by LauraChristel Horlings, Alumni of Cohort 6
For the past two years, I have been on a journey with Soul Care Institute as part of my professional development for my role with SIL as translation program coordinator. In preparation for our last retreat in March, the gifts of SCI had been much on my mind and in my conversation. I often said, “I recommend it".
Until a friend asked in response, “What’s the selling point?
A simple enough question, but it rather threw me off – I don’t sell things, I don’t know how to sum up for a selling point. However since my journey with SCI is nearly complete surely I know if it was successful. The selling point is usually the success of a project or journey. And the success of Soul Care Institute is how it got my eyes off success:
SCI manners and practices return me to the way Jesus meant for discipleship and took my eyes off success, even spiritual success.
Ambition for spiritual success is not the motivation I thought signed me up for SCI in 2017. My intended goal was to take the healing work I was doing personally and integrate it with Scripture engagement to offer to others in my Choctaw ministry. Even had I noticed, I would have thought I was on track, signing up for success in the right place.
After all, I derived my definition of success from Jesus’ teaching! Success in my relationship to God, success in being who I’m meant to be in my roles at home, at work, and in the community: success of the soul. Subtly and very concretely, success and its nemesis were exactly the characters in charge, the companions with whom I had signed up and traveled to Soul Care Institute.
By the time I began SCI in 2019 I experienced myself as mostly a failure whether at home or in ministry, in discipling others and even in my own discipleship journey. I’m pretty sure the actual sticking with the Soul Care journey came not from my heart, but from friends. They believed for me that Jesus remains with me and is delighted with me. They said the words to spur me on to engage SCI as intended. By the hand of God, I was in the right place.
Every soul and every discipleship journey is a mixture of failures and successes. During the two years since beginning SCI I have experienced some deep failures. Also God has given graces for some incredible successes. SCI has given me fuel for the fire of my ministry with the Choctaw and steadied me in the discipleship that comes with having children.
The way Jesus meant for discipleship is much bigger than Soul Care Institute and came way before Soul Care Institute. However, SCI has the grace to be one place that renews real discipleship. I think, rather than say I recommend SCI, I want to say I love SCI people and practices and stories.
And my favorite story to remember is that God was there during SCI to meet me and peel back some of the layers of my focus on my success and failures and restore the sight of Jesus, my first love.