{"id":26111,"date":"2020-02-27T12:43:37","date_gmt":"2020-02-27T20:43:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=26111"},"modified":"2020-02-27T12:43:37","modified_gmt":"2020-02-27T20:43:37","slug":"making-sense-of-why-and-who-and-how-and-what-and-where-we-are","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/making-sense-of-why-and-who-and-how-and-what-and-where-we-are\/","title":{"rendered":"Making sense of why and who and how and what and where we are"},"content":{"rendered":"

Needless to say, my hope is that every single member of our cohort finishes their dissertation, graduates with honors, earns the highly coveted title \u201cDoctor of Ministry\u201d and then is able to achieve all our hopes and dreams in large part because of the what we have learned together in the Leadership and Global Perspectives program.\u00a0 I fully understand that we are all completely immersed both in our weekly blog studies, and our dissertation research topics, with the end goal for some of us potentially less than 365 days away.\u00a0 Allow the soundtrack of our lives to cue up \u201cSeasons of Love\u201d from Rent<\/em> while we discern how on earth we will measure this next year.<\/p>\n

And yet, today I was discussing our beloved PDX DMIN program with a fellow Presbyterian colleague, a pastor of a 250 member church in southern Ohio, who had recently told her congregation that after a four and a half year attempt, she was ending her Doctorate of Ministry process, having completed all the necessary coursework, much of the dissertation research, but, alas, the dissertation just never came to fruition.\u00a0 She is not a Portland Seminary student and, to be more than fair, many elements of her journey were distinct and unique to her situation, however the final challenge of crafting the dissertation never came to fruition.<\/p>\n

And yet, this highly accomplished pastor is one of the leading voices in our denomination.\u00a0 She is leading a church that has been revitalized in large part due to her visionary leadership.\u00a0 \u00a0And even though she is not going to be a Doctor of Ministry, what she has learned through the study, research, hard work, and the sacrifice of keeping at it for four years has (in her own words!) made her a much more effective pastor, and a more fervent follower of Christ.<\/p>\n

I believe the same can be said about all of us as we enter the second week of a Pinker reading.\u00a0 In Blank Slate<\/em>, we delve into the realm of the origin of knowledge, and the fascinating concept of psychological and mental evolution.\u00a0 Pinker denounces the idea of a mental blank slate often throughout the book, but perhaps best when he says, \u201cThe Blank Slate is not some ideal that we should all hope and pray is true.\u00a0 No, it is an anti-life, anti-human theoretical abstraction that denies our common humanity, our inherent interests, and our individual preferences.\u00a0 Though it has pretensions of celebrating our potential, it does the opposite, because our potential comes from the combinatorial interplay of wonderfully complex faculties, not from the passive blankness of an empty tablet.\u201d[1]<\/a><\/p>\n

I gotta say I feel a tad like my brother German Harry this week.\u00a0 It was hard to discern how best to put this into my dissertation.\u00a0 Pinkers\u2019 last book had an entire chapter dedicated to the environment . . . but this one?<\/p>\n

But then I think about my friend who just concluded her Doctorate studies with an incomplete.\u00a0 What we discussed earlier this week quite at length, was that even though she didn\u2019t finish, she still learned a ton.\u00a0 She studied theology, different styles of worship, the intersection of psychology and religion, and in doing all of that it allowed her to better understand herself.\u00a0 She was provided the opportunity to better define her pastoral style, to come up with new paradigms for the way she led people to the promise and good news of a life with Jesus.\u00a0 In short, even though she didn\u2019t finish, she still was able to gain a fuller sense of why and who and how and what and where she is as a pastor, as a leader, and as a person of faith.<\/p>\n

And ultimately, that is what Pinker is doing for me this week.\u00a0 Though it may not apply directly to my research, what I am able to take away is a better understanding of preconceived notions I have about myself, about the way people think, and about how I can better provide spiritual care.\u00a0 My hope is that even as we work through our second week with this highly acclaimed academic giant, we can all do the same.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, (New York: Penguin Books, 2002), 421.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Needless to say, my hope is that every single member of our cohort finishes their dissertation, graduates with honors, earns the highly coveted title \u201cDoctor of Ministry\u201d and then is able to achieve all our hopes and dreams in large part because of the what we have learned together in the Leadership and Global Perspectives […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":108,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1803,1793,1790,1794],"class_list":["post-26111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-blank-slate","tag-pinker","tag-steve-pinker","tag-steven-pinker","cohort-lgp9"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/108"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26111"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26111\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26113,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26111\/revisions\/26113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}