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Rita and I have reached significant milestones in our lives and ministry in the past several months. We celebrated 36 years of marriage on December 31, and last November we marked 34 years of Christian ministry in the Boston-area, serving as missionaries, church planters, and pastors. All of these have been rewarding adventures, filled with joy and pain. And we now find ourselves living life on the back half of our 50s!
I began my most recent assignment in 2001 as the founding director of the Intercultural Ministry program with Boston’s Emmanuel Gospel Center (EGC). It has been a joy to serve and to serve alongside leaders from over 100 nations of the world. Our work has been multifaceted and taken on many forms of intercultural learning, connecting, training, and collaboration. The past few years our biggest initiative has been learning from and serving alongside refugee leaders, and helping churches to serve and partner with refugees. We have seen beautiful fruit in this process and also heartache.
I am grateful for the caring community and wise leadership of EGC that has walked with us in this journey. EGC recognizes that for staff to have long-term effectiveness in ministry, they must occasionally step back from ministry to rest, renew, reflect, and refocus. Therefore, with the support of our leadership, I will begin a four-month sabbatical beginning on February 18 (followed by a one-month period of applied research where I will be exploring two topics that I want to come back to after my sabbatical) .
A little bit about the sabbatical. Four words that I use to describe sabbath are: stop, rest, delight, and contemplate. The sabbatical will include plans to do all of those! STOPPING my normal work. RESTING physically and spiritually. I will be taking a few guided silent prayer retreats. Slowing down to DELIGHT in God’s goodness and the beauty of his creation, my marriage, my children, and friends. CONTEMPLATING areas I want to grow in personally and professionally. Sabbatical is not a vacation but is a structured, supervised time to intentionally replenish, reflect, and regroup for future ministry. My sabbatical will have three phases: The first phase will focus on rest, renewal & relationships; the second phase will focus on reflection & writing; and the third phase will focus on retooling, recalibrating, and re-engaging in ministry for the next season. Each of these phases has specific activities and objectives that have been prayerfully planned. During my sabbatical, I will meet regularly with advisors and peers as I work through my sabbatical plan. (*Note: Rita will not be taking the sabbatical with me per se but we will build times in where she can join me in various sabbatical experiences that will help renew her and strengthen our marriage and common ministry.)
During my sabbatical our needs will not decrease but increase. I am seeking to raise an additional $4,500 for these added costs . A big part of this extra expense will be a week of training and certification in Cultural Competence and Unconscious Bias. I have wanted to take this training for several years. This will give me new practical and powerful tools to use in our work in Intercultural Ministries. Therefore, we are reaching out to friends who might wish to help us with these additional costs. Thanks for considering to help us along our sabbatical journey! A donation of any size is deeply appreciated.
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