The PWR's Shifts
By Tandi Rogers
September 2019
This is the season of shifts—some of you have new staff, new board members, and a new church year upon us. We are all shifting gears of sorts.
Your regional program staff is also shifting into the new year. Our late August retreat felt like a launch into a new era for us. This bi-annual time together is one of the few times we’re physically all together. It’s a beloved time of worshipping and reflecting, recommitting to our covenant, connecting to each other and our calls and aligning our strategies. With the addition of a new staff member, Annie Scott, we took the opportunity to receive her many good questions as a way to break down assumptions as to why we do things the way we do them. We got clear on our core beliefs that guide our work. What came out was a list of intentional and aspirational movements we call “shift statements.”
Shift Statements for 2019-2020
- Moving from I to we
- Moving from fear to faith
- Moving from despair to hope
- Moving from perfection to wholeheartedness
- Moving from either/or to both/and
- Moving from defensiveness to curiosity
- Moving from shame to compassion
Over the course of the coming year you’ll hear more about these shifts. We’ll go deeper each month highlighting a shift and offering resources to help you move what may be shifting in you. We will also include addition resources including articles, podcasts, sermons, music and much more.
Contents
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Shifting From Perfectionism to Wholeheartedness
Sarah Gibb Millspaugh
From Pacific Western RegionIn our striving to do our best and be our best, we as people and we as congregations can sometimes gravitate toward perfectionism—a force that cuts us, and others, down.
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Shifting from Defensiveness to Curiosity
Tandi Rogers
From Pacific Western RegionHow do we as people and as congregations meet the intensity of this moment with curiosity instead of defensiveness?
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Shifting from Despair to Hope
Sarah Movius Schurr
From Pacific Western RegionDecember 4, 2019 The first of the candles in the Advent Wreath is the candle of Hope. In the Lutheran tradition of my childhood, we always lit Advent candles this time of year. Winter is often a time when we look for hope. We look with hope for the return of the sun in the months to come. We hope…
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Shifting from Either/Or to Both/And
Jonipher Kūpono Kwong
From Pacific Western RegionMany of our congregations can sometimes get stuck in polarized, either/or thinking. Are you an atheist or a theist? Are you racist or woke? The deeper spiritual truth is such divisions are an illusion.
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Shifting from Fear to Faith
Sarah Gibb Millspaugh
From Pacific Western RegionWhat would our communities and our lives be like if we lived from our faith more than from our fear?
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Shifting from I to We
Tandi Rogers
From Pacific Western RegionShifting from the hyperindividualistic thinking embedded in so much of American culture to an interdependent collective way of being.
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Shifting from Shame to Compassion
Eric Dew Bliss
From Pacific Western RegionHow do we learn to live, as people and as congregations, like we are worthy of love? How do we live into compassion for ourselves and others?
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