2019/12/11 5:58
Woke up to a new concept and a whole new set of project ideas for the Gardeners of Hope as well as the people around the world.
Peace and peacemaking is the theme of the second Sunday of Advent at Taiwanese Presbyterian Church of Greater St. Louis brought up in the sermon by Rev. Aline Russell, the interim pastor since September 16, 2019. Actually the title of the sermon is "Dead Stump" which triggered a question of "why mentioning the stump" in the Wilderness Sunday School class following the worship service.
In the classroom I reply to the question and said that the stump refers to the down-falling, decaying, boring, being forgotten matters. Actually the lineage of King David started falling apart very quickly even before David died. The theology behind that prophecy of Isaiah implies that God's calling, recruitment, and implementation is not limited to the success, the good, the elite, the formal leader, the praised, etc., but even the ones going through the ditch. This is reflected in how Jesus dealt with the neglected ones, unwelcome people, the sinners and the despised.
Advent, just like every institution and festivity, has history of beginning, growing, evolution, illness, and possible extinction as hinted in the sermon.
(Advent has probably been observed since the fourth century. Originally, it was a time when converts to Christianity readied themselves for baptism. https://www.infoplease.com/calendar-holidays/major-holidays/advent-dates-traditions-and-history)
Everything that goes through routines faces the possibility of becoming boring and followed perfunctorily if special effort were not utilized in interpretation and new application. This wake-up call brings a new light in understanding and observing Advent with new extension and applications.
Now, what's the key or the theme of this revelation? It might not be by chance that my wife was sick and could not go to the church where she was scheduled to introduce the guests and the new comers. I had to fill in for her. After I introduced a couple who returned from the East, Taiwan, to support their daughter who is due to deliver her third baby on the first day of 2020 I ask for others that I might have neglected. Elder Kevin pointed to a lady away from him. This lady happened to be a returning visitor who has been worshiping with us several times and invisible in the last several week. I happened to chat to her a couple of times and added her mailbox into the mailing list of the unofficial church newsletter that I publish and maintain. After the worship service I went to apologize to her for my impromptu bunch of words about her. She smilingly said that she was surprised she was remembered.
Yesterday, I found her in the facebook and request for making friend. She accepted shortly after and I started chatting before I went to sleep. The eye-opening information from the facebook is about her college education was through majoring in human resources management. I could not help but continue the conversation that I started in the past about extending her current profession as a pet groomer into special service to the community as a hairdresser. This line of thinking has been going on in my mind and conversations for a while as an ongoing experiment of the Gardeners of Hope Foundation, which is not incorporated, not even organized, yet. This line of thinking is an extension of my previous career as an information system designer who is always requested to help re-engineering the operations that has the potential of advancing business and the value/contribution of a staff.
Spontaneously the conversation went in the direction of her previous study of human resources management. I was suddenly enlightened that human resource management could be one key element in church life simply because following Jesus implies having new life. New life normally involves new ways of behaviors, lifestyles, routine of living, and many other issues. Church life is a place that facilitate and nourish the development of new lives and new practices that advance a person's career development.
It is not by accident that I got involved in the re-engineering of some volunteering systems in the church, such as translation of the sermon, translation of the liturgy, screen-projection in the worship services, scheduling all the volunteers, etc. Now the new thoughts is about utilizing the knowledge of human resources management and the knowledge of re-engineering to facilitate the systems of volunteer services, which include getting to know the people, finding out the existing skills, finding out the potential of exploring and learning new skills, document the workloads of all involved, promoting the ideas and the value of ordinary services rather than the services of the best candidates, etc.
The key to this new thoughts is to encourage and develop the skills of chatting with strangers beyond a person's comfort zone. Every church leaders can benefit from learning to recruit volunteers.
I will continue to write about the new projects that come out of this revelation in a different blog in this series. 7:31 2019/12/11
8:48 2019/12/11
After I timestamped the ending of the first draft I realized that the peacemaking was totally missing from the first draft.
The keys to this new thoughts include the concept of peacemaking. I have heard of this term many years ago. I don't remember when I first ran across this concept. For sure the concept has not really registered in my mind nor has it affect my life and behavior until this morning.
Peacemaking has been a low-key, and even no-action concept to me because it implies passive peace by avoiding conflict. This morning I was inspired to think about positive peace by initiating, facilitating, and nurturing peace. Suddenly it appears to me that the ability and the habit of peacemaking could be one key element in career life and career development. This means being a peacemaker is ultimately important to the work involving team work and multi-disciplinary collaboration. I lived through it in the aircraft company and kind of successfully facilitate peace in my system design that involves multiple disciplines in the company. Why did not I think of peacemaking as a career skills even after I actually practiced it as a deputy chief executive officer?
The why is not as important as how to develop, implement, and promote the concept from now on. This is the core of the new project that combine Christianity, the gospel, the church, the volunteerism, the Christian services as a way of realizing the ways of following Jesus, and the career development that helps individuals make a living through making a life.
In a simple summary, we can develop programs that help Christians and the searchers of Christian faith to have hands-on taste of following Jesus and grow from serving the Lord through serving and bring/facilitate/maintain peace to others. 9:03 2019/12/11
