Summary

In this very first episode of the Ministry Forum Podcast, Rev. John Borthwick, Director of the Center for Lifelong Learning at Knox College, takes us on a personal journey through his somewhat unexpected path into ministry. You’ll hear how a curious kid obsessed with history (and Dungeons & Dragons!) found himself navigating university, working in surprising places like a bingo hall, and ultimately feeling that unmistakable nudge toward ministry – despite his best efforts to resist it!

With a mix of humor and heart, John reflects on the people and moments that shaped his calling, shares some funny (and humbling) lessons from his early career, and talks about how lifelong learning has been the heartbeat of his life and ministry. Whether you’re new to ministry or have been at it for decades, John’s story will resonate with anyone who’s ever wondered, “How did I end up here?”

Find us on your favourite podcast app or player, just search “Ministry Forum”

Quotables

• "People don't engage with an institution. They engage with a person." – Bill Lord’s advice to John on building connections.

• "Lifelong learning has been the metronome of my life." – John reflecting on how continual learning has guided his career.

• "COVID-19, if that wasn't a case study in lifelong learning, I don't know what might be." – John on adapting to the challenges of the pandemic.

Episode Notes and Additional Resources:

• Knox College, Toronto - Centre of Lifelong Learning

• Atomic Habits by James Clear

• Sam Thomas Davies’ website for helpful book summaries.

• Intermission in the Presbyterian Church in Canada

• Brady Shearer - Pro Church Tools

• Jim Keat, Digital Minister

• Cat Mulvihill - giving workshops, webinars and calls a facelift

• Ryan Panzer - Grace and Gigabytes, The Holy and the Hybrid

About Rev. John Borthwick

John Borthwick leads Ministry Forum as the Director of the Centre for Lifelong Learning at Knox College. John knows intimately the ups and downs of congregational ministry. Having served in congregational ministry for 25 years, John has lived it and, as he would say at times, just survived and often thrived in this unique and challenging role. He is passionate about supporting ministry leaders as they answer the call to serve. During COVID-19, John responded to the needs he witnessed among his colleagues and friends by creating The Abbey, a virtual space for community and learning. He intends to translate his recent experience on a much larger scale as he stewards Ministry Forum. John looks forward to being available to ministry leaders - reach out to him today!

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Transcript

Welcome to the ministry Forum Podcast coming to you from the Center for Lifelong Learning at Knox College, where we connect, encourage and resource ministry leaders all across Canada as they seek to thrive in their passion to share the gospel.

I am your host, the Reverend John Borthwick, Director of the Center and curator of all that is ministryforum.ca.

I absolutely love that I get to do what I get to do, and most of all, that I get to share it all with all of you. So thanks for taking the time out of your day to give us a listen.

Whether you're a seasoned ministry leader or just beginning your journey, this podcast is made with you in mind.

Well, you've heard it said that you have to start from the beginning.

It's a very good place to start.

And [you should] always write about, maybe talk about what you know.

So today we're kicking off our very first episode of the Ministry Forum Podcast, talking all about me. Let's call it a long introduction into the origin story of John, the director of the Center for Lifelong Learning at Knox College and curator of ministryforum.ca. This will be a rarer format.

Rarer - that's a funny word - format for our future podcasts, just me talking endlessly, but we may turn back to it occasionally for the right reasons.

So let's talk about lifelong learning and how it really has been the story of my life up to now. For as far back as I can remember, I was a curious child, questioning everything, voraciously, learning, exploring.

Now, let's not confuse things. My passion for learning wasn't fostered by the education system.

Sorry, any teachers out there.

In fact, I often found myself not fitting in well with that kind of environment. I quickly gleaned what I needed to do to get by, but saved my real interests for outside of school hours. I'm recognizing that I may be starting to sound a little bit like the narrator of young Sheldon. All this to say that as a child and youth, I loved learning things, nature, birds, animals, the world, geography, history, warfare, a keen interest in Yeah, strangely enough, the war of 1812 sparked by many visits to various forts around Lake Ontario and Lake Erie with my parents, the First World War, the Second World War, as well as a whole bunch of stuff in the Roman Empire and a fascination with medieval Europe. These were kind of my interests.

I could be found with my head in a book. Often, I read those funk and Wagnalls encyclopedias that you get from the grocery store. Some of you remember those. I know I'm dating myself, but for some reason we never seem to ever get more than two or three. So I certainly know more, a lot more about A, B and C than I do the rest of the alphabet.

Okay, you guessed it. I was an only child, and to be clear, I said only child, not lonely child, certainly that played into my curious personality. In my experience, the imagination of an only child goes to 11 now High School's collision with teen awkwardness, found my imagination sparked by the world of Dungeons and Dragons that basement in Stranger Things wasn't far off my high school years, although, to take it one notch further, my friends and I were those kids who were given permission by a teacher to eat our lunch in a classroom so that we wouldn't be disturbed as we set out on a journey with our Dungeon Master, most likely intended to head off any potential bullying.

It was in those high school years that my grandfather died and our family began a tradition of taking my widowed grandmother to church - St David's Presbyterian Church in Hamilton. 

It was there that I began to experience an invitation to consider a call to ministry, an invitation that teenage me wasn't really terribly keen on, but one that dear Anna jack, a retired Deaconess and widow of a minister, would remind me of every single Sunday, anytime I would meet Mrs. Jack, she would say, John, I know you're for the ministry. You're for the ministry. John, now it is a longer story, maybe for another day, but eventually I'd listen to that call, and somehow that would take me to the place where I find myself today, Knox College.

But I've, I've jumped ahead a bit.

Let me backtrack when I entered McMaster University for a bachelor in history, interestingly enough, on a mission to study medieval history, specifically a dream that went up in smoke in my second year when I discovered, to my horror, that the entire Medieval Studies program seemed to have been disbanded. It was an academic glitch that I had no knowledge of and no backstory about. It just didn't appear. All the courses that I had wanted were no longer being offered. Hello, smorgasbord of a BA in history with a minor in Political Science. I ran the gamut. If you look at my transcript, there wasn't too much that was similar. And now, and for all Anna Jack and the members of St David's, my home church in Hamilton, Ontario, knew I was for the ministry, I was confident that I was really not, and I hoped that my post secondary education would find me a way out.

Now, while studying at Mac, I decided to see if there was a way out for me in another perhaps more practical program that I found at Sheridan College in Oakville, Ontario, on the weekends over a couple of years, while I was doing my BA in history, I completed the Ontario management certificate, joining lifelong learners from the corporate and business sectors. I completed all the courses, things in marketing and advertising, human resources, finances, all the things now.

So, at that point, I graduated with both a BA in history and a management certificate from Sheridan College, and so I embarked the young man that I was in earnest to find my path before that calling caught up to me what was a new grad to do.

But since I worked at the Burlington Public Library and building maintenance, I enjoyed sort of trolling and sort of scanning the stacks. On those long nights of vacuuming carpet upon carpet upon carpet, I would often discover books that might be of interest and have a little glean of them. One that caught my eye in the business section was the financial posts 100 Best Companies to Work For in Canada, and so I took it upon myself to write a letter to every single one of them, asking if they had any jobs for a keener like myself. I also applied to a few other job postings that I found in the local newspaper, if you can imagine it. These were the old timey days.

Now, out of 113 letters that I mailed and sent to prospective employers, I received 111 these were the days when companies actually replied when someone applied. These 111 letters arrived over a period of a few weeks on beautiful paper stock with beautifully embossed letterhead, and they all said pretty much the same thing. We don't have any positions available at this time for someone with your skills and experience.

I'm telling you, I could have wallpapered my room with rejection.

Now there were two companies that contacted me. Both were companies that I knew nothing about until I drove to the actual interviews. One was for a role as a salesperson at Future Shop, an electronic store, sort of just before Best Buy. And the other was for an assistant manager position at a bingo hall in Toronto at Wilson and Wilson heights, operated by a subsidiary of the rank organization from the United Kingdom. This was a company that was involved in the film industry, gambling restaurants like the Hard Rock Cafe for a season, and also Universal Studios Florida, at the time.

While I was successful in becoming an assistant manager of a bingo hall without any experience at all. It was the first time in my life I received a salary, and I was so excited, but I soon discovered that a salary for a young person like myself wasn't as exciting as it could have potentially been, since I was expected to work extremely long hours, and when I did payroll for those who worked for me as a part of the organization, I discovered that my pay was actually lower than theirs per hour.

So I didn't stay long, as I said, I moved on to the world of haberdasheries, starting again without any experience in retail, as a full time associate at steel, what used to be called big steel man back then and then, on to Moors for a season of my life. Eventually, after some dark nights of the soul experiences that happened between size 42 and 50 suits in Moors, I determined that I needed to return to school to pursue a different path, and I landed on history, of course, with a goal to perhaps working in a museum.

Maybe I could pursue a master's and a PhD in some kind of history program, and I'd be set or this other thing kept creeping up, that Christian ministry thing, much to the delight of my parents.

So I, as I tell my call story, I chose, I guess, to try the ministry really emphasizing this idea of try.

If you'd asked me back then why I was doing it, I would have said it seemed that my parents thought this was a good idea, and certainly a number of other people. So I thought I'd try. And I went through the process of meeting with my session and then presbytery all along the way, thinking that someone would figure it out and say, no, no, not you, fella, not you.

But instead they said, by all means, go. Go.

So eventually it led me to sitting in the chapel at Knox College one early September, and it was there that maybe my call actually came to fruition, because it was in that place, sitting in chapel, that I just had this feeling that this was the right place for me. This was home.

And can you imagine it now, after some 30 years later, I actually get to work there.

Who'd have thunk it?

I guess only God, and certainly Mrs. Jack.

And so it was at Knox College where I dove into learning many, many things that I'd never heard of before 

I'll admit it, as a young person, I'd went to church officially from 13 to my time of landing in Knox College, but before that time, it was sketchy at best. One of my formative stories around church and being a child in church was I came to my parents at one point because we went to different churches throughout my time. That's for another story as well. But what I came to my parents saying was, I don't want to go to church school anymore because I'm tired of coloring pictures of Jesus, apparently, I said this. I don't remember saying it, but this is what my parents said. And they told me “well, if you're going to stay in church, you have to sit there and you have to be quiet”. So that's what I did. And so I must have taken in some things occasionally, but I actually remember most flipping through the Bible, and often it would land me in Revelation. For some reason it was kind of cool, and so I'd read that while the minister preached.

I didn't realize this podcast was going to be so much confession.

But for what it's worth, there you go. 

All that to say. When I turned up to Knox College, I felt really out of my depth. And so it became, it became an experience of growth and formation, of learning and developing an understanding of the Bible and theology and all sorts of concepts that I'd never had any experience of before.

And just to be clear, this wasn't really reflected in my academic transcript, but I certainly loved my time at the college. It was an amazing, amazing experience, and I had, of course, a lot of fun there. I loved the faculty, most of whom were approaching retirement. It was essentially the end of an era at the college. You might say I had professors like Dr. Nickol, Dr. Humphreys, Dr Goggin. It was a beautiful time to be in that space. Calvin Pater made everything just so much more interesting.

And I guess I perhaps took learning maybe a bit too seriously as I got into it from time to time, I can remember being in class with the late Reverend, Dr. Art Van Seters. He was my principal when I was studying at Knox. I'm not 100% sure what sparked the bomb that he lobbed at me, but he must have been asking the class what they were reading and what was on your reading list and my reading list I remember solicited this jab:

“Hey, John, why don't you relax a little and just read a book for fun.”

I've remembered that to this day, and I will occasionally read books for fun as I go along. And interestingly enough. That led to a passion for reading books, some for fun, and many still for learning something new, various genres, short ones, long ones, audible ones, dusty, hardcover ones too. And almost a decade now, I begin to really increase my reading technology certainly helped. And funny enough, I would never have described myself as a reader.

When I was younger, I was such a slow reader, and then something seemed to unlock with inside me. I recently read Atomic Habits by James Clear, who says that we are what we say we are. So maybe because I so often define myself as a slow reader, or not a reader, that's who I was for a season of my life.

But now I proudly proclaim that I am a reader, finally hitting my personal goal of 100 books in one year, in not surprisingly, 2020, certainly a global pandemic helped, but I've been able to keep close to that goal for the last few years, and this year, I'm actually on track to eclipse that goal entirely. Commuting to Toronto a couple of days a week, and traveling for my gig has certainly helped quite a bit. And I know I'm a weirdly wired duck as my response to people who feel bad for me needing to commute or travel to work is often, you know “but now I have more time to read my books” 

A bit we are considering for the ministry Forum Podcast is to occasionally insert an unpaid commercial break. We're doing this because we get to use fork and spoon by Kevin McCloud from filmmusic.io, as an interlude. I certainly love that little clip. But more importantly, we can go a little deeper on something that we may have referred to in the pod as we were talking. For example, I just mentioned that I read Atomic Habits by James clear. So, this gives me a chance to share a couple things with you our ministry forum, listening audience.

In this case, SamuelThomasDavies.com you'll see the link in the show notes. So now you know that I read a lot, and an insight into my own process that I've had over the years is that I love to highlight or mark quotables that I can refer back to as I seek to prepare content for writing sermons, all the different things in my university years before Google, I actually owned several large books of quotes. Remember books of quotations that you'd have to search through, go in the index and try to find a topic and then put a little quote into an essay, and stuff like that, man, it was such that I could find those quotes so I'd have them in my essays. But what an archaic way of doing things. I used to and I still do when I'm reading a paper book, take a bunch of those little post it flags, and I'd actually cut them into even smaller bits so that I could mark quotables that I could find later. Then I go through the book, if it was borrowed from a local library, just to cement the content for me, I would type out all the quotes into a document, man, and then I discovered Kindle.

Remember, this is an unpaid ad, and that's my e-reader of choice. We can discuss this in a future episode if you like, or leave a comment in the feedback when you'd like to do so to say more on why I chose to be owned by the world of Amazon. When it comes to reading, my Kindle does all the work for me now, and it lets me print out a lovely summary of my notes and highlights into a document. I file these, and I refer to them from time to time as I recall. Hey, I read that book. I remember a quote from that book. I think it was this one. Sometimes I'll frame it differently and put it into different kinds of files, just if I'm building out a series or something like that, and if I really, really, really wanted to be even more efficient and effective, I'd probably have some way of curating all these into my own searchable database. But hey, there's that internet for that second brain.

Okay, so let me circle back to Sam Thomas Davies. Sam has a website where he creates book summaries, and I've used them to help create PowerPoint presentations. I've used them for content creation and points that I'd like to make in sermons. I've used them for books I've read and I confess for books that I actually haven't read. They're amazing and they're comprehensive and they're super helpful if you're looking to hit the highlights of a book but are struggling to summarize it for yourself - of course, I bet ChatGPT could do something similar - and some of you are already saying that out loud as you listen to this old dinosaur talk - oh, we'll talk about chat GBT, my friends, soon enough. So just as an example, Sam has a summary for Atomic Habits. He starts with the book in three sentences, and then five big ideas, and then you'll summarize each chapter, even including illustrations from the book along the way, and you can ask for a PDF of those. Here's what he has for Atomic Habits, just in case my mentioning it sparked your curiosity.

Atomic Habits by James Blear the book in three sentences.

An atomic habit is a regular practice or routine that is not only small and easy to do, but it's also the source of incredible power, a component of the system of compound growth. Number two, bad habits repeat themselves again and again, not because you don't want to change, but because you have the wrong system for change.

Number three, changes that seem small and unimportant at first will compound into remarkable results if you're willing to stick with them for years

And then the five big ideas:

Habits are the compound interest of self improvement.

Number two, if you want better results, then forget about setting goals. Focus on your systems instead.

Number three, the most effective way to change your habits is to focus not on what you want to achieve, but on who you wish to become.

Number four, the Four Laws of behavior change are a simple set of rules that we can use to build better habits. They are, one, make it obvious. Two, make it attractive. Three, make it easy, and four, make it satisfying.

And the fifth Big Idea environment is the invisible hand that shapes human behavior.

So I'd encourage you to check out Atomic Habits by James Clear, or if you don't have time to read it, or if you'd like a helpful summary of it, check out Samuel Thomas Davies website for a summary of it and many, many other books. You can even subscribe, and he'll send you one every Monday, and that's our unpaid commercial break for today.

Back to my times at Knox College, and another glimpse into the mindset of one who seems to have been made for lifelong learning in a similar way to my undergraduate years. I guess I had some time on weekends that's kind of disappointing, especially Saturdays. And it was on those Saturdays that I had the pleasure of meeting a future mentor and wise, wise guide, the Reverend, Dr. Bill Lord.

My occasional Saturdays with the Lord would transform my future in ministry. Why? You ask? Well, Bill Lord was the director of continuing education offered through the Toronto School of Theology during my Knox years, a role he held for 15 years. Bill hosted these Saturday and occasional weekday workshops for ministry leaders that featured leading experts in congregational ministry and church leadership, many from the Albin Institute and other leading scholars from across North America.

I remember when we first met, Bill said, so where are you from, John? And I said, Knox College. I'm an MDiv student there. And he said, What are you doing here? And I say this with all due respect to my alma mater and where I'm devoting my life to today. I said these words, I'm here because they aren't teaching me there what you are sharing here. If I hope to be a congregational Minister someday, I think I need to learn some of these things in advance if I'm going to have a chance to survive. I said something along those lines. It wasn't like I kept a transcript of my life back then, and I'd say the same today, a master of divinity or any other kind of graduate degree in preparation for ministry can't possibly teach you everything you need to know, and so there's so much you couldn't have imagined you needed to know before you get out into the parish.

So I was grateful that TST had a role like Bill's, and that Bill was the one to make it what it was for a season. So many of the topics that they offered and that Bill curated talked about things like serving a long term pastorate, which I had the pleasure of doing, personality types and conflict management, which I pursued, as well leading effective meetings and so many, many other things that enhanced my MDiv and certainly helped me to prepare for some of the wild and wooly things that I would experience in 25 years plus of congregational ministry over the years.

Bill and I's paths would intersect on a couple of occasions, once, when I was a part of the design team for a pilot project from the Presbyterian Church in Canada that was a collaboration between Presbyterian and United Churches new ministry grads, and it was called starting, well, maybe I'll talk about that in another episode of our podcast.

And then again, when I moved to Guelph and became the Minister of St Andrews just. So happens that Bill had retired there, and a few of his neighbours attended our congregation. We'd often run into each other at continuing education events around Kitchener, Waterloo and Guelph. The man still participates in a wealth of lifelong learning experiences. He is a passionate learner and is always learning new things, and thrives when he's able to share his learning with others, and so when he was leading a United Church peer support group, he invited me to join so that, by his invitation, they could be more ecumenical.

And when I was called into this new rule as the director of the Center for Lifelong Learning, I reached out to Bill immediately. He so generously passed on wisdom that he received when he started out as his role at TST, he said many things that have helped to shape what you have seen coming from Ministry Forum over the past year 

But no better advice did bill pass on than this, the same advice that he received in his first few weeks so long ago, he said, “people don't engage with an institution, they engage with a person. It's about relationship. They're looking for a relationship”.

Since day one. As a director of the Center for Lifelong Learning at Knox College, I've tried to live by this advice, and that's why we say things like, you are not alone as you do ministry, and why we delight in feedback that says just knowing you're there is a support.

My brother, Bill and I continue to meet on occasion, and he always comes prepared with his little notebook with tidbits and nuggets of sage insight and caring lived experience. I'm actually looking forward to interviewing Bill for a future podcast episode. I'd love to introduce you to the man who is so influenced and so generously passed on his wisdom and experience to me over the years.

Before I leave my time at Knox College, let me share a wild coincidence related to my current role at the college that was shared with me when I started last year in August. Some people were going through some old files that were being purged, and someone came across a document from the Knox Ewart Graduates’ Association from 1995 it was when KEGA itself was formed as a result of combining the two graduates associations, Knox and Ewart, the document sent to KEGA members details a meeting that took place in Guelph between ministers who served three of the four Guelph churches at the time, Xander Dunn and Elizabeth Long from Knox, Herb Gale from Westminster, St Paul's, and Peter Darch and Susan Schaefer from St. Andrews, where I would serve as the incumbent to Dr. Darch. Some eight years later, the topic ideas regarding how Knox College can support its graduates. Over a dozen interesting suggestions were generated, but this one in particular jumped out at me. This bullet point said, hire someone to be responsible for continuing education for the college. I don't know, maybe it's just me, but I just find that so fascinating to think that 32 years ago, a meeting took place, possibly in the parlor of St. Andrew's Guelph, and it was suggested by my predecessors and others that Knox College should hire someone to take care of lifelong learning, and then that person becomes me. That is some strange working of the spirit there.

So, upon graduation from Knox College, I was blessed to be called to Rexdale Presbyterian Church, where I served for five years, and then I was off to St. Andrews and Guelph where I spent the next two decades of life in congregational ministry. And it's been over that 25 year plus span of service and congregations that I took advantage full advantage of both the time and the monies made available in the calls to ministers for continuing education and study leave. I used every ounce of my study leave time and every cent and then some, adding some of my own funds into my continuing education.

Now, while serving at St. Andrews, when I was blessed with cost-of-living increases from time to time, I would actually instruct our treasurer to simply add the dollar amount into my continuing education allowance so that I might be able to enhance my voracious appetite for learning.

It was also at St. Andrews where I discovered the PCCs intermission, definitely a topic for another episode of our podcast.

Over the 20 years of service with that congregation, I was able to take three intermissions, which technically aren't to be used to intentionally learn something, but they are certainly allowed for more time to read and experience silent retreats. But mostly, and primarily, what I love about the PCCs intermission is that they are for rest and rejuvenation after long stretches of carrying the mantle of ministry, I couldn't have continued to serve in congregational ministry effectively without these opportunities.

And I have so much more to share about intermissions, but more on that. Another time. I promise.

It might seem weird to summarize 25 years of congregational ministry in just a few short sentences, and I'm certainly happy to chat more with any of you about my experiences. It was quite the adventure. But for the sake of this introductory episode, I just wanted to lean into the lifelong learning aspects and how it has been kind of the metronome for my life.

So let's now jump ahead to COVID-19. If that wasn't a case study in lifelong learning, I don't know what might be. I can remember we went from everything carrying on as per usual to an announcement, and if you want a little chuckle, it's actually recorded on YouTube. It was our first ever video recording made of a service at St. Andrews, where Rev. John Borthwick is telling the spartan crowd that we are likely going to close down worship for a few weeks. But don't worry, everyone will be back soon, and by Sunday morning, seven days later, my head is absolutely filling the rectangle of some new-fangled - at least to me and some others in our congregation - technology platform called Zoom. Man, what a learning curve we were on, parts of which I couldn't have survived without the dedication of one of our elders. Shout out to Peter DeVries, who took so much on from a tech perspective, to ensure that we were live every single Sunday for a year, except when we shut down the feed, so that we both could get some much-needed downtime. And Lauren Wasyluk our Logistics and Creative lead - her know how, in the area of digital communications, transformed my weekly rhythms and saved me from the precipice of burnout.

Yet again, in ministry, everything took so much time, since it wasn't stuff that I was familiar with. I was watching so many YouTube videos, surely discovering people like Brady Shearer and Jim Keat and Cat Mulvihill.

It was like walking through molasses. And in some weird ways, it was also so liberating.

I'm going to be honest, there were parts of the pandemic season that I absolutely loved. We could try new things. We could do things differently. We could worship in different ways using the technology we had. Yes, we were apart and not in person, but there was something about that virtual experience, that talking head, that that engagement with people, that intimacy that happened that you never experienced on a Sunday morning standing in a pulpit. It was exhilarating, and it was exhausting, and it was all these things, because we'd never done this before.

And it was during the pandemic that something that I'd had on my mind for a really long time in ministry, probably about a decade. To be honest, I have notes on it. Was finally ready to be born. I had, I'd had this imagining of something called the Abbey. I'd struggled for years how I might bring this idea of the Abbey to life, but there was always barriers in the way. Like for some of the things I'd like to imagine for the Abbey people would need to come into a building, and the only building I had was a church building, and I was aware that some of those things would be a barrier for folks, and I can't imagine that our leadership would be too keen on me, saying, hey, let's rent some space when we had 10s of 1,000s of square feet of real estate at our disposable, all disposal, all for free.

And then the other thing was, if I was to gather people somewhere, man, you often need to feed them, hospitality is so very important, for sure. But that became another barrier to ever making the Abbey into something real.

But when the pandemic came along, the inspiration came back. Wait a minute. I could do all the things related to the Abbey, as our mission expressed, it a safe place to nurture spiritual things and to care for those who tend to all things spiritual. Now, while I'd always hoped to venture into the world of being a place to nurture spiritual things. I imagined an exclusively online community for spiritual practice and support.

But it seemed that if we dug where the ground was soft, caring for those who tended to all things spiritual, that became the space that we needed to occupy for the two and a half years. That we did. It was amazing experience. It was an amazing community that we built.

We'd offered space for conversation and support. We'd offer timely webinars on topics that were needed for the days that we were living in, like launching with a hybrid ministry, kind of 101, by an amazing guy called Ryan Panzer. We offered sessions on burnout and conflict and compassion fatigue and so so much more. I loved the Abbey and what we started to do there, and I so appreciated the support, encouragement that came from the congregation I served, as well as the investment of some resources from our presbytery, our presbytery was amazing, and making sure that congregations got the resources they needed during that really, really challenging time.

And then one day, not in the same way as Mrs. Jack telling me, “you're for the ministry”, everything changed, and the trajectory of mine and the Abbey's life would go in a much different way.

It's probably really truly in my entire life, the time that I felt fully called into something. I mean, there was often tactics and influencers and people that were involved in sort of shaping and moving me in certain directions, circumstances had played parts in the big picture, the widest vision of of calling and vocation, I could certainly say that there was something going on in my call to congregational ministry and to serving a different congregation, and all the paths I took were certainly a part of something big of a call of some kind, but when the call actually came out of the blue, that allowed me to experience a calling to serve the church and ministry leaders in a different way, that brought me to where I am today, as the director of the Center for Lifelong Learning at Knox College, a return to the place where I first felt spiritually home, this time to serve the college in a visionary way, seeking to respond to and come alongside those who have answered similar callings to serve Christ in ministry, amid the reality that we are all in this role, has just become another example of my adventures in lifelong learning.

Personally, I can't tell you how many new things I've had to learn, new skills that I've had to be shaped by, to retool, to think differently, and while I've occasionally bristled when deep in homework in the evenings and on weekends over the last year, I'm actually so very grateful that the college embedded professional development for me.

Yes, it's true. I had to actually go back to school at the same time as learning a completely new job and a completely new landscape. I have just completed after an entire year of course after course after course after course, the Western Continuing Studies Professional Certificate in learning and development, it's essentially learning about best practices in instructional design, adult learning theory and so much more that has been so practically applicable to the work I do every single day with Ministry Forum. 

Those who know me have said this opportunity has taken all the threads of my life up to this point, pulled them into focus, maybe in a tapestry kind of way. In this my lifelong learning story and this next adventure that I've only just begun, I am so grateful that every single day I get to do this, and most of all that, I get to share it all with you.

Thanks for joining us today on the ministry Forum Podcast. We hope today's episode resonated with you and sparked your curiosity. Remember, you're not alone in your ministry journey. We're at the other end of some form of technology, and our team is committed to working hard to support your ministry every step of the way.

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May God's strength and courage be yours in all that you do. May you be fearless, not reckless, and may you be well in body, mind and spirit and may you be that peace.