Canoeing the Mountains – Christian Leadership in Uncharted Territory

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Bolsinger says that ministry on the map is about solving “technical challenges.” Their solutions are based on best practices, offered by an expert. For example, how to lead a Bible study or set up a fund-raiser. If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.” What we are calling “shared values,” Paul terms as the “same mind.” And that same mind is more than thinking the same way; it is about common cause, common care and a shared commitment to look out for the others.” Nearly two million people come to Alaska every summer, some on large cruise ships, some in single kayaks–all in search of the last great wilderness, the Africa of America. It is exactly the America Heacox finds in this story of paradox, love, and loss. The divorce leaves Richey questioning everything, while struggling to find a way forward. To get his bearings, he enters the first Ultimate Florida Challenge, an all-out twelve-hundred-mile kayak race around Florida. A number of pastors are ready to throw in the towel. Studies show that if given a chance to do something else, most pastors would jump at it. Reportedly, upwards of fifteen hundred pastors leave the ministry every month.

No matter how much power and authority you perceive resides in your title or position, no matter how eloquently you articulate the call of God and the needs of the world, no matter how well you strategize, plan and pray, the actual behaviors of the congregation—the default functioning, the organizational DNA—dominate in times of stress and change.” Unrelenting winds, carnivorous polar bears, snake nests, sweltering heat, and constant hunger. Paddling from Minneapolis to Hudson Bay, following the 2,000-mile route made famous by Eric Sevareid in his 1935 classic Canoeing with the Cree, Natalie Warren and Ann Raiho faced unexpected trials, some harrowing, some simply odd. But for the two friends—the first women to make this expedition—there was one timeless challenge: the occasional pitfalls that test character and friendship. Warren’s spellbinding account retraces the women’s journey from inspiration to Arctic waters, giving readers an insider view from the practicalities of planning a three-month canoe expedition to the successful accomplishment of the adventure of a lifetime. In this coming-of-middle-age memoir, Kim Heacox, writing in the tradition of Abbey, McPhee, and Thoreau, discovers an Alaska reborn from beneath a massive glacier, where flowers emerge from boulders, moose swim fjords, and bears cross crevasses with Homeric resolve. In such a place Heacox finds that people are reborn too, and their lives begin anew with incredible journeys, epiphanies, and successes. All in an America free of crass commercialism and overdevelopment.Canoeing the upper Wye is best if you want a slow quiet meander. The river is wide and gently drifts downhill. There are a couple of mini rapids that require concentration, but nothing too challenging. Andrew is Director of Communications for the North American Lutheran Church (NALC), and was ordained a deacon in the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) in 2019. He currently serves as assisting clergy at Incarnation Anglican Church (State College, PA), and has served as a lay minister in Lutheran and Baptist churches since 2010. Andrew received a Bachelor of Science in Religion degree from Liberty University (Lynchburg, VA) and a Master of Divinity degree from Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry and the North American Lutheran Seminary (Ambridge, PA). In May 2022, he completed his Master of Sacred Theology degree from Trinity, where his thesis explored positive and negative missiological practices used by Anglican missionaries to the Samburu tribe in northwest Kenya, particularly surrounding inculturation, gender, and indigenous leadership. He is married to Shannon, and has a son, Ephrem. They live together in Boalsburg, PA where they enjoy walking outside on nice summer days. Tod Bolsinger, Canoeing the Mountains: Christian Leadership in Uncharted Territory (Westmont, IL: IVP Books, 2018), 19, 232.

Senior authorities, those above one with whom connection and relationship are critical to support one through a change process. Think of Jefferson's role with Lewis and Clark. We’ve been providing free travel content on Anywhere We Roam since 2017. If you appreciate what we do, here are some ways you can support us.Bolsinger splits his wisdom into five parts. First, in “Understanding Uncharted Territory,” Bolsinger emphasizes that good leaders in this age recognize that the world in front of them is nothing like the world behind them. [2] For the church, the environment in which we pastors led churches in the past was to open a building and put out a sign; this is all it took for people to come. People were favorable to the church. But now, Bolsinger warns, we live in a post-Christian society, where people are suspicious of the church and unwilling to give up a good Sunday. His point? If we lead with the methods we used in the 1950s, we will be quite upset about the declining results. Bolsinger also notes that a large number of pastors are leaving ministry behind each year because they do not have the tools needed to lead in the church of the twenty-first century. Seminary did not train them to lead, but only focused on skills necessary to preach, serve in hospitals, lead weddings, etc. Many pastors were trained in a setting where they could assume people would come to hear and respect what they had to preach, but people in our society simply do not care anymore about our message. These changes in the world ahead are only more evident in a society marked by Coronavirus. In 1930 two novice paddlers—Eric Sevareid and Walter C. Port—launched a secondhand 18-foot canvas canoe into the Minnesota River at Fort Snelling for an ambitious summer-long journey from Minneapolis to Hudson Bay. Without benefit of radio, motor, or good maps, the teenagers made their way over 2,250 miles of rivers, lakes, and difficult portages. Nearly four months later, after shooting hundreds of sets of rapids and surviving exceedingly bad conditions and even worse advice, the ragged, hungry adventurers arrived in York Factory on Hudson Bay—with winter freeze-up on their heels. First published in 1935, Canoeing with the Cree is Sevareid’s classic account of this youthful odyssey. The river now carries you downstream where you can laze about, stop for picnics, go for a swim or rush through the rapids. Now and then you need to decide which side of the river to take, but if there is any potentially dangerous sections (i.e. a tree down on the side of the river that you need to avoid) the hire company will have told you which way to go. For Christian leaders this means that ministry is not only the means to bring the gospel to the world, ministry together is how God makes a congregation into a corps that is ready to continually bring the gospel in new ways to a changing world. As missionaries who have been thrown together into unfamiliar surroundings with little more than a sense of call and commitment to each other, when we love each other and are dedicated to our mission, we change.” Ancient records of canoes are found from the Pacific Northwest to the coast of Maine, in Minnesota and Mexico, in the Southeast and across the Caribbean. And if a native of those distant times might encounter a canoe of our day—whether birch bark or dugout or a modern marvel made of carbon fiber—its silhouette would be instantly recognizable. This is the story of that singular American artifact, so little changed over time: of canoes, old and new, the people who made them, and the labors and adventures they shared. With features of technology, industry, art, and survival, the canoe carries us deep into the natural and cultural history of North America.

Management is about keeping promises to a constituency; leadership is about an organization fulfilling its mission and realizing its reason for being.”A tempered leader is formed in the act of leading, through reflection, relationships, and a rule of life, in a rhythm of leading and not leading.” Seminary didn't train me for this." "Our church is dying and I have no clue what to do." Over and over, Tod Bolsinger encountered these statements in his consulting work. Pastors are trained in teaching, liturgics, and pastoral care, and often, those tools just don't seem enough in our changing world. Bolsinger likens this to the moment Lewis and Clark climbed the Lemhi Pass, having canoed up the Missouri River, and instead of expecting to find a river on the other side of the mountain that would carry them to the Pacific, they found...mountains. The needed to exchange canoes for horses, and adapt to an "off the map" situation. In this book, Bolsinger considers the adaptive leadership of Lewis and Clark, and applies it to Christian leaders often tempted to try to "canoe the mountains," because they don't know any other way to lead. Often, they may be the greatest obstacle to transformative change in their churches or organizations. The choice they face is between adventure and organizational death. All of this is part of understanding the "uncharted territory" that calls for a new kind of leadership. This seems to me to be a critically important book for leadership teams and pastors. So often our approach when things are not working is simply to double down and try harder, which, as someone has pointed out, is a definition of insanity. The willingness to leave the canoes behind, and learn new skills, to get up on the balcony, and then try new interventions rooted in careful observation and interpretation and not reaction, and to stay relentlessly focused on mission separated Lewis and Clark from other explorers. Whitewater Books 1 Introduction to Paddling: No Barriers (The Young Adult Adaptation): A Blind Man’s Journey to Kayak the Grand Canyon By Erik Weihenmayer