Episode 16: Context Matters with Mark Calhoun, Wyoming DS

Our guest today is Mark Calhoun, District Superintendent for Wyoming and our topic is context: how important understanding the contextual lay of the landscape is to effective ministry.  

I have a world of respect for Mark Calhoun.  Mark is extremely thoughtful and always engages his brain before he speaks.  He epitomizes mindfulness in a leader.

An unedited Adobe file of the transcript is HERE.  Note:  Unedited.  

Part of Mark's drive towards context emerged from his time at St. Paul School of Theology in Kansas City.  The focus there was on understanding the demographics and the community makeup of the local church.  Who is there?  What does it look like?  

Mark served in Wichita, Kansas before coming home to the Mountain Sky Conference.  He was four years in Polson, Montana and eight in Lander, Wyoming before taking the Superintendency in Wyoming in 2020.  He has been a gifted connectional leader in those three plus years.  Gifted.  

Mark mentions he is a Type 2 on the Enneagram, and that is a helper and defined better HERE. If context is important to Mark, and it is, being in relationship is also of importance to him.  He works hard at being relational.  Easy to state as a goal, much more challenging to live out.  

I confess:  my heart was strangely warmed when Mark talked about how he felt sitting with people in moments of joy and pain.  It is frankly a blessing that we as pastors are called to sit with people in the extremes of life:  joy, pain, anxiety.  Part of the call.   

This podcast was produced on December 12 & 13, for release on December 18, 2023.  Please share if it speaks to you.  

My next two guests will be the Reverend Doctor Tom Barlow of Iliff School of Theology and Reverend France Davis, Pastor Emeritus of Calvary Baptist in Salt Lake City.  Those podcasts will be released on January 1st and 15th respectively.  Tom Bandy (with Dr. Barlow) and Black History (with Pastor Davis) will be our starting points for discussion.  I will muse a little on things connectional on January 29th.  If you have a potential guest for me, send me a note.  I would love to hear from you in general.  

My email is dennis at (@) mantuan dot (.) org (and written that way to confound harvesting bots.).