Assignment 1: Course Reflection

Prior to the commencement of Living the Bible in a postmodern context I listened to a song by Robin Mark called ‘Central Station’. In the midst of a lyrical narrative of a missed opportunity to share the gospel with an old friend, Mark included a testimony to his own experience of God:
Grace flows like a mighty river
And one day I just dipped my finger in
And a love caught and dragged me to a deeper place
I laughing and flailing like some water babe
When grace flowed like a mighty river.
And immediately Mark returned to narrating the story of the missed opportunity.

What unsettled me as I encountered this song was the knowledge that as I preach about grace every Sunday, I try my best to give as full and adequate a communication of the subject as I can – yet Robin Mark is satisfied to leave it at five lines…forty-one words. This is hardly more than a tease in terms of explaining God’s grace. He has left so many questions unanswered. What does it mean to dip a finger in? How much of yourself do you actually have to invest in exploring God’s great stream of love? What does this deeper place look like in real life, and what is an appropriate response? A laughing, flailing water babe has just found its true home, but Mark doesn’t clarify or explore this at all. And yet, his poetry moved me deeply, and prompted me to recollect my own conversion by the grace of God.

My great awareness as I reflected upon the song was that the artist is free to leave stones unturned, leave tracks uncharted, and allow the ones touched by their art to follow their own paths and upturn their own stones. My education as a preacher was (to continue the metaphor) to take the people along the right track and show them which stones to overturn. And what I have been finding is that I am growing in faith and discipleship as I encounter the Word of God deeply as I prepare to preach, but the greater extent of what touches me can not be communicated to the congregations that gather. I am uplifted by this methodology of preaching, but the congregation is much less so. I hear my thoughts echoed by Johnny Baker. “People aren’t listening. People don’t want to be preached at. They don’t want to be told what to think…It isn’t working. Maybe it’s time for a rethink.” I came to this course ready to rethink, hoping for a better way.

And what I was offered was a multiplicity of different ways that may be more effective in enabling people to experience the unleashing of the power of scripture in ways that lead to a personal and corporate encounter with God leading to the possibility of transformation (if you’ll allow me to sample and remix Mike Riddell and Johnny Baker). Whilst I have dabbled with a variety of methods of helping people to connect to God, I have never seen them in the same ‘status’ as preaching, or imagined them used as alternatives to the sermon/message. Participation in the case study examples was valuable evidence for their efficacy as means of ministry of the Word.

DJing: “Honey, who shrunk the gospel: Jesus as representative”.
This sermon made it easy to identify cultural and biblical samples as they were remixed into the new message of the sermon. Cultural examples amplified the biblical message and gave a fresh understanding to the text.
Lectio divina: John 8: 1-11
This experience opened up the breadth of experiences brought to the biblical text by the different hearers. I can exegete this passage thoroughly and deeply on my own (it’s the most useful thing that 4 years of seminary gave me!), but the gift of community approaching the text together was in enlightening and enlivening the story as a real event. As people brought their unique perspectives to the text the authenticity and humanity of the story was accentuated. It was certainly more emotionally moving than my exegetical work! This approach offers the leader the chance to be transformed at the same time as the congregation.
Godly play: Paul.
Whilst it was (at least from the point of view of the university) an educational experience, participation in Godly play was as transformational an experience as an outstanding sermon. The storytelling was focussed and modelled exactly the feel of Godly play given by Jerome Berryman in the course reader. It accentuated the reverence for the story, and the importance the story has had in the church and for us today. I intended to be a spectator, but the telling was compelling and I was drawn in. I suspect that many in churches would also begin as spectators but find themselves enthralled in the story. The time of wondering was a rich experience. The questions and half-formed thoughts expanded my consideration of the story. Something seemed to happen, even when a thought was small to the person wondering it, oftentimes it made a connection with someone else in a helpful way. Wondering did not purport to give answers, and yet it did in some way involve transformative heart experiences. The prayer/response time demonstrated that this method had in fact ministered (or I suppose it is more accurate to say that the Holy Spirit ministered) to us, even though we were observers as well as participants.
Since returning home I have made arrangements to trial Godly play with a women’s Bible study. These women are in the ‘unable to sit on the floor’ demographic, so I’m going to try it at a round table with a white cloth on it. I think I might kneel on my chair and reach well out into the middle of the table to display the tangible storytelling materials. This group usually has coffee and cake together before their Bible study, so my plan is to continue this tradition, but to have someone clear the cups and plates away before I begin the story, as I focus the group on the importance of the story to us and to all who have gone before. And then…not sure yet!
Visual: 40 by Si Smith
I’d seen some of these pictures on the net previously, and they hadn’t done anything for me. I actually found that 40 of them got a bit boring. That’s the way the web seems to work –it gets you into a mind-space that insists on speed. What really helped to make them a useful experience for me was the sound-track and words. The phrasing and repetition of the words made the pictures into a meditative experience. Time slowed down for me.
Si Smith has said something that connects with my reflections on Robin Mark’s song and my preaching: “so much of my church experience has been about controlling the message, nailing it down, finding the ‘true’ interpretation of the text, closing out the argument. art bypasses that and hits you on a much more instinctive level, i think”. This instinctive level allows room for the one who appreciates the art to make their own meaning over time, with the assistance of the Holy Spirit. Smith says, “good art makes room for the spirit to blow”. I’d say that good preaching (or whatever you want to call getting to grips with the Bible) makes room for the Spirit too, and so the inclusion of artistic elements, or the use of art is one way to reinvent preaching.

One thing that helped me immensely was the framework for this course which set out to expand our collective understanding of the Bible text from words written on paper to:
·incarnate, lived out experiences of Christ Jesus…
·imaginative, visual, artistic explorations of God…
·community understanding of Christ, generated not by ‘me’ but by ‘we’…
·dialogue, not to narrow understanding but to open people’s minds up for their own thinking about God.
This approach trusts people of faith to come to understandings of Christ that are real and true. It makes all people into theologians, rather than keeping the thinking about God in the rarefied air of the academic disciplines. Sometimes group exercises in interpreting the Bible have degenerated into ‘ignorance informing ignorance’, and this is certainly counterproductive, but it does not negate the potential for learning and active discipleship that community meaning-making builds around the Bible. Indeed, dialogue does not prevent those with theological backgrounds from injecting what they have discovered into the conversation, and their understandings may well be informed by those who have not been corralled by the thinking of academy. There is great potential for creative thinking as the community explores Christ together, and under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, which may enable new thoughts about who God is and how we may best respond to God to emerge.

I also found it very helpful (as a white, western, male, theologically trained Minister) to consider the Wesleyan Quadrilateral (Scripture, Reason, Tradition and Experience) in the context of dialogue around the Bible. Clearly what a group of people bring to the task of interpreting a Bible passage in Wesley’s categories will be greater than any one person can. This was a moment of enlightenment for me. Can I really trust the Lord to be the Shepherd, leading his sheep to pasture? Could it be that I am not supposed to too closely define the right ways for the people to think so that they may find God’s richest blessing? I am now more ready to explore what meaning we together can find, rather than making sure that the flock stays on the right path.

Such an approach is soaked through with humility. We approach both the text and the people with a sense of hope in the possibility that they might reveal truth to us. The particular thing that a group might learn in any given encounter with the Bible is outside of my control in a dialogue approach. (It probably was anyway, even with a narrow, deductive preaching methodology.) I am intrigued that seeking multiple possible meanings in a text is actually more respectful to the ancient text, through which we hear the Word of God, than trying to make it say one thing. I appreciate the concept that seeking multiple possibilities of meaning actually represents love for the text. And through the text, with its multiplicity of meaning, we encounter Christ.

So I have come home to my church and I’m looking at our second worship space. The space has been deliberately created to have blandly neutral walls, white ceiling, grey carpet, grey curtains, frosted glass, artificial lighting. The feel of the space is cold, sterility –I’ve been in hospital wards with more character! Those who developed the space (earlier this year) believed that nothing should distract people from their singing and listening to the preaching. Not even a cross (that most identifiable of Christian symbols) adorns these walls, and it looks vacant, empty, barren. As I look at the worship space, I dream of it having life –a fecundity for spiritual birth.

We are now in a position to make changes to our worship space to suit our renewed worshipping community. One approach we could take is to commission works of art to fill the space. But I’m thinking of another approach… How about if we were to create works of art as part of our community life together? As we respond to Christ, and as God is revealed through our experience of community gathered around the Word, we could record our learnings and feelings through visual art. Hanging these will serve as a reminder of what we have encountered together, give the space a quirky, modern feeling. I imagine that these images would be transient, not staying on the walls for ever, but being cycled through and eventually removed and replaced by more current works. What will people make of these expressions of art? Visitors might get some sense of the holy adventures we have been having, or they may simply find colour and vigour on the walls. Regulars might have a sense of ownership of both the building and the book that inspired the art. Responses may be diverse. Understandings might not be exactly what I’d write in my exegetical sermon on the text. But I am going to try to trust that people will be transformed by their encounter with the Bible and, more importantly, by the God revealed in it. Elizabeth experienced the joy of new life out of the experience of barrenness. Mary found her empty womb filled with the life of God. I hope this empty space may, likewise, be transformed into a spiritually fertile place.

Ian