Global Top Gun Strives to Build a Culture

This week, young Unificationist leaders gathered together at the Cheong Pyeong Heaven and Earth Training Center to begin the second Global Top Gun Workshop. Each day, they are given clear, purposeful presentations on community structure, proactive thinking, Unification Thought and faith while being immersed in a family-like culture that is meant to model God’s love in every relationship. Participants come from 25 nations and are all seeking to build the skills necessary to be agents of change back home. Here are the daily highlights of the first week, including photo galleries and Familyfed Radio podcasts.

Listen to the Podcasts

Day 1

February 2 was the first full day of events, during which the Global Top Gunners became acquainted with the workshop vision, the standards of the Cheong Training Center, and of course with one another.

“Coming to Cheongpyeong from Nigeria and meeting with my brothers and sister I never knew I had, was a dream I never thought I could realize at this present time,” said participant Godson Dgurie. “I promise to make the most of this opportunity and go back to my country with much to tell.”

The day began with introductory remarks by Demian Dunkley, Director of Evangelism at FFWPU USA, and chief organizer of the workshop. After introducing himself, Demian discussed the vision of the workshop: that participants develop a deeper awareness of God, True Parents, themselves and others.

Demian explained, “God wants us to live the right things, not just to do the right things.”

“He challenged us to consider the degree to which we actually live as a global family, and to take responsibility for our lives, faith, culture, and community,” summarized Miyoung Eaton, an American participant of Top Gun.

Following Demian’s introduction, two administrators in Cheong Pyeong, Ryuichi Kishimoto and In Pyo Moon, shared about the history and activities of the Cheong Pyeong Heaven and Earth Training Center, the workshop’s gracious host on behalf of True Mother for these next 21 days.

“I am especially grateful that the workshop is at Cheong Pyeong,” said Cliff Gaines from Georgia, USA. “This is my first time attending a workshop here. This is truly a very beautiful and spiritual palace. My goal for this workshop is to take what I have learned back home to the USA and to use it to help with our outreach efforts as we become and create Tribal Messiahs who can bring more people back home to this Heavenly place.”

After lunch, Demian offered a second presentation, tackling the objectives and the vision of the workshop with even more depth. There are three workshop objectives—intellectual, emotional, and willful—which Demian described as a 360-degree leadership model. He went on to discuss how these objectives would be the unifying standards by which participants can measure all options and face all challenges.

Demian also discussed the revolutionary approach, developed by last year’s international leadership team at Global Top Gun, to the structure of the workshop: an organic, dynamic, and natural structure as opposed to a static and flat institutional structure, which was first put in place during the 2015 Global Top Gun workshop. The revolutionary component of the Global Top Gun workshop team structure is its roots in the natural concepts of families, clans, and tribes. Top Gun is one tribe of 103 members, four clans, and four or five families per clan. Demian empowered the participants to make the most of this new model by seeking to meet challenges and reach objectives from the grassroots up: starting from the family and working their way up through the clan and tribe.

“This way, we are not forcing a curriculum but applying a process,” said Demian. “We’re enabling participants to create their experience and to actualize God’s work through themselves and with each other.”

After dividing into families and clans, the participants had reflection activities in which they wrote letters to True Mother about what was currently on their minds and hearts. They also discussed with each other their reasons for attending Top Gun and how they foresee applying the workshop experience to their work and ministry back home.

“It’s really exciting coming together as such a diverse group,” said Benedikt Jensen from Germany. “As one family we want to invest ourselves and contribute to making the world a place full of love and peace. Whatever challenges will come, we will make it.”

Day 2

On February 3, the Global Top Gun workshop began to transition from training to education. The main themes of the day were practicing a proactive family culture and exploring participants’ understanding of God.

Tasnah Moyer began the day with two presentations about the culture of Top Gun: “Creating the Space” and “Setting the Intention.” During the first presentation, she discussed four components of a proactive culture that these young leaders are called to be responsible for and to implement in their lives and relationships—openness to discovery, sharing, active listening, and punctuality. 

Tasnah’s talk defined proactivity as a type of freedom. “We keep what we discover and resist what is forced upon us,” she said. Much of the content was rooted in the theme of giving: putting someone else’s needs before one’s own or putting God’s vision first, for instance.

The second presentation provided again an opportunity for participants to clarify, by sharing as a family, their intentions for participating in Top Gun and what they can take back in service to their local communities. As an example, Tasnah quoted True Father’s autobiography: “Setting a goal in life is similar to planting a tree. If you plant a jujube tree in the front yard of your home, you will have jujubes in your home. If you plant apple trees on the hill behind your home, then they will produce apples. Think carefully about your choice of goals and where you intend to plant them. Depending on the goal you choose and where you plant it, you can become a jujube tree in Seoul or an apple tree in Africa. Or you can become a palm tree in the South Pacific. The goal you plant will bear fruit in the future. Think carefully where the best place is to plant your goal so that it will bear the best fruit.”

For the final training activity, Demian invited one of the workshop families, nicknamed the “Hope” family, to model with clan leaders and core staff members the organic conversations and reporting that will happen at the end of each workshop day. This is the practical application of the “free-centering” culture that Demian introduced the previous day. Families first sit down to reflect on the day together. Then they send a representative to share with the clan leaders. Finally, clan leaders will meet and communicate the situation of the participants with the core staff of the workshop.

“It’s an inspiring model because it encourages us to be honest with one another and actively create our experiences here in a very natural and cooperative way,” said participant Miyoung Eaton.

Shifting to the educational focus of the workshop, staff member Gerry Servito gave two presentations on Unification Thought, inspired by the first week’s theme of “deepening an awareness of our Heavenly Parent”. The first presentation was called, “The Nature of God,” during which Gerry shared about the revolutionary content of the Principle of Creation. His core point was that, in the Divine Principle, True Father offered a deeper understanding and clarification about the nature of God for both the Abrahamic and the Far Eastern faiths. Following this presentation, participants were instructed to try digesting the content in a more intentional and constructive way: not just receiving as a passive audience member, but internalizing the content to share it with someone else in the next five minutes.

The second presentation was about the three Hearts of God. Gerry shared very passionately about the experience of God: His and Her heart of joy at the beginning of Creation, sorrow at the Fall, and pain as He and She has strived to reconnect with us.

“It was a very powerful presentation, because it conveyed a deeply personal understanding of God’s heart,” said Miyoung.

In the evening, the Top Guns went outside to surprise Yeon Ah Moon, President of the Women’s Federation for World Peace (WFWP), on the stairs on her way out of the Chinhwa Building. They gave her a roaring send-off, which she happily received.

Day 3

On the morning of February 4, Demian announced a fun surprise to the Global Top Gun participants: they would be spending that day out on the town! The plan was to go to Seoul and spend the day with In Sup Park, husband of International FFWPU President, Sun Jin Moon, at the Lotte World Mall. He treated the group to lunch, a movie and dinner, and spent some time with them chatting, laughing and taking photos throughout. 

“Seeing each and every one of you, I just feel like this is True Parents’ gift to us,” said In Sup to the group over lunch. “They give us the Word, the truth, but also, they give us each other, and this wonderful global family. It’s a real privilege and honor for me to be with all of you guys, and a real joy. I know so many of you came from so many different countries, from all the four corners of the world, and it’s a wonderful miracle. I know there will be many challenges and obstacles and difficulties in the future, but I know together we all feel connected and feel one, and that we can overcome anything and create a lot of good things for True Parents. I know with that True Mother will gain a lot of strength and energy and she’ll be able to do more with all your great support and care.”

“Dinner was awesome. Sitting there with everybody really felt like a family,” said participant Cliff Gaines. “I was blown away by the movie. Seeing the struggle, I felt God’s heart of sorrow and suffering and a father’s heart of suffering. It was just really powerful.”

Nicole Thurner commented, “Everyone is excited to be in Seoul and experience many new things today, and especially to spend time together. It’s a nice atmosphere.”

“I was really amazed that In Sup Park wanted to invite us,” said Nora Waldmann. “He spent so much time with us so that we can have a really amazing time together. I’ve never really experienced this before.”

“Our elder brother In Sup thought being together as a family is the best kind of learning,” explained Demian Dunkley. “He could have just come and given a 40-minute speech at Cheong Pyeong, but instead he took hours out of his schedule to bring us all down here and treat us to this awesome off-campus treat.”

Day 4

On February 5, Global Top Gun participants discovered their clan colors. Early in the day, cardboard boxes filled with bright blue, red, green and black T-shirts were smuggled through the meeting hall and deposited in the control room. In the evening, the control room became the staging ground for a clan-wide fashion show—a competition to determine which clan had the most pride and enthusiasm for their clan, in which the Green Clan won.

With this new sense of identity, the energy of the Top Gunners seemed to shift.

“It’s easier to visualize that we belong to something greater than just ourselves; that we are connected—if only by the designation of a T-shirt color—to a community, to other people with whom we will share our experiences, goals, challenges, and dreams for the next two weeks,” said participant Miyoung Eaton.

Demian Dunkley, Director of Evangelism at FFWPU USA, also stressed very personally and potently to the group that it is up to them as leaders to cultivate the culture that they would like to live in, that they needn’t wait for someone else higher up in the chain of command to take initiative and actualize much needed change and reform in their communities of faith, family, and career.

“After first being assigned to workshop families, and now solidifying our clan identities, I feel like we’re beginning to craft the network of support needed to build such a culture here at Top Gun,” said Miyoung. “And if we can do it here, the possibilities for cultural growth, renewal, and inspiration afterward seem endless.”

Throughout the week, under the guidance of Gerry Servito, participants are beginning to become attuned to the fact that though intellectual comprehension may be the starting point for meeting and understanding God, it’s ultimately not enough by itself. Gerry has stressed that we need to feel and experience God in our hearts to truly know Him and Her as our Heavenly Parent.

“This is an incredibly inspiring thought for many of us here but also a very tall order,” said Miyoung. “I think it’s so helpful to be working out the challenges of this vision here at the Cheong Pyeong Heaven and Earth Training Center, where prayer and devotion seem almost to saturate the air we breathe.”

To follow the Top Gun experience live, visit the Global Top Gun blog and Facebook page!

Follow the Blog