Paging Dr. Dixon
Editor’s Note: A year ago, just as he was wrapping up his Doctor of Intercultural Studies degree at Fuller Theological Seminary, we did an interview with Dr. Rob Dixon. One year later, we thought we would check in to see what he’s up to.
Challenging Tertullian: Since our last interview, you have started a new ministry venture, yes?
Rob Dixon: Yep, that’s true. I’ve become a traveling teacher/trainer. Want to think about the caliber of your mixed gender ministry partnerships? Pick me!
CT: OK, that’s quite a phrase, “mixed gender ministry partnerships.” Can you unpack that for us?
RD: I know it’s a mouthful, and I’ve tried out like 3 other ways of putting it. If anyone has a better way to frame it, I’m all ears! My degree was focused on flourishing working partnerships within the ministry context between women and men. In an article in the New York Times the other day, columnist Nicolas Kristof wrote, “we should all be adult enough to maneuver through the middle ground between leering at a colleague and avoiding [them].” I think that’s right, and I’m here to offer a way through that tension.
CT: It must be gratifying to be putting your degree to work?
RD: Indeed. My worst fear was that my dissertation would sit up on the shelf gathering dust. I’m grateful for every opportunity I’ve been given to present on my research model. The last 8 months or so have been wonderful!
CT: Talk about where you are doing these trainings.
RD: There are two main categories. I’ve been doing some training over video, with individuals and groups. While I appreciate the luxury of not having to travel, the video conferencing medium has some disadvantages as well. For sure it’s tougher for me to connect with people. So I like being physically present as much as possible. For instance, I’m doing this interview on my flight back from Iowa, where I was training a group of pastors and lay leaders in Ames.
CT: Great. Well, can you tell us what you actually do in trainings like the one you did in Iowa?
RD: It can vary, but often there will be some sort of foundational presentation on what the Bible has to say about women and men in partnership (spoiler alert—the Bible is FOR such partnerships), and then I’ll train off of my dissertation model. At the event in Ames, I spent 2 hours or so guiding the group through 10 attributes of flourishing partnerships, including topics like having a learner’s posture, communication, sharing power, attentiveness to negative dynamics, etc. We cover it all!
CT: What kind of response are you getting? What are you learning as you make the rounds?
RD: By far the biggest thing I am experiencing is that people are uniformly grateful for the content. I find that most communities, churches, and organizations are silent on topics at the intersection of faith and gender, and so people are hungry for this conversation. That’s particularly true in this cultural moment of #metoo and #churchtoo. My goal each time I train is to send people home with practical things they can do immediately to make their mixed gender ministry partnerships more satisfying and effective. Almost across the board, the reviews on the trainings I’ve done have been positive.
CT: That all sounds great. Do you ever get pushback?
RD: Of course I do, and after 8 months of doing this, I can usually guess where the pushback will come from. For instance, one of the attributes in my model is authentic friendships. Thriving partners share more than a cubicle; they share a friendship! Often, this attribute brings pushback, particularly with an older crowd, because it challenges the enshrined paradigm of the Billy Graham rule, with its six decades of teaching that male leaders should never be alone with a woman who is not their wife. So, that’s a common landmine, and pushback is not uncommon.
CT: Interesting. So what’s your reply to that?
RD: I can’t give everything away! Come to a training to find out!
CT: Fair enough. Do you do other types of trainings?
RD: I do. My main thing right now is the mixed gender ministry partnership content, but last week I helped a community in downtown Fresno consider the Bible’s message of equality between the genders, and I’ve been known to speak on topics like male privilege (Challenging Tertullian shout-out!) and gender reconciliation as well. What I told the group in Ames was that whenever and wherever a faith community is having a conversation about faith and gender, I want to be a part of it.
CT: What would you say is your vision for these trainings you’re doing? In the big picture, what are you hoping to accomplish?
RD: I’ll use the language of calling here to describe my passion for this new ministry. I feel called to challenge the people of God to embrace a theology and practice of gender equality, and I see everything I’m doing right now as furthering that end. At the risk of sounding a bit melodramatic, I’m desperate to help others imagine a church where women and men can flourish in equal measure.
CT: Lastly, if folks read this and want to find out more information, do you have a website?
RD: I do have a website, and I’d love it if folks would stop by. I have posted some resources there along with a description of what I do. If people are interested in having me coach or train, they can reach out. My email is on the site.
CT: Thanks Rob. We appreciate it.
RD: You bet. Talk to you next year!
On Being Commissioned
There are several moments that I could pick as critical markers on my journey to this doctoral degree, but this picture captures my favorite one.
Here I am, being spiritually commissioned to carry forward the fruit of my research to the church in order to reach the world. And what a joy to be launched on my way by Dr. Betsy Glanville, my dissertation mentor.
May God use this research, and may God use me, to help our faith communities discern ways to form flourishing male/female ministry partnerships in greater measure!
An Interview with Dr. Dixon
Editor’s Note: We sat down recently with Rob Dixon, a newly minted Doctor of Intercultural Studies from Fuller Theological Seminary, to talk to Rob about his program, what he learned, and what’s up next for him.
Challenging Tertullian: Welcome, Rob. So you’ve just finished your doctorate. You’re big time now, right?
Rob Dixon: Thanks for having me, but I don’t know about “big time.” After all, let’s not miss the fact that I’m currently interviewing myself on my own blog…
CT: Well, can we call you Dr. Dixon now?
RD: You can. Fuller’s policy is that a student can use the honorific once their dissertation is published to the online dissertation library, and I accomplished that on Friday, January 26th. Here’s a fun fact: I’m actually the second Dr. Dixon to graduate from Fuller; my uncle Jim Dixon graduated with a Doctor of Ministry degree in 1976.
CT: Wonderful! And how does it feel to be done?
RD: A mix of feelings for sure. I feel a lot of relief that it’s over and the dissertation is done. I also feel a ton of excitement at introducing the world to what I’ve learned. And a part of me is even sad; I’m going to miss the learning process. It’s a curious mix of emotions.
CT: So you’re moving forward as Dr. Dixon. Really, what are your thoughts on that title?
RD: To be honest, my first inclination is to deflect. I just saw someone using “Dr. Dixon” the other day (here), and it was kind of crazy. If you know me, you know that I’m a pretty informal person. So by temperament, I’m instinctively reluctant to embrace this idea that I’m an expert in something. On top of that, the more I learn and the deeper I dig into topics like the one on this blog, the more aware I become of how much I don’t know. So, I think there’s some inner spiritual work for me to do as I step into my leadership and authority as someone with a doctorate. It’s going to take some getting used to.
CT: But are you open to people calling you Dr. Dixon?
RD: They can call me whatever they want to, lol. Or, perhaps we should pick a day a year when I can only be called Dr. Dixon? We could go with January 26?
CT: Your degree is a Doctor of Intercultural Studies. Is that a Ph.D?
RD: It’s not a Ph.D, but I get that a lot. Sometimes I correct people, sometimes I don’t. The D.I.S., and its cousin, the Doctor of Missiology degree, is a four-year, primarily online program with a wonderful blend of theory and praxis. I’ve loved my program. Folks can find more information here.
CT: Can people read your dissertation?
RD: I heartily recommend it if they are having trouble sleeping! A lot of friends and family have asked if they can read my dissertation, and it’s flattering. But a dissertation is not an easy thing to read, particularly if you are not in the academy. It’s pretty technical at points, it’s written in an academic style, and, at more than 170 pages, it’s a bit of a beast to digest. So when people tell me they want to read it, I usually tell them to wait a bit and I’ll send them a 10 page summary. I’m working on that right now and will have that ready soon.
CT: Can you put your topic into a paragraph or so?
RD: Your question reminds of what we do with college students at the end of a short-term missions trip, when we coach them to tell their story in 30 minute, 5 minute and 1 minute versions. The short version is this: I’ve just spent four years understanding what flourishing male/female ministry partnerships look like in InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. In that process, I’ve created a training model that groups 10 distinct attributes into 3 domains which, taken together, form mixed gender partnerships that are personally satisfying and missionally effective. There you go. Just two sentences!
CT: Now that you have your doctorate, are you planning to teach?
RD: I actually have turned in my application to do adjunct work at a campus near me, but I don’t have any plans to teach full time. While I think I would enjoy teaching, I’m not ready to be full-time in a classroom yet. I’ve been in ministry for a long time, more than 20 years. I’m a practitioner who is still learning, and I’m not yet ready to give that up. In fact, I’m eager to take what I’ve learned in my program out for a test drive in my ministry!
CT: Are there people you want to thank, now that you’re at the end of the doctoral road?
RD: Indeed there are. As was true when I finished my MAGL, it’s taken a village to get this degree done. In the dissertation, I got to write a dedication page and an acknowledgements section. Those were holy moments for me, because it’s true to say that without my friends and family, there would be no Dr. Dixon. I appreciate my research subjects, my staff team, friends who helped in various ways, our extended family, and, of course, Amy and the kids. Everyone has been so supportive, and I’m grateful.
CT: Last question. What are your next steps? Now that you’ve finished your dissertation, what will you work on next?
RD: My dissertation advisor told our cohort several times that the finish line is also a starting line. And as I said earlier, I’m eager to shepherd what I’ve learned into the world, both in InterVarsity and beyond. I’m convinced that my model can help a church that I think is frankly foundering in the era of #metoo and #churchtoo. So I have a few things brewing. I’m working on a website, I’m plotting some writing projects, and I’ll be speaking on flourishing male/female ministry partnerships several times in 2018. I’m pretty excited for everything that is to come this year!
CT: Well, thanks for being with us. We’re excited to see where all of this goes for you. Just please don’t neglect this blog!
RD: Thanks and I’ll try not to!
Victory!
At about 4pm on Friday, January 26, 2018, I uploaded a PDF of my finalized dissertation to ProQuest, the online repository of academic writing, thus completing my doctor of intercultural studies program.
There was much rejoicing.
In My Defense…
Want to know what happens in a dissertation defense?!? I’m your guy. Here’s a summary of what I experienced last Thursday in my defense.
First, here’s what happened. We met in a glass-walled conference room in the Fuller Library. Two of my cohort-mates were there in person with another three there on video. Three members of my family were there, my parents and Amy. And then two professors were present, and together they constituted my dissertation committee.
At the outset, I was given 10ish minutes to give those gathered a sense of what my journey thorough the program has been like. I chose to testify about how God has met Amy and I in terms of time, finances, passion, and product. Next, my most recent peer reviewers got to give feedback or ask questions, before members of my committee did the same. Then, when all was said and done, we cleared the room so that the committee could decide what they wanted to do with my work. After maybe 10 minutes out of the room, we came back in and they issued the verdict.
Now, five reflections on the time:
First, I found it to be an odd combination of defending my work and gladly receiving input. I mean, the whole experience is framed as a defense; in other words, my task was to justify my findings and conclusions. At points, this required me to answer pointed questions and clarify misconceptions. On the other hand, my reviewers had some helpful input for me, and I was glad to receive it. I don’t know if navigating the tension is normal for dissertation defenses, but I spent my 90 minutes sitting in the middle of this interesting dichotomy of defending and receiving.
Second, I came away with some subtle but helpful ways to strengthen my work. Because of this, I’m not technically done yet, so hold of on your “Dr. Rob” commentary for now. From here, the plan is to do my revisions in the next couple of weeks, run them by my committee, and then send it for copy editing, which is a mandatory step before publication. Once it’s published, have at it with the doctoring (or don’t!).
Third, I certainly felt the presence of my community. I was the one defending on Thursday, but I had scores of friends and family rooting me on from afar. And I felt it palpably. So, a big THANK YOU to everyone who prayed, texted, tweeted, facebooked, and called me.
Fourth, I left the defense incredibly encouraged. Simply put, people were super generous with their comments, both inside and outside the room. Perhaps my favorites were the women in my world that affirmed that the research I had done was congruent with their experience of me. One of my deepest aspirations in life is to have my words and actions be integrated, so these comments were a gift to me.
Fifth, as we walked out of the library and out onto the Fuller mall, I actually felt a twinge of sadness. I’ve been a Fuller student for the last seven years in a focused way, and for the last 17 years (!!!) in a more “meandering” way. To be honest, I’m going to miss the coursework, the cohort experiences, and I’ll miss the ways that Fuller has trained and equipped me for my ministry with InterVarsity.
What was the best part of the experience? That’s easy.
Hearing my mentor professor say, “congratulations, you are passed with distinction.”
Thanks be to God.
Preparing to Defend
My journey through the DMiss program has been a long, winding, and wonderful road. To be honest, I can’t quite believe I’m at (or very near) the end. More than once lately, I’ve been feeling nostalgic; when it’s over, I think I’m going to actually be sad, in addition to like 75 other emotions.
What’s ahead? The defense. Sounds sort of ominous, right? When I think of defending something, it doesn’t take long before the imagery gets life or death. And while I trust that my upcoming dissertation defense won’t be some sort of missiological Alamo, it is in fact a big deal, one worth preparing for. Here’s what I’m doing to get ready.
First, I’m reading. I’ve spent the last two days reading peer dissertations, but today and tomorrow I’m going to read my own. I want to be as familiar as possible with my project before a bunch of scholars ask me incisive questions about it! To celebrate the occasion, I even printed it out, the first time I’ve done so since I started writing.
Second, I’m critiquing. What’s that cliche? “The best defense is a good offense?” I’m going to try that out, and so as I’m reading, I’m critiquing. I’m going to create a list of the toughest questions I can muster, and then try to answer them. Then, for fun, I’ll see how many of my questions actually get asked during the defense.
Third, I’m gathering. In one sense, I’ll be the one standing up at the podium defending this dissertation. But in another sense, I see myself as a part of a community of folks who are interested in my research, who have participated in my research, and who give a rip about the topic of flourishing male/female ministry partnerships. So I’m plotting email updates and Facebook posts all week. Also, it’s going to be great to have advocates in the room with me; thanks in advance to Amy, my folks, and to my cohort for your support.
Finally, I’m praying. Sure, this has been an academic program, but for me the DMiss has also been a deeply spiritual endeavor for me. The other day I was reflecting on how God has met me over the last four years, and I made quite a list. I’ll be sharing a portion of that list as a part of my defense intro.
If you’re the praying type, I’d love to have you onboard. I defend this coming Thursday morning, from 10:45-12:15, at Fuller.
Getting the Message
Well, I’m back from Researchville! On Friday, I took a deep breath and hit “submit” on my final paper for year 2 of my doctoral program. And then I celebrated with nachos. While the research process this year was a total joy for me, I’m pretty glad for a break.
Now let’s see if that break translates into more regular blogging or not…
On the Monday of Thanksgiving week, I had the opportunity to exposit Galatians 3:26-29 for a room full of Cal Poly Mustangs. I talked about how the text calls for both salvific and social implications. Indeed, according to the passage, God has no gender bias in salvation, and God’s dream is for there to be gender equality in the Kingdom community.
In other words, gender equality is designed to be good news, both eternally and currently.
In terms of application, I challenged the community to do three things: check their hearts for gender bias, search the Scriptures on the topic of gender equality as a community, and work to build healthy male/female ministry partnerships.
I hope the students engaged the message, and I hope their community is changed as a result of it. Since I’m not there in the aftermath, I don’t totally know what the results might be.
What I do know is the impact on my kids. Because it was Thanksgiving break, the Dixon family made the trip together, and the kids came to hear Dad speak.
And as much as I care about college students engaging the message of gender equality, I’m more eager to have my kids embrace it. If you’ve read my blog over the years, you know it’s been a work in progress, but it seemed like this trip was a helpful deposit.
How do I know?
While I was speaking, the kids got some chalk and graffitied the back chalkboard. How’s this for some tagging, Galatians 3 style?!?
My Process
Greetings from Researchville!
For those of you scoring at home, I’m in the thick of wrapping up the second year of my doctoral program, and it has been a year marked by all manner of academic research. At this point, the end is in sight. I have 40 pages of first draft due on November 20 and then my final paper is due on December 11.
In case you are curious, I thought I would detail my process. In other words, this is what I’ve been up to in lieu of blogging regularly.
First, the research part. The goal has been to cast the net wide and gather as much data as possible on my research problem, namely, the qualities and characteristics of flourishing inter-gender partnerships in my organization, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship.
Primarily, research has taken three forms:
- Participant observation studies. In this method, I’ve sat in the room while InterVarsity staff have conducted a run-of-the-mill staff meeting in order to observe the gender dynamics. You know, stuff like who is sitting where, who talks more (or less), who leads the meeting and how everyone interacts with each other. Think Gorillas in the Mist, only with campus ministers…
- Focus group interviews. I really like this method, as the whole idea is to get a group of staff interacting with one another around my topic. So we’ll have agreeing, disagreeing, and then a bunch of collaborative brainstorming. And when that all happens with some degree of vigor, good data tends to emerge.
- One-on-one interviews. The solo interview format has made up the majority of my research this year, and it has been a joy (and an honor) to hear people’s stories. Early on, I generated a ten question interview route, and I’ve been walking through it with staff from all around the country. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed all of the reading in year one, but the personal interaction in year two has been even better.
So…what do you think you get when you combine hundreds and hundreds of pages of notes and interview transcriptions?
Yep. Data. A lot of it. Like an overwhelming pile of information about inter-gender partnerships in mission and what makes them flourish (or not).
So, step two is to code the data.
Coding the data may sound fancy, but, really, it’s simply the process of culling the information in search of nuggets that while help inform my research problem. In my case, I’m seeking to wrangle the data into four different word documents, one that corresponds to each of my four stated research questions.
How do I do this? Simple. Sorta.
Each research question has a letter code. “H” is for “history,” as in, what is the history of inter-gender partnerships in IV? “C” is for “current state,” as in, what is the current state of those partnerships around the organization? “Q” represents “Qualities and Characteristics,” and that’s really the meat of my research. Finally, “F” stands for “flourishing,” as in, what could flourishing look like in my organization in this area?
And, armed with my H-C-Q-F rubric, I sort through my notes and transcripts, marking them up with one of my four designations. I’ve done this on airplanes, in coffee houses, at my kitchen table and even on a clip-board while I’m walking laps. Then, after I’m done with the paper coding, I go back through with my laptop open, transcribing observations or direct quotes in my word docs.
At this point, with most of my research data coded, I’m left with four really robust documents, each with information that (I hope) will help me answer my questions.
And now, step three lies ahead…to write. For this year two final paper, I have to write up two of my four research questions. Deciding which two to focus on is feeling like a challenge! Right now, it’s going to be F and Q, in case you’re curious.
And lest you think drawing the curtain on year two means an end to the research, think again! In some ways, I’m only beginning. In fact, later on this month, after the first draft deadline, I have more interviews scheduled, including one with our president. After that, in year three, more focus groups, more participant observation studies and, ultimately, perhaps a qualitative survey open to all InterVarsity staff.
All of that lies ahead. For now…time to get writing!
Leave it to the Women…
So far, year two has been even better than year one.
Don’t get me wrong, I loved the first year of my DMiss program. Reading, er, ransacking more than 100 books was good for my soul, and I feel like I learned a ton about flourishing inter-gender partnerships in mission.
On the other hand, you can only learn so much from a book, and, on top of that, reading and writing can be a lonely experience, and even introverts like me need good, old-fashioned human interaction from time to time!
So, that said, I’ve really enjoyed year two. My focus this year is on research. With people. With practitioners. With real-life, bona fide campus ministers who are trying to live out flourishing inter-gender partnerships in mission, day-in and day-out.
So far, I’ve conducted seven interviews, the first tithe of a group that might end up numbering at around ten times that number. And it’s been a blast. I’ve gleaned insight into how folks are holding the value for inter-gender partnerships, what they are doing to live them out well, and I’m slowly but surely gaining clarity about what just might make such partnerships really flourish in my context.
Another thing that’s emerged is that without exception people love working with people of the opposite gender. I mean, they really enjoy it, for a variety of reasons. Because it makes them sharper. Because the diversity of perspectives makes the end product better. Because it’s funner. And more.
This joy in partnership stands out in part because it is a relatively new phenomenon, because the sad fact is that in evangelical history for many years, inter-gender partnerships were something that just didn’t happen. As in, they were off the table as options. Like, don’t even think about it.
And who, you ask, were the folks that dreamed up this preposterous, out-of-the-box idea?
Women.
Recently, I read this piece, entitled “An Era of Women as Institution Builders,” in the third issue of Fuller Magazine, with interest. In the article, the writer, SPU Professor Priscilla Pope-Levison, analyzes the fruitful pioneering ministry of women in the late 19th century though the middle of the 20th century.
Here’s a quote from the article:
When the nation would not permit women to vote, when mainline denominations only begrudgingly allowed laywomen to vote in general church conferences, when a mere handful of women attended seminary, and when women’s ordination seemed a pipe dream, [these women] built their own institutions, undeterred by what culture or church had to say about their prescribed roles. In institutions of their own making, they exercised religious leadership as evangelists who led others to religious experiences, as ministers who shepherded congregations and celebrated the sacraments, as bishops who ordained ministers (female and male), and as theology and Bible teachers who instructed both men and women. By standing in the pulpit, presiding at the communion table, laying hands on ordinands, teaching classes, and evangelizing the masses, they pioneered women’s religious leadership in American Christianity.
Their significant legacy lies as well in their challenge to patriarchy in American Protestantism. These women broke ground as religious leaders by building institutions for women and men and enlisting male and female converts. Men and women joined their churches, sat alongside one another in religious training school classrooms, and filled church leadership positions at all levels. These women evangelists, therefore, rank among the first American women to build–and lead–mixed-gender religious institutions.
I don’t know. Maybe if I had historically been deprived of power, pushed to the margins of evangelical culture, I might be inclined to establish institutions that cared for and developed…people like me. And only people like me.
So how noteworthy is it that these pioneering women had a vision that was so open-handed, so generous, so inclusive, so…
Revolutionary.
Dispatches from the First Church
This week, I’m challenging Tertullian at Fuller Seminary in Pasadena.
And I mean that literally.
Today, in class, we were talking about the implications of Tertullian’s commitment to demonstrate that Christianity dovetailed nicely with the highest Roman moral standards. All of a sudden, up on the powerpoint popped this question:
“If you were a missionary meeting Tertullian today, what would you say to him?”
I laughed out loud.
At which point, I had to explain to my classmates that I would indeed have a few things to say to Mr. Tertullian, and that none of them would have anything to do with ancient Roman moral standards. Which ultimately resulted in me quoting Tertullian’s despicable description of women as “the Devil’s gateway.”
Tertullian, consider yourself challenged.
And, also, consider yourself wrong. Because the evidence is that the first church thought and acted differently than Mr. Tertullian. According to Bevans and Schroeder in their book Constants in Context, in the first church women were valued more highly than ever before. They write:
“In the first place, more women than men converted to the Christian faith, including a significant number of high-status women. Recognizing that there were a number of factors, most writers recognize ‘that Christianity was unusually appealing [to women] because within the Christian subculture women enjoyed far higher status than did women in the Greco-Roman world at large.’ Important aspects of this improved status and human dignity are reflected in the Christian condemnation of infanticide (which was most often female infanticide), divorce, incest, marital infidelity and polygamy–common practices that victimized women in particular. Christians respected and cared for widows instead of applying great pressure on them to remarry. In contrast to the general situation in which women were frequently forced into pre-pubertal, consummated marriages, Christian women ‘were married at a substantially older age and had more choice about whom they married.’ Underlying this Christian appreciation of the human dignity of women is the basic belief that all people are equally children of God.”
Not only were women more highly regarded by the first church, there is evidence that the pre-Constantinian faith community put them to work in ministry as well. That happened in more “official” church offices such as apostles, prophets, co-workers and laborers. But it also happened in two other critical ministerial contexts of the day, as house church leaders and as martyrs. Bevans and Schroeder write:
“From this perspective we see that women were very much involved in the predominant model of mission, especially within the household, the house churches and the group of martyrs. This is all the more significant given the subordinate role of women in the general society.”
So, let’s review. Women in the first church were given more dignity than ever before and were deployed as leaders both in more formal and informal contexts, up to and including making the ultimate witness to Christ as martyrs.
Seems to me like Tertullian needs to rethink his own moral standards.
Challenging Tertullian 