted online by the supervisor, intern and the committee.

These forms are used to assess the progress and growth of an intern as well as note areas in need of more experience or training. The evaluations at the end of the year should note any progress in the areas needing improvement.

By previewing the mid-year form you will get a sense of the types of information necessary to fill it in and be better prepared when the form needs to be completed and submitted.

The mid-year form is due six months into the internship, which for most interns is at the end of February. A nine-month evaluation is also expected from the supervisor and intern. It is easier to see progress at the nine-month mark if these two evaluations are actually three months apart.

After the evaluations have been submitted, please remember to send hard copies of the signature page from each evaluation to the CLI office at your school.

Lay Committee members: Preview the form questions.