Transformed & Transformational

We are back for season 5! Author and artist Ruth Chou Simons joins Heather and Keane for this first episode of the season focused on finding our home in Christ, wherever He leads us.

• “I care about words as art.”
• “‘The heaven declare the glory of the Lord,’ the Bible says. Ultimately, we are not just believing that God is on high and He is sovereign and He’s the ruler of all and Creator God; we don’t just think that and believe it, we experience it when we see the sunrise and the sunset.”
• “The more we know that God is God and we are not, the more we start really being able to worship Him for who He is.”
• “When you make your home with God, you’ll never be far from home.”
• “Sometimes we associate home with location or environment or kind of furniture or the smells… Nothing can truly satisfy the way my relationship with Jesus can.”
• “If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.” C.S. Lewis
• “God offers to all of us a sense of belonging, home, and absolute security, regardless of where you live… It doesn’t matter where God takes you, if He’s the one that you’re walking with, you actually have access to your true home.”
• “The first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day is to have my soul happy in the Lord.” George Mueller
• “Everything that is scary out there, I’m sheltered from ultimately by the blood of Christ, but also I have safety and comfort under the shelter of God’s wing. And that shelter is true home.”
• “Throughout Scripture, when we see God pursuing His people, when we’re being offered a relationship with Jesus, it’s always through presence.”
• “He is our shepherd as in He is caring for us, He holds us, we are close to Him.”
• Hebrews 11:16

Learn more about Ruth Chou Simons here and find her new book here!

What’s changing our lives:

• Keane: Community photography class
• Heather: Changes to her church small group
• Ruth: FaceTiming her sons in other states and ginger turmeric shots

Weekly Spotlight: Santa Cruz Christian Learning Center

We’d love to hear from you! [email protected] Podcast Website: https://teachbeyond.org/podcast Learn about TeachBeyond: https://teachbeyond.org/ 

Looking for practical suggestions for beginning the school year well? Megan Randolph, TeachBeyond’s Director of School Services, shares doable tips to prepare for the year logistically and spiritually. This is a great episode to share with your friends in education!

• “The rhythm of an academic year is necessary for the longevity of teachers.”
• “At the end of the first week of school, what do we want our students or our learners that are in our care to know? We want them to know that we care about them, we want them to know that we value excellence, and we want them to know that we’re passionate about our work - the content and also the work of education.”
• “If you can do that bigger picture planning now at the start of the school year, I think that will save so much time and allow you freedom later on to pivot as you need.”
• “Plan, put effort into it, pray about it, approach it in a positive manner, and then just make the best with what you can and with what you have because, at the end of the day, actually how you approach the first day of school is really going to set the tone for your students.”
• Tips from past guests:
• Linda: Have a plan for classroom management
• Esther: Have students share a special item from home
• Anna: Give each student a fresh start and view them as children of God
• Jonathan: Keep the students the main focus over the lesson plan
• Lindsay: Welcome each student personally as they enter the room
• Tosca: Take time to reflect and remember that God is writing your story

What’s changing our lives:

• Keane: Sons back in school
• Heather: Watching the Olympics
• Megan: Packr app

Weekly Spotlight: Belize Christian Academy

We’d love to hear from you! [email protected] Podcast Website: https://teachbeyond.org/podcast Learn about TeachBeyond: https://teachbeyond.org/ 

For International TCK Day we are going back in our archives to our conversation with Michèle Phoenix from Season 1, Episode 22.   Michèle is known around the world as an advocate for Third Culture Kids (TCKs) and the children of missionaries. Listen in for a glimpse into the world of TCKs!

• “Passport culture plus adoptive culture(s) equals Third Culture Kid (TCK).”
• “Because I have those two cultures in me, my closest sense of belonging is with others who are, like me, multiculturally formed in their formative years. There’s a misconception that third culture is actually my individual third culture that I form out of the two that shaped me [...] but actually the term means that we find belonging with others who are also third cultured.”
• “My differences were similar to their differences, and that I wasn’t weird; I was a TCK.”
• “Mostly belonging in multiple places increases their skillset; it makes them bridge builders.”
• “To ask them to figure out what is uniquely one culture and uniquely another in the way they think and in the way they think, even in the way they speak, is going to be a real challenge for them.”
• “Something that feels fairly minor to a monocultural adult who has lived multiculturally for a while might feel like this tidal wave of all of these emotions coming back to the TCK or MK.”
• Article: Nine Tips for Living Well in a Season of Grief
• “The enormity of the blessing and the strength that comes from growing up as a TCK is immeasurable.  You have blessed them in ways that you probably won’t ever be able to fully realize.”
• “Generalizations about TCKs are not always entirely helpful, but knowing what the majority of them tend toward I think can be a really helpful thing in mentoring them and walking with them.”
• “Because of our experience seeing things done differently in other parts of the world [...] we can start to draw people from their highly selective clusters toward each other.”
• Learn more about Michèle’s ministry here!

What's changing our lives:

• Keane: Reading more than one book at a time
• Heather: The Next Right Thing Journal by Emily P. Freeman
• Michèle: Four Tiny-Small Questions for the Quarantine-Weary
  • What small thing can I do that will make me feel alive in this moment?
  • What small thing can I do to take some sting out of this day?
  • What small thing can I do to make today feel purposeful?
  • What small thing can I do today that will connect me with God?

We'd love it if you would subscribe, rate, review, and share this show! And as always, you can reach us at [email protected].

For this special summer episode we are re-releasing a past episode from Season 2. 

Keane talks to Liz Steggall-Lewis, Director of Beyond Borders, about World Refugee Week and God’s heart for the refugee. We also hear about the work Beyond Borders is doing to serve the most vulnerable.

• "The character of God shines in these stories of displacement."
• "In Malachi it talks about the way that you treat foreigners, orphans, and widows is a sign of your righteousness."
• "The whole Biblical command is to care for those who are vulnerable and to welcome and love the foreigners among us."
• Resources:
• World Refugee Sunday - Exodus World Service
• World Relief
• Refugee by Alan Gratz
• Beyond Borders Sponsorship
• Life Jacket Documentary

What’s changing our lives:

• Keane: Summer Traveling
• Liz: Pizza

We’d love to hear from you! [email protected] Podcast Website: https://teachbeyond.org/podcast Learn about TeachBeyond: https://teachbeyond.org/

TeachBeyond President, David Durance, joins Heather and Keane for the final episode of the season! Keane reveals the season-long mystery message, David shares about the TeachBeyond Way, and, of course, all three share what is changing their lives. Keep listening to hear clips from past episodes in this Season 4 Finale!

“For us to be on mission together, it’s not just enough to know what we’re doing and where we’re going, but how we’re going to get there. And the TeachBeyond Way gives us this wonderful starting point, so that as we go and live out the mission around the world, we know this is the common thing that makes us TeachBeyond.”

What’s changing our lives:

• Keane: Becoming a foster parent
• Heather: Rabbits in the yard
• David: Reading through the Bible at a slower pace this year 

We’d love to hear from you! [email protected] Podcast Website: https://teachbeyond.org/podcast Learn about TeachBeyond: https://teachbeyond.org/ 

As followers of Jesus, our leadership flows out of His transformational work in our lives. Heather and Keane talk with Brian Delamont about five things that leaders do: advance the mission, build teams, communicate, develop self and others, and evaluate. Also, don’t miss the final mystery word of the season!

• Download the Core Competencies Cube here!
• “Everything rises and falls on leadership.” -John Maxwell
• “As a leader, when understood in a Biblical worldview, I’m actually first a follower, I’m a disciple, I’m an apprentice of Jesus. That’s the foundation of leadership.” -Brian
• “It all flows out of who we are as followers of Jesus. If we are being transformed by Him, if we’re choosing to intentionally follow Jesus and allow Him to transform our hearts, then these behaviors flow out of that. They’re not behaviors to learn, but they’re happening as fruit when we are living and leading as God intends because good leadership always reflects God’s good leadership and God’s good design.” -Brian
• TeachBeyond Core Competencies of a Leader:
  • Advance the Mission
  • Build Teams
  • Communicate
  • Develop Self and Others
  • Evaluate
• “Mission and vision will always take you into the unknown.” -Brian
• “When new people join the team, you make sure they catch the vision, they can understand where you’re trying to go, and then you’re able to release them.” -Keane
• Episode 146: Doing Life Together
• “As followers of Jesus, we want to never stop growing; we never arrive. We’re never fully complete because God always has more to do in us.” -Brian
• Episode 15: Growth Mindset
• “We can participate in developing ourselves and others by being open to what the Holy Spirit’s doing and modeling that we’re all on this journey together.” -Heather
• “Leadership is the outcome of discipleship.” -Brian

May Reflection: Which Core Competency will you start with, and when will you do it?

What’s changing our lives:

• Keane: Eating fresh vegetables and making salsa
• Heather: Growing a cut flower patch
• Brian: Being in a season of waiting

Weekly Spotlight: Belize Christian Academy

We’d love to hear from you! [email protected] Podcast Website: https://teachbeyond.org/podcast Learn about TeachBeyond: https://teachbeyond.org/ 

Katherine Haschig shares about student teaching abroad, choosing to stay at that school as a classroom teacher, and seeing the Lord at work through Gospel-centered transformational education all across Africa. 

• “I’ve definitely always wanted to be a teacher. That’s been in my heart for forever, but living overseas was not really something I envisioned or planned on doing.”
• “I was at this pivotal time where I could really do anything.”
• “I’m not a super adventurous person; I kind of really like my comfort zone. This was really shocking for everyone - including myself.”
• “That’s really my favorite part - getting to be with the teachers, getting to take school visits, see their schools, see what they’re like, and train the teachers with this curriculum we have.”
• “I have had the privilege to take what I just learned sort of recently [in university] and add that into part of our curriculum.”
• “We have no idea the ways God is going to lead us and guide us and direct us.”
• “God, here I am. I’m here to serve You in whatever capacity that looks like.”

What’s changing our lives:

• Keane: Geocaching
• Heather: Playing the board game Wingspan
• Katherine: Reading books on a Kindle

Weekly Spotlight: Student Teaching with TeachBeyond

We’d love to hear from you! [email protected] Podcast Website: https://teachbeyond.org/podcast Learn about TeachBeyond: https://teachbeyond.org/ 

Our guest this week shares from his personal experience with and research about the Indian church specifically, as well as the global Church as a whole.

• To learn more about the International Day for the Unreached, listen to Episode 109: The Alliance for the Unreached.
• “The Church is influenced by society [...] and yet, we are also different because of the human-Divine meeting in the church. It is not just another human plane of belonging, but there is this coming together with the Divine in the church, which gives us another dimension of being.”
• “Ultimately, we are united through one Lord Jesus Christ [...] but we are also enlivened by the Holy Spirit, who is present everywhere, and He speaks to us all in our languages in our own spaces, and we are all adopted as sons and daughters of one Father.”
• “There is no other way for the Church to be but connected in the local and the global; if it’s not connected, then it’s not the Church because then there’s no one Jesus Christ, there’s no one Father, there’s no one Holy Spirit. And yet, we are also diverse and different also because of where we are.”
• “An ideal vision is that all would be equal - all would have equal opportunities, equal passports - but that is not the reality that we experience.”
• “If we are one Church, one people, one body of Christ, [we are called] to share and participate deeply in the needs, the pain, the joy of the other also.”
• “How does the Church reach out in mission? To be very simplistic, by being Church.”
• “If I were to point out one thing [that the global church could learn from the Indian church], it’s maybe the capacity to be okay with the knowledge that you will be persecuted. [...] Being okay with that does not mean that I am saying there is no pain, there is no suffering.”
• “Life has been difficult from a human perspective, but in the midst of all of this, I have experienced God in a new way.”

What’s changing our lives:

• Keane: A network of children’s museums
• Heather: Hard-boiled eggs
• Sonam: Watching his son grow and learning to be more flexible

Weekly Spotlight: TeachBeyond Opportunity Board

We’d love to hear from you! [email protected] Podcast Website: https://teachbeyond.org/podcast Learn about TeachBeyond: https://teachbeyond.org/ 

As the end of the school year approaches, listen in for tips from some of our Season 4 guests!

• Linda Kardamis: Step back and consider what you want to accomplish before the end of the year.
• Christy Biscocho: End the year with a dance party!
• Jessica Moulding: Pay attention to student needs, stay focused on year-end goals, and give yourself grace.
• Savana Duke: Create space for all students to process upcoming transitions.
• Tami: Take time to enjoy your students, and write down everything you need to accomplish.
• Jacob Cavett: Plan well for the summer.
• Cesar Valdez: Spend time in the Word of God.
• Kelly Crandall: Take opportunities to identify feelings and encourage kindness.
• Clarence Yau: Enjoy each day, and say yes to being intentional with people.
• Lindsay Nimmon: Emphasize relationships with students.
• Bastiaen Norel: Make a check-list for final tasks. Then, enjoy your holiday!
• Tosca Nathan: Look back and celebrate where you saw the Lord at work.
• David Platt: Make the most of every moment, knowing that your impact is far more than you can see now!
• Sonam: Take time to slow down with God. 
• Brian Delamont: Ask yourself: What will you celebrate and how? What do you need to leave behind? What conversations do you want or need to have before the end of the year?
• Keane Fine: Savor the moment and appreciate the time you have.
• Heather Brown: Plan special activities to conclude the school year together.

Weekly Spotlight: HopeSeed School

We’d love to hear from you! [email protected] Podcast Website: https://teachbeyond.org/podcast Learn about TeachBeyond: https://teachbeyond.org/ 

What are the potential benefits and dangers of Artificial Intelligence? How can we approach AI through a Biblical worldview? Perhaps you’ve been asking these questions, too. Thorsten Marbach shares helpful insight in navigating the world of AI as humans created in the image of God.

• “The further into the future we look, the more divergent the possible scenarios and predictions are.”
• “What does it actually understand? There’s a very clear answer to that, and the answer is nothing.”
• “We need to catch a wake-up; we can’t just let this thing slide. This stuff is developing very fast, and we need to be on top of our game to make sure that it’s going to a good place.”
• “Previous technologies were very good at disseminating existing ideas, whether that was the printing press or the radio or the Internet, but now here we have something that’s creating - or at least seems to create - new ideas. That’s new.”
• “Engaging with AI has everything to do with what it means for us to be human.”
• “If one just were to look at those three things in which we can understand our humanness - identity, dominion, relationship - or if you want, it’s basically just saying being, doing, relating [...] those are exacting the three areas we need to think through and work through when it comes to what we do with AI at an individual level and at a societal level.”
• Dominion questions: Is this pulling me to a place where I’m doing better at dominion, or is it actually pulling me into a space of domination or a space of abdication? Is this AI thing going to increase or mitigate inequality? 
• “Don’t abdicate your creativity to AI.”
• “AI might simulate moral agency, but it doesn’t have true moral agency.”
• Relationship questions: Is it helping me relate in a better, deeper, wider way, or is it actually shutting down my relational capacities? Is this helping me love God and neighbor more or less?
• “It’s not an AI world; it’s still God’s world.”
• Identity questions: What does it mean to be a human being, and what is consciousness?
• “We have a very valuable identity, but it’s a derived identity; it’s not a self-made identity.”
• “One of our key roles as Christians would be to challenge and perhaps give an alternative to some of the more reductionistic understandings of what it means to be a human being.”
• “We can know who we are. We can know whose we are. We can know that nothing is going to derail God’s big story of creation, fall, redemption, eternity. No matter what AI does, no matter what happens, it’s still God’s story.”

What’s changing our lives:

• Keane: Using the arc browser
• Heather: Getting a new duster
• Thorsten: Learning from others in a weekly gathering that he coordinates called TGIF

Weekly Spotlight: International Christian School of Togo

We’d love to hear from you! [email protected] Podcast Website: https://teachbeyond.org/podcast Learn about TeachBeyond: https://teachbeyond.org/