June 30, 2009

Connect the dots

Friends,

As human beings who look for deeper meaning in our lives, nearly all of us feel that there is an underlying path we follow. However, I once heard someone describe the path we follow not as a continuous straight line running directly from beginning to end, from birth to death, but more like an adult version of connect the dots.

Becca on the move to the next "dot" in her life. June 22, Bromo volcano, east Java.

Which is to say, our life proceeds in a series of fits and starts. We linger at one point (one dot, one location, one job, one state of mind) for a while, then decide it’s time for a change and take a leap to the next point, where we settle in for a little while longer. When we are in the midst of this sequence of leaping alternated with hanging out, we are often hard-pressed to discern any sort of pattern. But just like when as children we connected what looked like randomly arranged dots into a picture, once we’ve made it past a series of dots, we can look back and see a pattern to our lives.

It’s certainly true for me, a person whose address you should write down in pencil because I’ll be leaping to the next address before you know it. Yet when I remain still long enough to turn and look back at the many dots I’ve leapt on and off of, an interesting pattern emerges.

I first served in Indonesia 20 years ago as a nutritionist for Church World Service. I worked in Papua with a local public health foundation. During those three years, I also learned the Indonesian language.

Because I was working for an organization with “church” in the name, people frequently invited me to pray and to preach. When I told them I wasn’t a pastor, they began to tell me that I ought to be one, so I came back to the United States and enrolled at Columbia Theological Seminary. During seminary, I felt a call to become a professor and went directly from seminary to Fordham University, where I received a doctorate in theology.

But when I graduated, tenured faculty positions were few and far between. While searching for a job, I paid the bills by doing adjunct teaching and selling organic scones at the local farmers market.

Although I enjoyed the teaching and the farmers market, I began to question my decisions. My Indonesian years were far in the past and seemed insignificant, and all the years I’d spent in school now seemed to have been futile, since I couldn’t get a job. It was a difficult period in my life and I certainly didn’t feel very satisfied with the seemingly random set of dots (choices) that had led me to a lot of purposeless jumping.

Sometime in early 2005, sitting over coffee talking with my friend Patti (whom I met at the farmers market) about how pointless my life seemed, she suddenly said to me, “Has it occurred to you that maybe you could help with tsunami relief? You have a health background, you’re a pastor and you speak Indonesian.”

It was as if Patti had spun me around and helped me look back at my own dots and seen the connection—there was a discernable picture after all!

Within a month of that conversation with Patti, I was on the plane to Sumatra, Indonesia, as Presbyterian Disaster Assistance’s liaison for tsunami relief. Through that work, I met Robert Borrong, who is the treasurer of one of our partner disaster organizations in Indonesia. Dr. Borrong also happens to be an ethics professor and was the president of Jakarta Theological Seminary. He mentioned to a mutual friend of ours that the seminary needed a new theology professor and that person told him he should talk to me.

Becca with Yeryandri Tungga at graduation on June 6, 2009. Becca was Yeryandri's advisor for his senior thesis on mission theology.

Since you are reading this newsletter, you know how that conversation turned out: I am now a professor at that seminary. Yet another dot has been connected and become a part of the emerging picture of my life. Sometimes I am nearly overwhelmed by the realization of how those disparate parts of my life—health, Indonesia, theology, and teaching—have come together in such an unexpected way. I feel fortunate to be able to give back to God and my neighbor after having received so much along the way.

This realization was brought out even more strongly recently when I had the privilege of witnessing the graduation of my first set of advisees and four students for whom I had served as thesis advisor. The seminary held its annual graduation ceremony on June 6, and it was a meaningful moment as I watched those students, of whom I am so proud, walk across that stage and receive their diplomas.

The 2009 graduating class at Jakarta Theological Seminary as they prepare to sing a song during the closing worship service.

As I tell this story, I am deeply aware that my life is not unique. Hundreds of PC(USA) mission personnel are at work on every continent and quite a few islands across this big wide world and in the United States. Every one of them has a connect-the-dots story of their own. We all have been given amazing chances to serve in a variety of positions, after having been led by the power of God’s Spirit assisting us in our leaps of faith from one place to the next.

It is with great excitement that I therefore wish to share with you an upcoming opportunity where you can get to know some of our mission personnel and hear directly from them about how their dots have gotten connected, thanks to your support, into a beautiful picture of mission.

Forty PC(USA) mission personnel will visit hundreds of congregations across the United States this fall to tell how God is at work around the world. World Mission Challenge, a reprise of a similar event in 2007, will be held September 25 to October 18, 2009. Learn more at the Mission Challenge Web site or by calling Ellen Dozier at 888-728-7228, x 5916.

Becca

The 2009 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 113