Sailing Uncharted Waters

by Courage & Renewal Facilitator Paul Michelac 

“I have seen a man walk on a high stretched rope holding a long pole for balance: memories and dreams can do that, be a great help.” 

Rabia

How would you make sense of this passage from the 8th-century Sufi poet, Rabia?  What word or image speaks to your soul or grabs your attention?  For Reverend Paul Kottke, Senior Pastor of the University Park United Methodist Church in Denver, Courage to Lead retreat alum, and advocate of Courage & Renewal for Clergy and Lay Leaders, Rabia’s quote carries several important meanings: “Dreams in the sense of vision, and memory is that collective wisdom of our past that we do well to study.  The metaphor is sailing.  I’m not a sailor but I’m told that as you are sailing across a body of water you find a landmark in front of you and that becomes your dream.  If you only look that way, then you are not paying any account to the cross-currents that are going to push you off course.  The only way to keep yourself on track is to look backwards, so memory is that looking back. Looking back [memories] and looking forward [vision] then keeps you on track.”

As the captain, the leader of his church, Paul sees his role as that of a weaver: “I weave community. I’m constantly looking for ways to connect people together such that they feel a stronger commitment to life, to values, so that they feel empowered.  It is invariably in conflict that there is an opportunity to weave it in a new way.”  And the threads of Paul’s sailcloth are rich with 20 years of service to the interfaith community as well years of shepherding the spiritual journey of his congregation. The University Park United Methodist Church sits on a small hill across University Boulevard from the University of Denver, an urban campus on the outskirts of Denver.  Although the street and campus are full of with a sense of busyness, cars and commerce moving along and deep academic engagement  in the service of students, Paul’s church projects a calm and inviting presence.  This is no surprise, as the man himself exudes an energetic, focused, and calm demeanor.  His dedication and joy to his life’s calling radiates from his face.  It is no wonder that leaders within the national level of the United Methodist Church encouraged Paul to move up the leadership ranks within the denomination.  But due, in part, to Courage to Lead, Paul has elected to remain at the “pastoral level and do interfaith and courage work together.”

Since completing a Courage to Lead seasonal retreat series, Paul has developed a richer experience base to describe spiritual formation: “It is really an internal response that gets expressed externally. My observation is that people who go through the structured spiritual formation of the Church often end up more individualistic, less engaged with the external.  The beauty of Courage to Lead work is that we really end up with an expectation that we are going to remain engaged with the public.  And prior to my retreats I was wrestling with a sense of not being centered with myself. I was wrestling with a dryness of the soul.  Following my retreats I did come back renewed and impassioned.” Paul speaks of this inner and outer change as a sort of “being born again, obviously in a very different way than the more evangelical use of the term, but it has really been true in the last three years this grounding has caused me to be born again with a sense of passion, more focused, less scattered and less anxious.” 

The change that Paul speaks of manifests itself in his leadership. Yet this change, like the man, is gentle and invitational. He lets his actions speak what he knows to be true: “I really try to let my actions and presence just reflect my beliefs … in a fairly calm way and reflective way that is still not disengaged from the world."  This calm, interactive presence was evident in Paul’s recent interactions with a senior leader in the wider church community.  There was some concern within his congregation that this senior leader would call into question Paul’s involvement in the interfaith movement.  Paul’s response to this potentially divisive situation reflects his Courage & Renewal grounding: “My parishioner asked, ‘how can you not be anxious?’  Well, to be honest, I’m not, because I’m absolutely convinced that this merging of the soul work with interfaith work has to happen if this generation is not going to cave into fear.”  Paul sent an email to this church leader asking to “to sit down and talk with you about why interfaith work is so important in the 21st century and how I can engage this as a committed United Methodist pastor.” Paul’s proactive stance to this apparent challenge to his core beliefs grows directly out of his Courage & Renewal work: “Prior to Courage to Lead, I would have responded ‘thank you’ and played it safe.  For me to come back and say that I needed to meet with this leader about this being important was a very specific example of the [effect of] Courage work.”

Paul’s ability to confidently chart a new direction for his congregation is evident to his parishioners: “My parishioners say something is different. I’m more grounded and my preaching is better.  This is in the context, and this may sound egotistical, that I’m told that I’m one of the best preachers this church has ever had. So this change is not seen in the sense that ‘thank God’ he finally got his act together. They see that I’ve gone to a different level and they are intrigued by that.” 

Paul understands both his increased willingness to follow his “inner preacher” and the positive perceptions of his congregation as a direct outcome of his Courage & Renewal work.  In particular, he names this personal and professional change as a form of connectedness: “At the start of the sampler retreat my first question going in was: ‘Why is Courage the operative word here?'  Then I got it.  Once you have that connectedness, it is more of a violation to not listen to your soul than any violence that can occur outside of it.  And if I have to choose between one or the other I’m going to stay connected with my courage.  We are not going out there saying we are going to be courageous folk, we are just going out there saying we are going to be connected folks. And others will say, ‘That took a lot of courage to take that position.'  Well no, it was just what I needed to do.  And it does have me standing forth in the midst of my institutional work in ways that has my colleagues saying: ‘Gosh, Paul you are really doing some courageous stuff’.”

Paul is acutely aware that his calling to serve goes beyond attending to his soul, his church, and his denomination to include wider societal and global concerns: “The greatest danger societally and globally is that we are in a huge flux, and in the midst of flux the first human response is the lowest response, fear and violence.  And part of leadership is to caution people about the first response and invite them into a more tempered response that indeed we can rise above this with hope and with vision and that good will come out of this.  My thankfulness is that I have the grounding to not get hooked by this fear.  To continually invite people to take deep breaths so that we can move beyond this.  And the second is that I can offer a vision of hope.  We can ground ourselves in this vision of hope even though we may not see the end result.  The goodness of life, which is grounded in our relationships, will survive. The United Methodist Church is well positioned to be a servant leader in the 21st century … but we have got to have the vision.”

Paul is an accomplished mariner of church politics and spiritual formation; a person highly sought after for his advice and guidance.  Over his long career he has attended and led countless workshops on spiritual renewal and church business. So what does Courage & Renewal work offer this charismatic and effective leader that he hasn’t already mastered?  Paul’s answer is as simple and complex as the work itself: “The retreats keep us from getting trapped in our heads.  Most interfaith work has been head-oriented, sharing information back and forth.  There is something about the retreat that is the balance, the interplay, the movement, whatever those languages are; personal time, small group time, large group time, culminating in the clearness committee interwoven with poetry … themes lifted up.  This is different than what I’ve experienced in other settings.  The work speaks to me.”  And despite his love for this work, the retreats have also left him knowing that his charted course lies with his church, supporting Courage  & Renewal work along the Front Range of Colorado, and working to change the Church he loves so dearly: “So why don’t I stop all this work with the United Methodist Church, quit all that and become a Courage & Renewal facilitator?  My answer is that my calling, and I say this lovingly, is to be in the belly of the beast.  This institutional system has it warts, has it failings.  But the institutional system has great resources as well.  And Courage is not about me withdrawing from this work, it is about empowering me to stay present in the midst of this work.”

Sail on Paul; remember, dream, watch the crosscurrents and sail on to that far distant shore…