Conversation Partners in Trinitarian Leadership

As I headed back from the Pastor's School at Hastings, I stopped to visit Jacob's Well in Kansas City. Jacob's Well is an emerging congregation started by Pastor Timothy Keel, who wrote the book "Intuitive Leadership". Our session had studied his book last summer and I was anxious to meet Timothy and to share a conversation around Trinitarian Leadership with him. Well it turned out the he was busy and I was referred instead to Executive Pastor, Deth (pronounced Date) Im. I was initially a little disappointed not to be meeting with the "head pastor" (sorry Deth) until I met Deth and we started to talk. Deth shared a passion and commitment to Trinitarian leadership (even though we're just in the midst of defining what it means)and a wonderful and perceptive insight into what it might mean as it gets lived out in the church. And after all, Trinitarian leadership is not about one person but rather the shared leadership of several persons who articulate, live and grow together in the mystery and ministry of the Triune God.
As I pulled up to Jacob's Well, I was surprised to see a very traditional looking church building, nestled in a quaint Kansas City neighborhood. Deth shared that Jacob's Well had started as shared office space for Timothy in Roanoke Presbyterian Church. It grew to include fellowship space upstairs as Jacob's Well started to worship. Gradually Roanoke Presbyterian let Jacob's Well use the Sanctuary on Sunday afternoons and finally, when Roanoke Church closed in the mid-nineties, they encouraged the Presbytery to sell the building to Jacob's Well. As Deth and I sat in the sanctuary, I felt very much at home in this space which had once housed a Presbyterian Congregation and as Deth and I talked I became more aware that our visions for ministry and Trinitarian leadership were more alike than different. I was excited to see Calvin's "Institutes" in his library along with Miroslav Volf's "Exclusion and Embrace" right next to his Wesleyan theolgians. I noticed Leonard Sweet's "Postmodern Pilgrims" and McClaren's "A New Kind of Christian" and Tony Jones' "The New Christian". In a sense, what my Trinitarian Leadership project is trying to do is to connect these two shelves on Deth's bookcase. Letty Russell's "Church in the Round" was another point of connection for us.
I was fascinated to hear that the planning group I would call the "worship committee" was called the "Kairos Team" at Jacob's Well because it is the group that sets apart a "time of being in worship". I was even more intrigued that the "mission committee" is called the "Koinonia team" to reflect how our participation in the mission of the Triune God shapes and molds us into communities in Christ. Wow! As we talked about how leadership teams can become intimate communities formed around Christ, Deth shared a recent opportunity at Jacob's Well for staff memebers to meet three times a week for prayer and Bible study (lectio divina, centering prayer, praying the offices). We talked about how that activity, could potentially be expanded to include the elder leadership in the faith community. It was a great meeting and a great opportunity to share how we can learn from each other in the broader Christian community and learn and grow together in Christ through this process.