sustain:if:able kiwi

a college of passion

Passion.

Twice this week I’ve been told that a Uniting College lecture is full of passion.

First, a visitor. A successful local business person, dropping in to see “what happens”? And at half-time, looking the lecturer in the eye and thanking them for their passion.

Second, a lecturer. Inviting guests to share of their ministry. Glad, at lecture’s end, of the passion. And how it infected the students, shaped the tutorial, infected the ongoing learning of the class.

Passion.

What is interesting is that passion is a core value at Uniting College. You know those vision statements, destined to sit at the bottom of a pile of papers? Well, the vision statement of Uniting College includes passion:

To develop life-long disciples and effective leaders for a healthy, missional Church, who are:
Passionate
Christ-centred
Highly skilled
Mission-oriented practitioners

So, somehow, passion has snuck out of our vision statement, leapt of the page and seeped into how classes. How?

I asked this question at our team yesterday. What does passion mean for us? And how has it leaked into our life?

And so together we talked as a team.

• is it because we care for our students? We’re not just about our research, we’re also about the people who come to learn and grow with us
• is it because we’re shaped by suffering? That in each of us as lecturers, there has been a personal learning, a vulnerability
• it is because we’re authentic? We want to walk our talk. We want what we say about faith, about ministry, about life, to be lived in us and livable through us.
• is it because we’re sacrificial? Many of us have been paid better elsewhere. We’ve taken pay reductions to work here, because we believe in the Kingdom, believe in what we’re doing.
• is it because we’re whole-bodied? The creative act invites us to take risks, to offer ourselves in risk into our projects, our lectures, our classes.

Passion. In us. In all of us as a team. In our life.  Snd so in our lectures. And please, in God’s grace, in our students.