Cultural Engagement
Value Definition - Relationships with diverse individuals, cultures, & ideas that result in evangelism, dialogue, application, & service that are Biblical, corageous, & compassionate
Overall Reflection
For my competence in the Ministry Leadershio degree, I am submitting the following artifacts:
- Volunteer Calendar to show days I volunteered for homeless service (in yellow on calendar)
- Picture of Service to show the times I was engaged with homeless ministry this year.
- Calendar of Visits to show days I visited churches and urban areas to connect them with the Ministry of camp
- Lists & Statistics of Urban Churches to show the inventory of potential churches to reach out to, which ones are connected to Camp Mardela and to what degree
- Pictures at Churches to show the engagement and connection made by sharing about Camp Mardela in services at these urban churches (only one successful Church visit made - Manassas)
Lifelong Reflection
As a result of the experiences documented by these artifacts, I will continue to develop in the Ministry Leadership degree by making room in my schedule to find more meaningful ways to personally and professionally engage with these communities. When I first began at Camp Mardela, I was able to take a lot more time to volunteer and visit churches. In order to reprioritize this as a part of my personal and professional ministry, this will take some intentional clearing of extra activities on my schedule and delegating more work tasks to volunteers and staff, so that my lack of free time does not hinder me from deepening these connections.
Learning Reflection
As I developed in the Ministry Leadership degree and ministry experiences, I learned that I lack the time to be as engaged with these various communites, and in order to make meaningful connections, I need to make more intentional time in my schedule for this.
For homeless ministry, I was only able to go one month, and not once a month as I was planning, since most of the other available dates fell on days I had work engagements or prior commitments However, I found a few other unique ways to engage with the homeless community, even if it was a little bit different and less often than I had planned.
For urban engagement I was able to make some small connections with churches, and the biggest connection I made was with Manassas. My ability to connect with more urban churches nearby was complicated by the fact that the Western Maryland church they typically support is REALLY struggling right now, and althought some were dissatified with that camp, they began to rally around it. As a fellow camp leader and sister camp to this struggling, I felt like it was inappropriate to pry to too much support from churches that are pouring a lot into helping keep this other camp from shutting down. So instead of engaging with these churches on behalf of Camp Mardela, I became a sort of consultant, and leaders from some of these churches were reaching out to me for advice on how to help this camp, which I happily gave. This was a different dynamic than I was expecting, but I learned that church support of camp doesn't have to be direct. A child who goes to camp is a win - whether it is at my camp or another camp, so to get to support that even if it wasn't at Camp Mardela was encouraging.
