Last week marked the fifth anniversary of Global Trellis. From the beginning, we have used the phrase Soul Tending and Skill Building with weekly rhythms of Soul Tending Tuesday and Skill Building Thursdays. We love thinking of you and what you may be facing. If you’re doing well, how can the healthy parts be watered so that they keep growing? If you’re not doing well, how can we sit with you, provide resources, or advocate for you?

As we come to the end of this series of articles related to capacity, let’s pause and look back over the series before we turn to what September holds.

One of the things I learned living cross-culturally is that too often I make assumptions on “basic” ideas. Surely a student is a student is a student. Or a classroom is a classroom. Right? Over time, I began to realize that even such “basic” concepts come with an unconscious list of assumptions that, it turns out, are not the same :)! Oh how often I wished we came with thought bubbles so that when I say “test” or “health care” or “marriage,” I could easily see what my students were thinking. If I knew where a disconnect occurred, I could clarify something while the misunderstanding or gap was small.

Every now and then, it’s good for us to pull out a concept like “capacity” and say, “Here is what’s in my thought bubble.” As we said from the beginning of this series, when Global Trellis talks about capacity, we’re not pulling a Christian fast one on you, using Christian language to repackage an idea that’s actually not Christian and get you to do more. More efficiently. More effectively. More productively. (More exhaustedly!)

Instead we want your capacity to be enlarged because it’s so life-givingly rooted in God and big and beautiful and a bit untamed.

Here’s where we’ve traveled together in this series

Jenilee Goodwin explained that capacity is like spoons, something tangible and influenced by reality—young children, singleness, TCKs, neurodiversity, chronic medical situations.

Lori Ferrell added the question, “how can we be more like circles that have a center with rippling out circles instead of a blob with no center?” Growing in knowing yourself is a beautiful invitation for capacity.

Next we turned to practical areas for cross-cultural workers with Mark Hedinger writing about how to grow your cultural capacity. Karen Hedinger explored how beginner and advanced language learners can expand their capacity through dependence.

As we continued through the series, we looked at how transitions, grief, and our minds can intersect with capacity. Tim Austin provided three resources to help you hold to both the being and doing that transitions need. Katie Brown reminded us how limiting grief is to capacity and how, with God’s help, Post Traumatic Growth is possible. Janeen Davis got right to the head of the matter: our thoughts! And how often when we ruminate, it diverts mental and emotional resources from what God would have us invest ourselves in. She helped us move spinning your wheels to actually processing.

The final area explored in this series involved relationships. Anna Danforth wrote about how what you are connected to—be it God or humans—is crucial to capacity. She also offered practical tips and resources for both areas! Bernie Anderson completed the series with his article on the importance of mentoring and building into others . . . freeing us from the lie that “we have to do everything!” and allowing younger people to continue the work after us.

Who knew capacity had so many facets? (We didn’t before this series!)

Our hope is that this series has allowed you the space to consider your own capacity and to see the depth and breadth of it. You may be in a season where you don’t feel that you have capacity, maybe now you understand why and may make one small adjustment to help your capacity. Or perhaps you’re in a season where you are energized and raring to go. This series is for you, too.

Our final hope is that you revisit this series. We’ve created a short discussion guide for you and your team to use to discuss capacity personally and as a team.

So, in answer to the question, can you expand your capacity? We believe the answer is a humble and resounding, yes. Thanks for being here! We’d love to hear how this series has impacted you, while giving you a chance to reflect on it. Would you share in this short survey?

P.S. Thank you Jenilee, Lori, Mark, Karen, Tim, Katie, Janeen, Anna, and Bernie for contributing to this series and enlarging our capacities. You can see the whole series here.