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If I Want Your Opinion I Will Give It To You!
Between October 24 and 28, 2007 I attended an event called Soularize sponsored by The Ooze.com in the Bahamas. It was billed to be a “conversation for the journey” a “learning party.” We, ACCD, decided to get involved with Soularize as a sponsor and participant based on promises like:
- “Changing Times: Your Church is Changing… Shouldn’t Your Conference Change Too? Expand your horizons from a single event to a continual learning journey. Join us as we gather TheOOZE global community for a learning experience that will truly be one of a kind.
And
- “interact in a smaller setting with well-known voices including N.T.Wright, Brennan Manning, Rita Nakashima Brock , and Fr. Richard Rohr sharing on the future of the church.”
And
- “Come and lend your voice, your experience, and your dreams as we explore the Evolving Church – rethinking and reinvent what the Church could be in years ahead.”
Something happened during the question and answer period of the opening evening session, given by the Pauline expert and biblical scholar N. T. Wright that inspired me to start blogging.
In the opening of his lecture Dr. Wright made the distinction “method contains message.” It lingered in my mind throughout his sharing. I found myself wondering about what seemed to be a paradox. Dr. Wright had been waxing elegantly on Jesus’ ministry for over an hour and 15 minutes uninterrupted. As I took notes and listened I was not only inspired, I wondered, “what is the message in this method of teaching?” Not that there was anything wrong with it; it was interesting, safe, pleasant to listen to, entertaining and informative. While it was all of that, it wasn’t a change in church, nor was it trans-formative. It was still the same thing I get at church, a broadcast. Only this one was supercharged! Was Dr. Wright aware of this paradox? As he spoke, I thought “No rethinking church, definitely no reinventing church yet, but lets see where it goes.”
After his lecture, came the traditional 10 or 15 minute question and answer period where the participant invites the speaker to demonstrate their expertise by way of safe and sane questions. No dialogs, no risk, no wondering, just a tee up for the speaker to expound.
So, I decided to “ask a question that would be an invitation to explore. You know, I wanted to “lend my experience and share my dream” in the spirit of a ‘learning party.” I asked, “Doctor, what do you speculate the message is in the methodology you used tonight?” A noticeable silence came over the room, my heart jumped into my throat. I became aware that I had broken the implied protocol of this methodology. Dr. Wright gave me an eloquent answer, only it didn’t address my question. So, I thanked him.” Then I continued, “I was wondering what you thought the message in the method of teaching you used tonight was?” He then explained to me that he was asked to speak for an hour and 15 minutes and that is what he did. I interpreted his mood and obfuscation of my question as saying, “That isn’t the type of question that is supposed to be asked.” So, I excused myself and sat down. Afterward, while waiting for the bus a Scottish gentleman approached me outside and said, “Sir, that was rude and uncalled for!” The statement was proceeded by a long uncomfortable pause before he continued through a sly smile and with a wink, “And, absolutely necessary!” I really didn’t get a chance to ask him what he meant because my bus arrived and people were moving before I could get the question out.
While I road back to my room in the bus I began to speculate what it was that the gentleman thought was necessary? Was it that I stepped outside the dominance of the methodology that was being used? Was it because it supported a personal agenda he may have had with the speaker?
It occurred to me that talking about changing church and actually changing church are really two different endeavors. There are some really articulate people who study what it might be like and broadcast about what it would look like, but few I have met are willing to get into the “journey” of it and have a “conversation.” Can we really evolve if we are unwilling to change our methodologies? What if new ideas communicate old messages when methodology remains unchanged? Perhaps that is what Jesus meant by a “new wineskin?”
Could the church’s methodologies be perfectly designed to yield the results we have in the culture?
For me the message of our contemporary methodology used to “proclaim,” “preach” and “teach” the gospel is in-congruent with its content. What if Jesus was an invitation to join in his conversation? What if the method we use to communicate his invitation sends the message, “if I want your opinion I will give it to you?!”
The conversation among God’s creatures is meant to reflect the divine Conversation in the counsel of the Triune God. So I think when honest and open conversation occurs among God’s people, we can transform to reflect more and more the image of God as revealed in Christ by the Spirit.
Therefore, the Community of God’s people, the Church, should be engaging more in actual conversation if she wants to have actual transformation happen.
Here is a good quote from N.T. Wright. He is referring to Paul and 1 Cor. 13. Paul reflects on our experience of love which is incomplete. The way we are now is seen against the way we shall be in God’s new world.
“Paul is urging that we should live in the present by the standard of what that completeness will be in the future. And the sign of the completeness, the future wholeness, the bridge from one reality to the other, is love…and what Paul is saying, if you like, is that love is not simply our duty, it is our destiny. It is the language that they speak in God’s new world and you’ll want to be learning it now so that you’re ready for fluency when the time comes.”
N.T. Wright, New Creation in the New Testament. Regent Publishing.
I love N.T. Wright’s writing. Which is why I wanted to attend the Soularize conference. I so enjoy and am inspired by his insights. The concepts are clear and his descriptions are so eloquent! What has provoked me to write the blog is what I see as a methodology of sharing those thoughts that prevents the listeners to do more than imagine, be safe and be inspired. A methodology of teaching that implicitly demonstrates that the content of the message is more important than the receiver of the message or the implementation of the message in the receiver’s life.
For instance N.T. exhorts us to be fluent in Love’s language so “that you’re ready for fluency when the time comes.” A great idea, no doubt. However, when I asked for him to have a conversation with me about speculating what the message in the method he was using might be, he wasn’t even conversational let alone fluent! Love is inherently a deep concern for the other person or persons I am in dialog with so love seeks to know the other. Other people are the object of love’s communication. When we have teaching sessions billed as a “Conversation” and a “learning party,” where the speaker downloads immense bodies of content with no interaction to experience how others are receiving it, the assumptions they are making, their perspectives, how God is inspiring or convicting them, what they are making up about the content that could be hurtful, etc. how can there be any “iron sharpens iron so one friend is to another?” I realize this isn’t something that N.T. or others are intentionally doing. Nor is it necessary to do all the time. It just dawned on me that even when people declare they are committed to having a conversation like in this case, automatically they revert to a methodology that is a proclamation rather than a methodology that is an invitation for others to enter into. How can there be any entering into “God’s new world” without a dialog? Are we transformed by the assent to ideas, or should I say our interpretation of the ideas that are blindly downloaded to us?
I would suggest that we are trapped in a methodology of teaching that has its strengths and weaknesses and that the methodology is so dominant it makes it difficult to connect its deficiencies with the outcomes that we desire, but are missing. And as a culture it seems to me that we have deeply benefited from it. It is a method that is effective for learning content in a way that we can learn about and engage inanimate objects like the physical universe. It is a scientific approach to life that objectifies everything it encounters including people. It makes ideas, objects and people easier to understand in a concrete way.
In my mind it has its weaknesses as well. People are not concrete. We are happening and relationship cannot be measured.God is infinite and eternal and beyond grasping with pictures and words. Which is probably why the Jews didn’t say the word for God or have images of a God in their homes or synagogues. Relationship is invisible. You can’t measure or capture love in a description, but you can shed light on it. You can talk about it in a way, as N.T. Wright has that creates a map or inspires one to search for it. Like an architect who draws plans, such teachers are brilliant.
However, the ones who build it have a very different set of skills. A different methodology to actually build what has been drawn or described. The practitioner who builds the building often makes changes to the plans in order to successfully complete the building. There is often a vast difference between the two.
My thoughts are that we have an over abundance of architects and a real need for practitioners. In fact, when it comes to the Gospel it requires that we are all practitioners and that we make practitioners (disciples). I don’t consider myself a disciple if the fruit doesn’t show up. We are in need of a methodology that will train practitioners when it comes to the kingdom.
I actually believe that the need is beginning to be recognized with in the church and business community, but the idea of shifting the methodology we use is still very threatening because the school of practitioners takes on a much more violent nature than the school of architects. To be blogged later.
It strikes me that a unilateral methodology, that is, one that is made up solely of expository teaching unaugmented by conversation or dialogue, might also re-enforce the church’s oft-implicit message that only the learned, those possessing knowledge (gnosis) are truly “spiritual”, as if our spiritual standing is a function of our brains rather than our hearts. I think of the Pharisees dispensing their wisdom from on high, while Jesus is up in Galilee teaching earthy parables to fisherman. Surely there is a message in that methodology!
I just looked up the word “method”; it seems to have its origin somewhere between 1375 and 1425.
My guts tell me that if we hang our hat on “method” in a conversation about humanity, community, God,and people, the conversation is going to be very limited in scope. It will smell very western.
Its aroma won’t go out there very far and won’t really attract too many people in.
The aroma isn’t for everybody; it will be exclusive and people will pick up on its exclusiveness. They will actually end up being repelled by what was intended to be inviting.
If my guts are right, it isn’t any wonder why “unbelievers” aren’t drawn in by our conversations as “believers”.
Is this what happened to you, Dan, at that conference you attended?