You may be wondering, whatever happened to the Anam Cara Project, that got so much attention this past year?
To put it simply, it’s in post-production.
The Anam Cara Project involved 38 individuals who wanted to deepen a friendship in the tradition of the Celtic Christian Tradition. An ‘Anam Cara’ is a soul friend. A soul friendship differs from other attachments as it includes a commitment to regularly practice the friendship and involves reciprocity, and a willingness to be Christ to one another. The 10-week project invited pairs of friends to deepen their friendship by practicing good listening habits and by sharing at a deeper level. The 60-90 minute sessions these friends engaged in each week also featured times of confession and prayer.
After the project, these individuals shared their experience by completing a survey and answering questions. With those responses in hand, I compiled my research and reflected on their meaning.
If I looked bleary-eyed and strung-out during November and December, it’s because I was. In addition to my pastoral responsibilities, I was drafting my project report or dissertation. I completed my first draft of the paper in the first week of January and submitted it to my faculty advisor at Campbell University Divinity School. Then, as many of y’all know, I waited for the response.
The dissertation is my report on the experiment I created for our church. Some of you will remember that the Doctorate of Ministry program exists to strengthen the local church. When my project report is approved, it will be published and made available to other church leaders who might wish to replicate what we created together.
My project report, at present, contains five chapters. The first chapter describes our church and the context the project found itself. The second chapter does two things. First, it exegetes a Biblical passage so that it can speak faithfully to the opportunity that the project presents. Second, it reveals my research on the history of Celtic Christianity. The third chapter articulates the details of the project itself, and the fourth chapter addresses the data that the experiment generated. The final chapter is my conclusion.
At the moment, my project report has 137 pages and contains 57 sources and 34,512 words. It is titled “Sharing the Path: The Celtic Practice of Soul Friendship in the Modern Church.”
In late January, my faculty advisor reported to me that she felt very good about my work and that it required only minor edits before it was to be sent off to my other two readers. After a week of making the recommended revisions, I emailed my most recent draft to another faculty member at Campbell, as well as to another reader who serves as my field supervisor in the project. At present, I am awaiting their response.
What is the next step in my process of completing my degree?
My readers can do one of a couple of things: First, they can tell me to make additional edits and resubmit my work. Second, they can go ahead and schedule a time for me to give an oral defense of my work to members of the faculty at Campbell later this spring. Once I have presented my work and defended my research and ideas, they will then render a verdict on my candidacy for graduation. If all goes well, I will be graduated from the Divinity School with a Doctorate of Ministry in May of this year.
I am eager to reveal my findings to the church. I am beyond grateful for the participants in the project, and I look forward to giving a presentation about what their practice of soul friendship has taught me. Suffice it to say, it’s a good, good story.
Until then, however, my project remains in post-production.