This month we share strategies for relevantly crossing sectors for member care, mission/aid, and beyond. How do we practically connect and contribute across sectors In order to stay in touch with our globalizing world and to further develop our member care skills?
The first resource links you to core suggestions for Charting Your Course through the Sectors (from chapter two in the new Global Member Care book). This chapter also updates the international member care model (five spheres, 2002, O'Donnell and Pollock) to help guide us into the next developmental phase of member care. The second resource provides suggestions for how you and your colleagues can effectively use the multi-sectoral materials in the new Global Member Care book (from the Application section on the Global MCA website).
Crossing sectors is a crucial direction that supports and shapes good global practice in member care. It is also crucial for addressing many of the world’s serious challenges, highlighted in the opening, brief video below: The UN Year in Review 2013.
Warm greetings from Geneva,
Kelly and Michèle O’Donnell
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The United Nations Year in Review 2013
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nntbLKgGajw
We think that watching this short video is well-worth your time. The opening comment sets the tone for this summary report: “Amid continuing turmoil and crises, it was a year of major strides for diplomacy as the United Nations worked to negotiate peace, instill hope and define a sustainable future for all.” The final comment, from Ban Ki-moon, cuts to the core with realistic inspiration and relevant instruction for us all.
Charting Your Course
"The [research] results are startling in the sense that Christians and non-Christians appear to be living in quite separate worlds. This distance has implications for Christian missions but is also problematic when it comes to dialogue, peace initiatives, environmental and health challenges, and many other areas of human interaction. Our hope is that highlighting the problem will help in planning solutions for the future." Todd Johnson, David Barrett, and Peter Crossing, “Christianity 2010” (2010)
Three suggestions for crossing sectors (excerpted from chapter 2 in Crossing Sectors for Serving Humanity; free online preview of this chapter and more are in the e-book version on Amazon). "This chapter discusses the nature of sectors and their relevance for member care in mission/aid. I also present ten lessons that I have learned and three suggestions for crossing sectors….described in terms of issues, involvements, and influences."
"1. Issues: focus on the areas that matter to you. What are you already interested in or involved in? What are you passionate about? What are you naturally motivated to learn a lot more about? Take it further by exploring what is happening in these areas within other sectors. Be prepared to expand your “experiential boundaries,”
knowing that it can be a bit uncomfortable but also rewarding...
2. Involvements: choose your level of activity. The process of crossing sectors can be understood as a “continuum of involvement.” This continuum has three reference points to help identify the degree to which we may want to get involved in a given sector: 1. Informed 2. Integrated 3. Immersed…Crossing sectors might get all of our adrenalin flowing, but as we have learned, it requires clear personal boundaries…
3. Influences: get a grid. What has influenced your desire and ability to cross sectors? The grid below can help you…track some of the main influences that have personally affected your involvement in crossing sectors…As you review your past, you may very well get a better sense of what your future course might look like..."
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Using Multi-Sectoral Materials
"The United Nations is a 20th-century organization facing a 21st century challenge as an institution with impressive achievements but also haunting failures, one that mirrors not just the world’s hopes but its inequalities and disagreements, and most important, one that has changed but needs to change further…The single greatest problem facing the United Nations is that there is no single greatest problem; rather there are a dozen different ones each day clamoring for attention." Shashi Tharoor, “The Good for Something UN (2006)
Seven suggestions for using the materials in Crossing Sectors for Serving Humanity (excerpted from the Vol 2 Application section on the GMC book series website)
"1. Read and discuss the book's Introduction (Growing Broadly in Mission/Aid--and Beyond) and Chapter 2 (Charting Your Course through the Sectors). Take special note of the member care model that guides the book (above image) as well as the new global member care model to guide the field…
2. Review the Table of Contents and note the chapters that interest you the most…
3. Go through the materials as a group--colleagues, part of a training course/academic text, webinars (TBA). As you read the material, keep in mind the five goals for crossing sectors…
4. Write 3-5 Take Aways (personal applications) for each of the chapters you read. What are the most relevant items for you and what do you plan to do based on this material...
5. Spread the word about this book and the important direction that it represents for member care and mission/aid.and beyond. Include the topics/processes related to crossing sectors in conferences, organizational goal planning, and the post 2015 sustainable development agenda.
6. Keep current via the Vol 2 Updates section on this website (and other relevant sources) as you "go broadly and grow deeply”…
7. Form a "caravan of colleagues" for mutual support and learning as you cross sectors in your life/work. .."
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Final Thoughts
A Personal Word from Kelly and Michèle
We are very excited about the growing impact of Volume 2 in the Global Member Care series—both the hard copy (Dec 2013) and now the e-book version on Amazon (Jan 2014). We have carefully chosen the materials in Crossing Sectors for Serving Humanity to help support you in your work as well as the overall direction of member care and mission/aid. Many of the materials may not feel exactly familiar but we encourage you to read them carefully and grapple with their implications for your life/work in our globalizing world. We sincerely hope that this book will travel far, wide, and deep, on behalf of the diversity of remarkable people who serve in mission/aid and other sectors as well as on behalf of humanity itself.
Contact us if you are interested in being part of upcoming webinars
on Crossing Sectors and Global Integration. mcaresources@gmail.com
Special historical note--100 global member care issues (2001-2014)
: This Update (February 2014) marks the 100th global update for member care that Kelly has helped to do/send: WEA-MemCa (2001-2006, 17 issues), Ethne to Ethne-Member Care (2006-2009, 25 issues), and Member Care Associates (2009-current, 58 issues). We are celebrating!
References
Johnson, T., D. Barrett, and P. Crossing. 2010. Christianity 2010: A view from the new Atlas of Global Christianity. International Bulletin of Missionary Research 34: 29–36. http://www.internationalbulletin.org/archive/all/2010/1
Tharoor, S. 2006. The good for something UN. Newsweek, September 4. http://tharoor.in/archives/st-for-sg/article-in-newsweek/
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More MCA Resources
Global Portal for Good Practice (website)
Reflections, Research, and Resources for Good Practice (weblog)
Global Mental Health: A Global Map for a Global Movement (website)
Global Integration: Connecting and Contributing (overview materials)
