Reflection That Sets Us Free

There is a saying attributed to Columbia University Professor John Dewey that says, “We don’t learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on our experience.” As with many pithy proverbs, there is no indication that Dewey ever said those exact words. What can be supported is found in his 1910 volume, How We Think (p. 156): 

Experience is not a rigid and closed thing; it is vital, and hence growing. When dominated by the past, by custom and routine, it is often opposed to the reasonable, the thoughtful. But experience also includes the reflection that sets us free from the limiting influence of sense, appetite, and tradition. Experience may welcome and assimilate all that the most exact and penetrating thought discovers. Indeed, the business of education might be defined as just such an emancipation and enlargement of experience. 

Fortunately, I have been blessed to be part of an institution that is committed to the kind of reflective experiences of theological education that sets us free to think differently and to grow in God’s grace. Future and present ministers, chaplains, and lay leaders are hungry for this type of learning. My very first year as a professor in 2005, North Park Theological Seminary commissioned me to develop travel courses that would provide experiential learning opportunities for our students. Since then, it has been my privilege to organize and lead twenty-seven such courses to various countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, and South America. Each of these travel courses has been a powerful exercise in reflective freedom and personal transformation.  

All of North Park Seminary’s degree programs include the student learning objective of exhibiting intercultural development for ministry. Interculturality can only be learned experientially. For those considering ministry, mission, chaplaincy, advocacy work, or vocations that seek to shape individual and structural worldviews towards God’s kingdom values, interculturality remains essential. Many of us in the United States find it necessary to leave the comforts and security found within our national borders to experience the challenges and, as I call it, the organized chaos required for us to see ourselves and the world in new, expansive ways. Through reflection we are free to grow both personally and interculturally.  

A crucial factor in intercultural immersion is the mutual impact and benefit these interactions have on everyone involved. While North Park faculty and students certainly have something to contribute, so too do our sisters and brothers from the host countries we visit who know their context better than we ever will. My desire for each travel course is to create a multi-cultural, multi-lingual learning community together where each person brings something they have prepared in advance to share. As I have done for past travel courses, when the opportunity to travel abroad arose, I asked our hosts to suggest a topic or theme they are facing that we can address together during our days of travel.  

Early in 2024 we began the planning for travel course number 27, primarily initiated by Covenant Global Personnel in Colombia, NPTS alumni Katie and Julio Isaza. It had been over six years since I had taken a group of students to Colombia, where a sister Covenant denomination has grown in several regions of that country. I was especially blessed that my colleague, Professor Armida Belmonte-Stephens, would serve as co-instructor with me. Her fluency in Spanish, cultural understanding, theological insight, and supportive personality were important contributions to the success of this course.  

With the input of Rev. Luis Barriento Buitrago, president of the Covenant Church of Colombia (FIPEC), and the director of the Covenant seminary program in Medellin, Pastor Jorge Gonzalez, we decided on a mutually relevant theme: “Developing Ecclesial Communities in the Midst of Cultural Diversity.” These two Colombian Covenant leaders were instrumental in selecting seven other Covenant leaders who would join us for the entire time to make up our cohort of over twenty people, men and women of various ages and ethnic backgrounds. Both Pastor Luis and Pastor Jorge contributed to the teaching and conversations, sharing meals, games, and life together with us the entire time.  

What began as a group of strangers, ended as a family. Through travel, shared meals, play, preaching, teaching, and corporate worship there was a sacred bond that developed, impacting each one of us. Below are a few of the reflective comments that participants from both countries shared from this intercultural experience:  

• “During this trip, I experienced God’s transformation. I witnessed people overcoming barriers, relationships formed, and God’s mission becoming a reality. We were reminded that cultural transformation requires us to surrender our preconceived notions and embrace God’s work in and through us. As we move forward, may we continue to seek, know, and serve God as we live out the Greatest Commandment and Great Commission.” 
• “Proximity changed everything for me. I haven’t been able to look at anything the same since I returned. I am slow to judge or assume if I am not in proximity to a person or situation. I am committed to listening and learning more than I speak. I am grateful in my city, work, and church that I am in proximity to so many cultures. But now, I will intentionally be emotionally in proximity to them as well.”
• “I do not want to forget the discussions on God’s desire for restoration, reconciliation, and
  life transformation. We must lay down our preconceived ideas at Jesus’s feet and recognize one another as created in God’s image. We distinguished between superficial change—external and minor—and deep transformation, which reshapes our thinking and actions. The missio Dei, God’s mission, invites us to be transformed so that others may witness God’s work in us. This involves engaging in active listening, intercultural collaboration, and holistic ministry.”
• “I have returned with a renewed commitment to slow down and see! See the invisible, hear the Spirit, breathe through the chaos, and to trust the God who holds it all, even when I feel a little lost in the middle of it. God did not just show me a different culture. He showed me a different me, the one that can let go, laugh more, trust others, climb slower, speak louder, and see the invisible.”  

We don’t often take the time to reflect deeply on experiences like these, but this group was forced to remember it all anew when, less than two months after our return stateside, one of our members, Rev. Amos Shakya, very unexpectedly passed away. Suddenly the recollections of our times together as a taste of heaven were brought very close to our hearts. Our bonds have become stronger even as we recall the joy this brother brought to each of us and the grieving loss we feel in his absence. This type of deep reflection on experiences emancipates education, freeing it from head knowledge to impact our hearts, bringing life transformation.  

Another philosopher, like John Dewey, made a statement over 2000 years ago, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Socrates may not have had theological education in mind, but nevertheless his words ring true today. Reflection frees us to see life differently. Thank you, NPTS, for providing opportunities like these to reflectively grow one step closer to God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.