Fast Forward / Rewind

Sunday, March 1, 2009

Today marks the beginning of the end of my time at GES. It is the first day of the last month of my time here, it seems. It also marks the first of my eight remaining weeks in Southeast Asia before returning to Canada… though for how long, only God knows at present.


Let’s rewind… … …

My last official update left us all in the lurch, not knowing if my future would contain another year at GES or not. If you’ve been an avid fan of my blog, you pretty much know how that’s all turned out. To save all of you from needless internet surfing, I’ll do my best to distill the events of the past two weeks.

The day after writing my last letter, I went and met with my fellow leaders in the church plant mission. I left the details of why w were meeting vague, hoping to keep guards down just in case what I was hearing from my employers was true—that being that those with whom I was working were being highly offensive, divisive & hurtful.

The meeting was pretty straight-forward. I asked them about the beginnings of this church plant, where the idea came from, how it all started & what motivations were behind it. When I had planned to meet with them, I thought that we’d talk for maybe a half hour. Man was I wrong. It turned out that the desire for planting a church had been in their hearts for a long time, and that the feasibility of such a plan actually began to materialise about a year ago. One thing led to another, and at the end of the deliberating process, *voila!* we got an active pursuit of a dream in the hearts of some people.

Satisfied with their story and the consistencies it had with other events and reports, I proceeded to ask my brothers & sisters in Christ if they were aware of any word or deed that may have caused offense toward my employers. Initially, they couldn’t think of anything, but after a few minutes, a story was recounted to me wherein some activities or words, they thought, possibly could have been misconstrued as being offensive or disrespectful. They assured me that it never was their intention to be rude or upsetting, and when I asked if they would be willing to meet with the owners of the school to discuss the issue of my provisional return (the provision being I was not allowed to associate with anyone who was part of this church plant, if I wanted to continue working at GES), they expressed an eager desire to do so.

After my meeting with these people, it appeared to me that the issue at hand was the result of some major miscommunication(s) between these two parties. I then contacted my employers, who had flown to the States for a recruiting trip, and asked if they would be willing to discuss this matter & see if some sort of resolution could be reached. The next morning, I read their response which expressed appreciation in my concern for this issue, but that the conditions of my return would not change. Following the Biblical precedent, I urged them a second time to reconsider, mentioning that the issue at hand extended beyond my return, and in fact, its reach touched the very foundations of the Christian Church. I urged them to reconsider the communication black-out in service of promoting unity within the Body of Christ.

My second response from them echoed the first. I was lauded for expressing my concern about this situation and they admired my desire to see reconciliation, but I was told that they felt their position was the most spiritual one to have. They stated that they were working under the premise of Hebrews 12:14, and told me that their condition still stood: I would only be welcome in the GES 2009-10 family if I severed all associations with the Christians who were working to plant this church in Nonthaburi.

My hand was thus forced. I had no recourse but to turn down the terms of my contract. I could not, in good conscience, willingly dissociate myself from other Christians for the purpose of keeping my job. The choice was simple: Keep my job & promote division and discord within the Body, or lose my job and stand on the side of unity and harmony. I expressed my regret to my employers and told them that I would be more than willing to return to GES if they expressed a desire to work toward reconciliation within the greater Church.


The Fallout

As it stands, the reality of my termination at GES has shed new light into my current surroundings. The library catalogue software that the school purchased for over $3k USD in September, and that I’ve been furiously labouring on/with for the past 4 months, I’ve been told, will likely never graduate to a status of “fully operational.” In light of this, my goal of cataloguing the entire English library at GES has shifted toward an attainable goal before I leave: catalogue the entire non-fiction collection, so that at least the software could be used by students to locate research resources & titles in the library. Currently, as I’ve previously stated, there isn’t even an old-school version of a catalogue anywhere that anyone can find, so students end up struggling to find books on topics, assisted only by the librarian’s scant recollections of the several thousand books within the four book-lined walls. When the non-fiction section has a completed catalogue, students then will at least have some sort of method to search the library beyond staring blankly at the dozen or so shelves of random titles.

My impending end at GES also bears implications in the IT world on campus. The dreams I had of setting up network accounts & internal groupware services for staff & students will not be realised. The gigabit backbone connecting the main office to the school buildings will also probably never become reality, which in turn limits the effectiveness of the copious improvements I’d made to the school’s network environment. And, although I’ve established a couple of really slick WSUS servers—one for office workstations & one for the discreet-network computer lab, these services inevitably need a look-over every once in a while, not to mention the other various acronyms established this year: AD & GP, DNS & WINS, SharePoint search services, DHCP, RIS/WDS, PXE & TFTP—and the more common things like firewall settings, Antivirus health monitoring, hardware & software maintenance, etc. My hope is to leave the network(s) with as much extended features as I can while also making the environment as maintenance-free as possible (who knows what type of IT strengths the school will employ next year or 5 years from now?)


Conclusions

I’m sad that my time at GES is coming to an end, but I knew from the beginning that this was the inevitable outcome—if not this year, then next. In its current state, GES will never become an institution that generates careers. It has the potential, but it would need the leadership & vision to see such an outcome materialise.

What I will miss the most in 26 days, after we see the final day of this year’s term culminate, will be my students. I will miss the young, vibrant minds; the “I’m better than you” rebellious thorns-in-the-side; the unmotivated; the under-challenged; the overwhelmed and most of all, the curious way that these students always seem to want to hang out with their teachers after school. Sadly, I will probably miss out on the development of those new Christians & the gentle nudging of those newly interested toward the amazing thing that we call relationship with Jesus. But who knows? Maybe God will have me back here in September?

I can’t yet say.