Duke Summer Institute

Syllabi from seminars

2009-06-23T15:34:00.004-04:00

Many of our participants have requested that we share the seminar syllabi, and we are thrilled to do that. Here are the course descriptions and the syllabi!

Social Conflict, Healing, and Mission in Global Contexts
Emmanuel Katongole
Syllabus
The seminar is especially designed for Christian leaders who are working in the midst of social conflict, war and poverty outside the US and those whose organizations, congregations and ministries are seeking to respond to these global challenges. The seminar will explore prevailing models of mission and reconciliation in global contexts. Drawing from stories and lessons from around the world: Uganda, Burundi, Sudan, the Middle East, South Africa, Haiti, the seminar will point to fresh experiments and develop alternative models of mission and reconciliation, which reflect the gift of God’s new creation. Models to be considered will include: pilgrimage, relocation, intervention, and interruption. In developing and exploring these models, special attention will be paid to the sets of skills and gifts that sustain Christian leaders within these models: lament and hope; courage and compassion; resistance and imagination; description and dreaming.

A Spirituality to Sustain Action
Margaret Pfeil and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove
Syllabus
The same Jesus who told his disciples that their works would exceed his own also promised to send an Advocate who would guide us in the ways and means of God. This course draws on 2,000 years of Christian experience to explore the rhythms, practices, and dangers of life with the God who chooses to work in and through communities of broken people for the reconciliation of all things. The course is especially designed for people who find themselves burnt out, distracted, depressed, or restless in the ministry of reconciliation. It will invite participants to build on their own questions, hopes, and experiences of faith to contemplate the dynamics of a spirituality of reconciliation. We will use a variety of media, including film, music, and art, together with opportunities for prayer and meditation.

Building Beloved Communities of Justice and Peace at the Grassroots
Mary Nelson and John Perkins
Syllabus
This seminar will focus on practical ways to build Beloved Community in under-resourced community settings, using interactive sharing of John Perkins, Mary Nelson and seminar participants. We also will use case studies of community building, community organizing from Chicago and Mississippi, dialoging on the Christian Community Development tools, including reconciliation, incarnational presence in the community, redistribution, building on the strengths of people and empowering indigenous leadership. Finally, we will partner with seminar participants to think through their own settings and action plans.

Shaping Congregations for Faithfulness across Divides
Jin S. Kim and Therese Lysaught
Syllabus
This seminar will ask: What do pastors need to learn to faithfully lead their congregations in embodying the ministry of reconciliation in light of obstacles to this work posed by contemporary culture? We will draw from the major spiritual traditions of the early church to think about what it means to "do church" in a way that witnesses to Christ's ministry of reconciliation. Through exemplars and interactive sharing we will focus particularly on practices of submission, prayer, confession, hospitality, and Eucharist. A key goal of the seminar will be for seminar participants to identify challenges in their own settings and to develop action plans for moving forward.

Transformative Leadership through National Organizations
Samuel Barkat and L. Gregory Jones
Syllabus
This course is designed to assist the senior leaders of organizations and institutions in discovering ways to move their own leadership and their organizations to a new level of faithfulness in the mission of reconciliation. Drawing from a theological framework, case studies, and participant experiences, three areas will be addressed:

A biblical and theological view of transformative ministry for reconciliation and teamwork for common objectives.
How to lead an organization in pursuing reconciliation, both internally and externally, including addressing conflicts. What does it meant to pursue reconciliation in organizational ministry Biblically and theologically, and with psychologically and sociologically sound principles and practices rather than through power and position? How does the call to embody both justice and forgiveness reshape institutional practices, structures, and programs?
Development of a practical action plan. Participants will identify opportunities, challenges, and barriers and develop a concrete action plan to move their organization ahead in dealing with reconciliation issues on personal, structural and institutional levels.

This course is based on collaborative and transformative leadership principles. We will address the kind of character, integrity and humility that leaders of organizations need to posses in order to be successful collaborative leaders.

2009-06-18T10:31:00.002-04:00

Snapshot

2009-06-05T13:32:00.000-04:00

The Present Future

2009-06-05T13:31:00.001-04:00

Reconciliation is not a dream. It’s not an act of the imagination. As Chris Rice introduced the session on leadership and the beloved community, his words were intended to lighten the load leaders take on themselves: “What God is doing is real,” he said. “And it’s bigger than us. God is gathering the gifts of God’s church. God has given us everything we need, and now we offer those gifts to one another.”

As Paul put it: “In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us” (2 Cor. 5:19). Today’s ambassadors of reconciliation don’t create peace. Jesus has already done that. They don’t create the gifts. They receive them from the Holy Spirit and pass them on.

This doesn’t mean leaders don’t get worn out or exhausted. They do. Paul did. Many of the leaders at this institute are tired. Paul, in the same chapter, wrote, “In this tent we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling” (5:3). At a particularly worn out moment in his journey, Chris shared yesterday that he received a word from God. “It’s not about you,” the Lord said. “It’s about me.”

That word from God is an invitation to receive strength and to embrace the Sabbath. Reconciliation is as sure as the promise of God’s work in Jesus Christ.

It’s not about us.

Snapshot

2009-06-05T10:18:00.004-04:00

"God calls us into the pain of the people--to identify with it and if necessary to take it on. Great leaders are willing to enter into the pain of their people."

--John Perkins, speaking on 6/4/09

Participant Talk Back

2009-06-05T08:22:00.002-04:00

Charlie Dates reflects on how he was blessed through his experience at the Summer Institute.

Snapshot

2009-06-04T13:39:00.000-04:00

Snapshot

2009-06-04T10:35:00.001-04:00

"This is a sacred space, woven together with holiness and genius."

-- Participant Kathryn Rickert, 6/4/09

Hope for the Journey

2009-06-04T09:24:00.004-04:00

A pastor in Durham has gained a reputation for sitting down with parishioners for the first time and beginning the conversation with, “So, what’s your story?” The unsuspecting churchgoer usually trips through some thoughts on how the day is going or what he hoped to talk to the pastor about. And then the pastor poses her question again. “No, no, no,” she says gently, “What’s your story?” The second approach is an invitation into honest sharing.

Stories sustain reconciliation. Moments of hope and transformation fuel the imaginations of church leaders. They also protect dialogues about reconciliation from becoming abstract. Stories keep us from the delusion that reconciliation is something out there, something that can be achieved through, perhaps, a few easy steps.

One such story helped to animate yesterday’s conversations about reconciliation. In his book The Gift of Peace, Joseph Cardinal Bernardin recalls the day in 1993 when he was falsely accused of sexually abusing a former seminary student. “The attack was directed against the most important thing I had going for me as a religious leader, my reputation,” he recalls. The charges picked up steam and made headlines around the world. Even after they were proven untrue, damage and hurt remained.

“It took one hundred days before the false charges against me were resolved,” remembers Bernardin. “They may be described as an education in law, but I prefer to think of them as a profound education of the soul.” The Cardinal prayed every day for Scott, his accuser. Though he was the victim, Bernardin sought out Scott and visited him personally. There Scott apologized, and the Cardinal responded by offering Mass to his accuser. There, over the table, the peace that was theirs in Christ was marked and celebrated. “Never in my entire priesthood have I witnessed a more profound reconciliation,” writes Bernardin.

It is only one story of reconciliation, but, as Bernardin suggests in his book, it was decades in the making. It called on all the resources of his spirituality.

There are many similar stories alive in the church, and retelling them is not tangential to the work of reconciliation. The stories of what God has done in the past strengthens God’s people for the work they will be called to tomorrow. And in the hard times, those stories provide hope for the journey ahead.

Participant Talk Back

2009-06-03T19:58:00.001-04:00

Listen to participants Dominique and Jill reflect on their dreams for the future and what they are learning this week.

Snapshot

2009-06-03T19:51:00.001-04:00

Snapshot

2009-06-03T13:11:00.003-04:00

"How is God stoking our moral imaginations? What is possible in light of the resurrection?"

--Margaret Pfeil, during her lecture Hope: God's New Reality in Broken Places, 6/3/09

Snapshot

2009-06-03T11:37:00.005-04:00

"Love doesn't mean doing extraordinary or heroic things. It means knowing how to do ordinary things with tenderness."

--Participant Chris Jarvis, quoting Jean Vanier, founder of L'Arche communities

Snapshot

2009-06-02T22:24:00.006-04:00

"We need to stop before we move on--to mourn, to lament. We need to step back and just be the children of God. To me, that is prevention, intervention, and post-vention."

--Marcia Owen, speaking on the panel "Lament: Seeing, Naming, and Feeling the Brokenness," 6/2/09

Learning to Stay and See

2009-06-02T21:07:00.002-04:00

Yesterday we practiced the discipline of lament. We took deep breaths, several steps back, and realized together that reconciliation isn’t something we can “do,” measure, and check off our lists. It is a journey that requires personal transformation and growth.

American culture peculiarly hides its pain—we hide sorrow, loneliness, poverty, illness, disability, the elderly. As Jeremiah says, we deal lightly with the wounds of our people. We somehow delude ourselves into thinking that we can only be effective ministers and care-givers if we wear the sheen of success, if we are in a position of power or competency.

Emmanuel Katongole reminded us that our American ways of hiding pain and erecting a façade of self-confidence is devastating to the process of reconciliation. In fact, he pointedly stated, “There can be no reconciliation without lament.”

Sometimes, the journey of reconciliation means we truly see, and we don’t look away from the world’s pain. We stay with the pain, we dwell there for a while, and like Rachel weeping for her children, we refuse to be consoled.

Some of us wept together yesterday. We wept for our own broken bodies and hearts, for our broken families and neighborhoods, for unfathomable injustice. And we sat with the pain, even as the silence stretched long.

Hear Our Prayer: Lamenting Together

2009-06-02T20:43:00.000-04:00

The desire to fix things falls on hard times in the ministry of reconciliation. Neighborhoods are not problems to be solved. Communities of people are not work projects. This is so because reconciliation assumes equality. Two individuals, two communities, two cultural groups (or three, four, or more) cannot experience reconciliation until the problems are not with him, her, it, or them. Brokenness is not one-sided; neither is reconciliation.

Paul describes the ministry of reconciliation not as one that was given to him in particular, but rather, “to us.” “And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation,” he writes. Reconciliation comes alive and, of course, bears its fruit in relationship—in relationship with God, and with others, especially those who are unlike us.

It is also sustained in relationship. Peace is not a destination, but rather a state of being that must be cultivated, maintained, and—very often—restored. The glimpses of reconciliation witnessed to at this institute bear witness to the fact that peace is organic and living. But like all things living on earth, it is also frail.

Emmanuel Katongole’s morning meditation cast light on a discipline that fuels reconciliation: lament. For him, it is a means “of learning how to narrate what is going on, a way to move beyond clichés.” The fact that brokenness precedes reconciliation means that the church will always need to cultivate lamentation. And it will always need to do so together.

Snapshot

2009-06-02T11:48:00.006-04:00

"There is no journey into hope without lament."

--Emmanuel Katongole, during his address "Lament: Seeing, Naming, and Feeling the Brokenness," 6/2/09

Snapshot

2009-06-02T11:17:00.004-04:00

"Racialized language steals our imagination… When we look out on our congregations we only see people who look like us. Our imaginations have been stolen because we don’t see that as a problem."

--Bill Lamar, speaking on the panel "Lament: Seeing, Naming, and Feeling the Brokenness," 6/2/09

Reconciliation and the Cloud of Witnesses

2009-06-01T18:44:00.020-04:00

The memorable statements from today are many:

“Those who come to serve the poor only stay when they realize that they are poor themselves.”

“The Holy Spirit is God’s imagination let loose in the world.”

“We’ve over-evangelized the world too lightly.”

But just as important as the ideas conveyed is the acknowledgment that none of these quotes is original to this week or these speakers. There are more than 100 participants and 15 teachers at the Summer Institute, but the community represented here is much larger, much older, and even more diverse.

Reconciliation is being illumined here in two ways. Both ways push us toward greater particularity. Chris Rice summed up the first in the morning’s opening address: “We do not have a generic God; we do not know a generic peace.” The reconciliation offered in the gospel comes through an encounter with the living God. It extends from Jesus Christ, making peace through the blood of his cross. The peace offered is for all, but it is hardly abstract.

Neither is reconciliation concrete only on God’s end of the work. It is as close as a neighbor, a spouse, a parent. It is as deeply needed as the wounds carried within each person. Neely Towe, a Congregational pastor, shared her story this morning about looking for a church in her early years of ministry: “I was yearning for a church like I saw embodied in my Dad’s AA,” she said. Her statement resonates across the board. Reconciliation finds its life in the concreteness of personal relationships, and in vulnerability and honesty.

It’s clear that the ambassadors of reconciliation today stand on the shoulders of many, many others. Some of those people are mentors, pastors, teachers, and leaders who have inspired the generation represented here. They are the ones whose ideas—like the ones above—continue to energize our thinking.

But reconcilers also carry within themselves the pain of division and deep brokenness. They may not always name names, but behind the lessons and principles of reconciliation are stories of real relationships. Those people, like our mentors, are haunting our conversations and enlivening the urgency.

Snapshot

2009-06-01T16:25:00.001-04:00

"God calls us to be pain-bearers, but not to go it alone."

-- John Perkins, during his seminar on "Building Beloved Communities of Justice and Peace at the Grassroots," 6/1/09

Snapshot

2009-06-01T11:57:00.005-04:00

"Reconciliation is never bigger than the person near to you who is difficult to love."

--Chris Rice, during his address "Reconciling All Things:
God's Vision of Beloved Community," 6/1/09

Snapshot

2009-05-31T21:51:00.006-04:00

"The distress of reconciliation is the agony of waiting.
We learn through music an enriching kind of patience."
--Jeremy Begbie, during his lecture-performance on the Spirit of Hope and Music, 5/31/09

Shaping the Beloved Community in a Divided World

2009-05-26T12:22:00.004-04:00

In five days, over 100 people will come to Durham from around the world for the 2009 Duke Summer Institute! The dream for the Summer Institute began over two years ago. God began whispering ideas to Duke Divinity School and to the Center for Reconciliation, calling us to dream of an intensive formation experience for lay people, clergy, and grassroots leaders, hosted at Duke. Since then, we have created a space for deep theological reflection and learning, a space where leading theologians and practitioners spend time in small groups, a space where worship, shared meals, music, and friendship are all central to reconciliation.

Duke provides a unique space for relationships and collaboration

2009-05-26T11:02:00.002-04:00