May 4, 2006
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The Threshold Project
What should we do with our lives? That’s a question June and I have been asking ourselves and each other a lot these days. Since both of us have taken a big step back from church ministries for a while, we’re trying to figure out how school / vocation / career / church / community / purpose / calling tie together in our lifes. Yeah, it’s a big long question. And we’re pretty short on answers.
So tonight in a few hours we’re embarking on a new thing: The Threshold Project. Some CCFC’ers have done it before in a smallgroup context. As far as I can tell, it’s a married couple, Scott and Louise Walker, who do vocational counseling with a Christian viewpoint. We had an intro meeting a few weeks ago, and tonight’s first session begins with our life stories. They suggested writing the most formative influences in a series of short stories, in the following categories: family, relationships, school, recreation, work, spiritual. I combined school and work because I lump them in the same category of “things you have to do.” I also added “girls” as a whole section in itself.
And I added a section on “race” because I think June would like me to look into it.True to self, I used PowerPoint to draw a 7×8 table with those column headings, and rows corresponding to different eras in my life. And I filled in most of those 56 boxes with 8-point text summarizing memorable events. So you can look at a single page and see my life defined by themes and times. It’s kind of freaky! (Did you know in college I once went on a date with Axl Rose’s girlfriend’s sister?) Also, it was tiring to think through it all. I’m a person who tends to let go of the past and look to the future, and I only did this as an exercise to better inform the Walkers so they can understand and analyze me better. High bandwidth, baby!
The whole experience runs through a series of 9 exercises, of which this life story sharing is the first. I wonder if by the end, they tell me I should find a career in PowerPoint. Next slide, please.
Update: they mentioned a few books: “Joy at Work” as similar to my “Play defines my life” philosophy, and “The Eighth Habit” since I had mentioned “7 Habits” as being one of the most influential books in my spiritual life. Also, they said that both June and I were “measured” and “controlled” people, and that made me wonder about the downsides, like not letting each other see our raw emotions. It gave us a lot of stuff to talk about. Next session Monday.
Comments (7)
cool that you guys are doing this! i really like the walkers… very wise and discerning.
will be interesting to see how God leads/speaks through these times. looking forward to hearing about the process… that powerpoint sounds INTENSE.
interesting!
hi ed! graduation is fast approaching and i’ve been thinking a lot about these past four years in college… maybe i should try to make a powerpoint too =P will you and june come up for graduation? it’d be nice to see you guys again before i leave the country.
ha ha ha … too funny. God has certainly gifted you to be thorough in doing the things that you care about!
wow. i’m glad you guys are doing this and i hope the outcome is less stress about time management because you guys know what you’re saying yes to and what you’re saying no to. i’m looking forward to getting updates. and we know you are very skilled at the organization and powerpoint. but did you also write down how you felt/feel?
hey ed! yeah, i heard “Joy at Work” is a great book! in general, though, i find business-minded books too much ”to-the-point,” and efficient.
they’re good about helping organized people organize even better (but i believe that there is a plateau point, and perhaps you and June have already reached that?)
lacking the ability to draw out true emotions. perhaps if you want to explore the emotional side of things, maybe a Christian-marriage/relational book may better suffice?
Eh, emotions are overrated. Emotions suck; I hate them with a passion! Grrr, Aurgh!….
Now if they were in bullet-points and within 2-3 slides, maybe I can tolerate them….