What are its demographics, power dynamics, and how well does it align with its neighborhood and context?

Reflection Journal

Completion requirements

Specific Week 5 Instructions

Exegete (i.e., critically interpret) your  church  (or a church you know well).

· What are its demographics, power dynamics, and how well does it align with its neighborhood and context?

· What sources and voices influence preaching, teaching, and leadership?

· What sort of impact or power does the congregation pursue?

· Who belongs and who may not? How can you tell?

· To whom does the church belong, and how can you tell?

· Which comes first in the church: Belonging, Behaving, or Believing?

Overall Instructions

Each week, submit a 1–2-page written journal that invites you to reflect on contexts and cultures within which you live and may one day do ministry, along with guided topical reflections. Make connections between each topic and the readings, videos, and discussions in the course. Your journal each week invites you into  observational reflection. Using  specific examples to support your reflection as much as possible, explore, examine, and ultimately  exegete your perspectives, assumptions, influences, experiences, questions, reactions, and growth as you engage perspectives and stories of others who are both similar and different from you. Each week’s journal asks you to exegete (that is, expound and interpret) aspects of your context, similar to how you would exegete Scripture. The following questions can further guide your observations and interpretation each week:

1. What have I learned during readings, learning exercises, and efforts to hold tension between ideas in this course?

2. What stands out to me as I exegete my world, my influences, my church, my library, and my own formation?

3. What do I find challenging, uncomfortable, or unresolved?

4. How am I choosing to adapt to new experiences or information?

5. What am I feeling about opportunities for growth, change, and my own calling to ministry in a globalized world?