A "difference that makes a difference"

On being an available community

An interesting conversation has developed from Kathryn's original post and it's made me think a little...

How can we make our church families open and welcoming to the world and community around us?  The implication in Kathryn's post is that weddings and baptisms are a vital way of communicating our welcome. (I'm conscious from other posts - her blog is well worth a regular visit, by the way - that Kathryn wouldn't limit church involvement in the community to services)  But still, I'm not convinced.

I used to be very anxious to get church services right, up to date and easy to follow.  Not because I wanted to be trendy but because I wanted to get our services to be easy to follow. The logic of my thinking was getting people into our church buildings.  I'm not saying anything very original as I suggest that this is not a tenable strategy for Christian engagement with our community.

So how can the church family be noticed as we bring our Lord's love into our communities.  Of course, all of us have the opportunity as individuals during our day-to-day work and lives but that is not enough.  Somehow, we have to engage not only our individual selves but our community self, our body-of-Christness in the lives of our community.

If it is only individuals that serve, love and share then what's to stop people thinking "Oh so-and-so's a really lovely person"? It's as we do things as a body, I think, that the Christlikeness becomes recognisable.

The three exes of learning: explanation

As a general rule, I would urge that you never trust any teacher who says that there are three-of-anything, especially if they start with the same letter or syllable.  ...but, of course, I'm different, so I'll say that there are three domains of learning

• Explanation
• Exploration
• Experimentation

Neat, huh?

The trouble is that I reckon that there's a fourth domain, intimacy (and I can't find another ex- word for that! :-(  but never mind.  Intimacy is that process and moment when we draw near to our God, when we hear His voice (or not) but somehow know that He is close by and that somehow, our life will never be quite the same again.  I have not explanation for this, no clever words to teach you how to do it (I doubt that you need them)...

but now on to my three exes!  tada!!

Let's do the most difficult one first.  It's the one that is the most common in the churches that I've been to. although I suspect that it might be less dominating in other traditions.  It is potentially the most dangerous to our learning journey and yet it is championed by almost all clerical errors.  Explanation, usually done by one person, who's spent a long time studying and who knows about whatever he (or she) is explaining.  What's the danger of explanation?  I hear you ask (well I don't actually, 'cos I suspect that you've read the previous post (rant) and so can guess what I think the problem with explanations are.

There are three attendant dangers to explanatory teaching/learning. They do not mean that explanation is unnecessary or that it is bad or that explainers are bad people.  It's just that whatever we do, there are always unintended consequences.  We only ever own half of our actions, the other half is created by those around us and explanations have a way of provoking unhealthy responses from our action-creating-partners.  So the four problems:

1. If you watch any soaps on TV, you may notice that no scene lasts more than about 90 seconds. This is because some clever researcher has found that most of us can't concentrate on one thing for more than about 90 seconds.  So why preachers, oops sorry, explainers think that we can listen for 15 or 20 minutes (or even 5 minutes for the quick preachers, oops sorry explainers) to one voice, often without any visual cues or support, is either folly or arrogance.
2. Explanations have a tendency to provide people with answers and nothing, but nothing kills off learning quite like answers.  If you have an answer that looks suspiciously like the answer then you just don't need to do any more learning do you?  And before any putative explainer says "But I don't preach, sorry, explain like that... sorry but you don't control how you're listened to! You may studiously try to avoid giving answers, but that does not say... in fact I'd almost certainly predict that the majority of your listeners will attribute to you the giving of the answer.  Now of course they may disagree with your answer, but answer they will make it and that'll be the end of the learning.
3. Recently, a friend from church came up to me and asked when I was next preaching.  She told me that she always looked forward to my sermons.  Vain pleasure at this complement was only just covered by my discomfort at the thought of another sermon.  I told her that I didn't enjoy preaching, except that I'm an appalling show off, that I thought it was a waste of time and that I suspected that people wouldn't ever remember the two or three questions with which I always finished my sermons.  "But everyone enjoys your sermons, Caroline they're fun but they're also challenging" "that's just the point," I replied, "They're fun, and folk settle back in their pews for a few minutes stimulating, thoughtful, funny talk and then walk away without considering the questions that they were supposed to take away and ponder of the following week.
4. The final trouble with explanations is that they have been such an ubiquitous form of teaching over the last 100-150 years that most of us have no idea what other ways of learning their might be. Explanations drown out other learning methods.  They squeeze out other learning contexts like bindweed squeezes the life out of plants in the garden... and bind week looks quite nice, just like a sermon. 

Is there nothing good about explanations?

..well, occasionally they can

• open our eyes to see new things
• start new and different conversations
• disturb our comfortable passiveness

but to do so the explanations have to be

• located and shaped by the listener's experience and learning needs, not some formal, top-down teaching programme.
• judged and used according to the difference they make to listeners' actions, not their head knowledge
• followed by inquiry and ongoing engagement at a level that sees the difference that is made, that encourages progress, re-explaining and extending bits that are needed as disciples' contexts change

(that all sounds like a conversation rather than a monologue to me)

and I'm afraid that I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times that has happened in my life and I've listened to some of the great preachers of the last 30 years.

I'll get onto some of the more positive forms of learning in the next few days...

Preaching and the making of disciples

I don't like sermons.

..which can make life just a bit of a paradox when I'm asked to preach but there we are, a trendy postmodern like me can handle paradox (so I hide behind one whenever an inconsistency or contradiction comes my way! :-)

So, why don't I like preaching.  Essentially because I believe that it is antithetical to learning and I believe that the Christian's prime calling is to be a disciple (i.e. a learner).  "But" you exclaim, "how can people learn if they haven't heard?" ..or some such paraphrase of the apostle Paul.

Learning is a relational activity.  Learning is about going on in relation with others; it's a process of being able to take what others say and add or develop that into action or words.  So, if we want to learn and foster learning within the Christian family then we will look at what sort of relations create what sort of relations.  Certain ways of relating will further learning. Other ways, however well and prayerfully intentioned, will damage learning.  Preaching damages learning and so it damages discipleship.

The Brazilian educationalist, Paulo Friere, challenged what he called a banking type of learning, where teachers transferred something called knowledge into empty vessels - the learners.  He typified the relations in such a form of education as being subject-object relations, where the teacher was the active subject and the learner was rendered a passive object.  His main argument was that such learning was oppressive, giving huge power to the teacher (or leader) and leaving the learner in a dependent relationship to that teacher/leader. He illustrated this by reference to revolutionary movements in Latin America.  He had a further point.  These kind of relations just did not foster learning; they did not enable to the learner to be emancipated (or empowered) into their own learning and self-determined action.

My argument against sermons is this... that whatever the intentions of the preacher (and I'm sure that many preachers will try to point out that sermons are not lectures or simple teaching activities) they create relations of passivity amongst the vast majority of any congregation.  Maybe that's the fault of the congregation members - I don't know - but who we are, and the learning we do, is like an improvised performance created together with those around us, with whom we are in relation. Think of it like a dance, if our dance partner moves one way, then we will follow or the dance comes to an end.  It is the same with learning, if one travels as the active teacher then others will be rendered as passive 'learners'.

It doesn't have to be this way, there are other ways of learning and we can all contribute to learning relations that change us and the world we make. I've blogged about learning loads of times (forgive me if I've repeated myself) but to me, this is crucial.  The Church has, for too long, had converts, communicants, adherents or the faithful.  Too often, we have mentioned disciple in the same breath as discipline and obedience.  That's not wrong but it misses out on the wonderfully emancipatory potential of the gospel; that wonderful, learning pilgrimage from here and now through eternity... everyday a new opportunity to learn a new way of being, the journey where we have all eternity to explore infinity. 

hmmm, a rant I'm afraid... and I fear another series on learning coming upon me

Church in a way that I'd like it...

I knew st long ago when we both helped out on CYFA houseparties - he used to play the most wonderful boogie-woogie version of "We really want to thank you Lord" - huh, guess that dates us but

he now gets to do church in ways that I can only hope about read here and here for some terrific ideas.  The quiet days one is just terrific, church as enabling rather than as entertaining.

Learning, Community and the Body of Christ

Over at her place, Kathryn has been talking about holidays, Christian festivals, church attendance and then what it isthat we do that makes us church. Not a complex or tricky topic there then! :-) I've joined in the conversation (as Caroline Too, I always seem to be the second Caroline on every other blog, but not here! :-) This whole conversation reminded me of something that I've been wanting to write about but which, if I'm honest, I didn't quite know what to say.  But there we are; never fearing to tread where ignorance and a half baked idea beckon....

I've been reading Dallas Willard's book "The Divine Conspiracy" recently.  It's a terrific book although it badly need editing; by my estimate it has about 150 pages too many and Willard often loses his overall theme as he circles round a detail, but there we are ... he's a professor and I'm only a lecturer, so what do I know...

Anyway, I've just reached the chapter that I've been looking forward to most, On Being a Disciple or student of Jesus. It's here, I'm hoping, that he'll unpack his wonderful description of us Christians as being apprentices of Jesus. However, he starts the chapter by asserting that if we are disciples we must have a teacher.  He strongly assumes that for every learner there must be a teacher and so rests on a deeper assumption that learners are different and distinct to teachers. (I'm sure that he would retort that teachers can {should} be learners too but that is not my point here.)  What I disliked about this opening argument was the distinction between the role of teacher and learner.  It carried with it another assumption, that we are individual learners, that our learning is done individually, as an intra-psychic process (inside us so to speak).  If you start with that assumption learning becomes a process of transmitting knowledge, skilled practice and/or values from one person to another.  There are all sorts of pedagogical problems with that assumption but I want to focus on just one: the individualism.

Imagine a couple of people getting into a rowing boat, so that they could learn to row competitively.  I'm talking about those long racing boats you see at the Olympics or the annual boat race on the Thames.  The two friends paddle out to the middle of the river.  Then one of them starts to lengthen their stroke, they use their sliding seat, try to feather their blade (I do hope that I'm using the right terms, I can only go on what the commentators say! I've never rowed competitively). Whilst one of the rowers, tries to become a racing rower; the other just continues to paddle along, dipping their oar in the water, looking around at the scenery, enjoying the sights and sounds of the river.  I would suggest that the rower who is trying to develop their rowing skills will get nowhere until the other rower starts to take the learning seriously.

You see learning is a social process, it is not an individualistic process of acquiring fact or skills. Learning, and especially the learning involved in being a disciple of Jesus, is done together, in the body of Christ.  In our little vignette, it was not that the second rower was deliberately stopping the other learn. It was not a failure of teaching.  It was not that anything intentional was done.  Rather, it was just a crucial point: that we do not learn to become on our own.  We have to be a part of a learning community and our every action (from the most trivial to the most profound) will either help or hinder that discipleship.

There are things that I do that hinder others' learning.  For example, I'm quite good at explaining things and I'm very good with words.  I can, to my shame, be a formidable arguer.  If you are sitting in a room with me where you think that I may be wrong about something, I'm not an easy person to argue with.  Additionally, at my worst, I can be very good at giving the answer to problems or issues.  If the answer has been given what need is there to search (learn) for your own answer?  Most frustratingly for me, on the occasions when I'm thinking out loud, when I'm reaching toward an idea but still aware of the muddle in my mind, I can still sound as if I'm giving the answer.  So, sadly, unintentionally, I block the learning of others.

On other occasions, I can help learning.  Passing by someone at coffee, I ask how they are and listen as they talk out a problem. On other occasions, I have got enthusiastic about another friend's ideas and that enthusiasm has been the spur to try out something new. Then again, I've told stories that got someone thinking... or smiled at someone who was just about to give up... or irritated someone who mumbled to themselves, "I'll show her". It is often not my intentional actions or words that help people learn but just my presence, at a particular moment; my presence within the emerging relationship of me, them and God that allowed the learning-to-become to start, continue or accelerate.

We are social 'becomers'.  We are not self contained individuals.  We improvise our lives together, not on our own little stages.  The Xhosa word and concept, Ubuntu, captures this powerfully "I am through your".  This is not a nice, twee "wouldn't it be good if we could all get along", this is just the very nature of us, as created in the image of the Trinitarian God. 

And this, Kathryn, is what I think the church family is about.  and it is for this reason that I so oppose the practice of large gatherings, all facing in the same direction, all facing one or two people who direct our activities. It is also why I'm uncomfortable with the way we currently practise the eucharist in Anglican churches with its centring on the Priest. For in all this, we obstruct the transitory, fragmented, momentary interplay of people enacting learning together; provoking, stimulating, inviting, encouraging each other to do more, to travel a different road, to carry on, to ....

The Russian literary critic, Mikhail Bakhtin, wrote about how Dostoevsky's novels documented the development of a hero as they inter-played (improvised) with other characters.  These were, he suggested, polyphonic (many voiced) novels and at the centre of them, at the centre of the plot, at the centre of the development of the characters was carnival.  And in carnival the rules were dropped and, within some preset guidelines, people could explore and play at different roles. 

Now, don't exaggerate what I'm saying here.  I'm not saying that Christians should overthrow all rules. Rather, I am saying that we should design our moments of relating in ways that promote carnivalesque relations. These relations will not be structured around a preaching programme or a fixed set of liturgical actions.  Instead these relations should be typified by a concern to help the other in their pilgrimage, a desire to encourage, a concern for the other's safety if they're heading down a risky route, an experience of walking alongside, being available to catch your friend falls...  and none of these actions are promoted by the conventional church gathering around a single (monologic) set agenda.

One final word, for this post is already too long. I can almost hear some readers saying that many church goers would not accept the potential chaos that is implied in my ideas above. Many worshippers value a nice, ordered service. I agree.  But the correct response to that point is to ask how we could help such people move from that position or how we could provide for them as we move the overall tenor of church family life away.  It won't be easy and it's likely to be messy but it will, more accurately reflect the three year walk Jesus had with his disciples - sometimes fitting with the conventional ways in the synagogues, sometimes responding to the opportune prompting of a question or event but, for the most part, walking along the highways and byways of first century Palestine.

Bringing the life of God

A friend emailed me today asking me what three things that I could do that would help bring justice to the world.  I suspect that we'll be hearing more of this idea in the coming weeks.

anyway, it got me thinking and I went and dredged up this old post that I wrote at Organic Church a couple of years ago.

Two blogs on the trot, Caroline, what’s going on here?

Well actually, I’m puzzling over something and I wonder if these guys can help me.

OK then, go on ..

ummm, err, I’ve been getting myself in a tangle for the last year or so. I’ve been nagging anyone who was foolish enough to pass too close by me with ill-formed ideas about taking our witness out into the community in a way that demonstrates and lives out Christ’s love rather than just talking about it.

I think the clever theologians in this blog-community call it Incarnational Missiology.

Oh do they? And does it hurt? And does the –ology make a difference? Anyway, what’s really go me frustrated is that I have struggled to put what I was thinking into words. My friends would say; oh could you give us an example, Caroline? But I didn’t want to do that. I didn’t want to say we should do this or that activity and I could feel my friends getting mystified with what I was banging on about. The wonder was that several people agreed with me that God was calling us to a different kind of witness, but we kept wandering around in circles.

I’m not surprised m’duck, you really haven’t had a clue what you wanted to do! Any progress?

Well, I think so.. can I try it out on you and see what you think? A while ago I was asked what my role as a university teacher was given that I’d just said that I thought that nothing stopped learning quite like teaching? My answer, after a pause, was that ‘because people spent time with me they could do more’. You know, I don’t think that’s a bad description of a Christian either. Anyway, just last week it occurred to me that when the Spirit breathed the life of God through the dry bones (Ezekiel 37) they could do more; they could get up and move around. So could one way of witnessing to the life of God in Long Buckby be to seek out ways of helping people do more? Not just doing good things for them or to them, but working with them in a way that helps them do more, be more alive …

Err, where does God come into this?

If we were to act in a way that help others do more, wouldn’t the worst that could happen would be that they experienced the life of God “through a mirror dimly”? And maybe, seeing that dimly lit image, they might explore for more? But I guess that is their choice isn’t it?

So how might this work in practice?

Oh, I really didn’t want to go into details, I didn’t want to champion one sort of action as being right.. but the other day, when I was on a walk, I was praying. I saw a friend, Gerry, who I knew runs his own business from home. “I wonder if there are more in Long Buckby like Gerry? So many jobs have been lost in the village over the last few years that we’re in danger of becoming a dormitory housing estate; I wonder if we could encourage more businesses into the village, more people to work from home and so use village facilities? I met up with Gerry the next day and it turned out that he had tried something similar a few years ago. He said that it would take time and stamina to keep going through the first year which would be hard. I wonder if “keeping going” so that we could encourage more local businesses might be one way amongst many that the church family could help the village do more, one way (amongst many) that we could be a heartbeat to the village?

Sounds a bit vague..

It is vague, and I don’t want to be more precise. I’m sure there are many better ideas, but the key question for me is whether this kind of ‘bringing the life of God’ to help people do more is a helpful way of witnessing to his life giving love?

****

well, in the couple of years since I first wrote that things have progressed slowly.  the Entrepreneur idea hasn't taken off but other ideas have and I'm spending more and more of my time praying for these ideas and trying to support those who are carrying them out.  What would you do to bring the life of God to your home town/village?  And what could others do that would encourage you to be adventurous?

Is there a future for the church in the west?

A while ago, I was asked if I was optimistic about the church in the west. this was my answer:

"Oh yes, but probably not as we do it now. We tend to run it as a club in England. We run events (sometimes quite good events) when it suits us, how it suits and then we say “Oh do come along”. We haven’t spotted yet that the rest of the world reckons that we’re quite kooky and strange. So how do we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? I think that we’ll be more monastic. Hopefully that means spending more time with God and also living in community (not sure quite how that will be defined) sharing more of our lives, goods and activities. Church will, I hope, become more of a place where people inspire each other to try new ideas, explore new possibilities, fail and then catch each other when we fall. Church will be a place more interested in the word ‘maybe’ than what ‘is’. We’ll suddenly realise that we have all eternity (starting now) to explore the infinite depth of our Lord. Because we have eternity we’ll forgive each other’s little detours, although we’ll help them back (as they help us). And because we have an infinite God we’ll never be tempted to say “this is the final, authoritative truth about Him”.

But there again, maybe we’ll become a small, fractured, bitterly divided clump of has-beens, more intent on disputing the number of angels on a pinhead or some such theological detail that seems so crucial at the time. we seem to be going that way at the moment, but He that is with us is greater than he who is against us so ..

maybe just maybe …"

Choosing a teacher

At a church that I used to go to, I had a couple of friends: The Professor and a Canary.  They were regular attenders and I got to know them well.

The Professor, as you can imagine, was very clever.  He had a way with words.  He used deep words and he used long words but he was always careful to explain those to other people.  The Canary could sing.  He sang so beautifully. He was a joy to listen to.

Of course, ours was the kind of church that championed "every member ministry" and soon the minister was looking out for jobs for the professor and the canary to do in the church.

Now the Professor, who was good with words and careful to explain them, first became a Sunday School teacher, then a House Group Leader, then a member of the Church Committee (so that he could explain some of the long words in the letters from the Denomination's Head Office.  Then the professor became a Lay Preacher and finally chair of the Church Committee.  He was respected and his words (even the long ones) were listened to very carefully.

The Canary joined the choir but there was a problem there; he couldn't read music.  So, wisely, they suggested that he join the Music Group but here as well, he struggled - you see his voice just didn't fit with guitars and we could never get the balance right on his mike (and you should have seen him when he tried to raise his arms in praise).  The Canary wasn't good with words and, to be honest, we never really understood his explanations very well - if indeed they were explanations (they sounded very much like his other songs), Anyway, not being good with words, he didn't really fit in with house groups and he could never get his argument over in a committee meeting and the one sermon he tried, well frankly, it was embarrassing. So, we had tried to include the canary in the life and leadership of the church but it hadn't really worked.  After a while, we stopped seeing the canary around the church.

You know, I miss that canary.  I miss his beautiful singing. It didn't matter that I didn't understand what he said or that he couldn't explain himself.  The world was just a better place when he was singing and I miss that.  But I do go to house group and I'm sure that's good for me.

Leaving Church? or a New Monasticism?

Well, if I'm honest I don't know...

but about 18 months ago I wrote a series of posts about my experience of dropping out of church membership and my anticipation of exploring alternative ways of doing church that didn't centre on gathering together on a Sunday morning. (You can read those posts here and here).  Anyway, I came across these posts again recently and it got me thinking "How far have I travelled in the intervening year and a half?"  So here's a quick report on my pilgrimage to date.

I'm certainly finding that I'm getting my spiritual sustenance in different places. I find church services (including the ones I lead) less and less helpful. I tend to go every other weak because I'm a member of a particular church family and I think that I should meet with other members of that family.  I use services to keep up to date with family members who I might not otherwise see and often find that our conversations lead to further meetings or prayer interest in the following week. But the services themselves are generally not contributing to my pilgrimage.  Instead, I'm finding myself spending increasing times on my own in prayer, bible reading and general reading (currently being bowled over by Dallas Willard's The Divine Conspiracy.

Particularly important to me recently have been my lunchtime walks.  When I work at home I tend to take a break at lunchtime.  I read a while ago that a common practice of the Lindisfarne (Celtic influenced) monks was to spend 40 days in prayer and fasting so as to prepare the land for a new monastery.  Well, I've long wished to live within a community, so I thought that it might make sense to give lunches a miss when I was working at home and go for a prayer-walk instead.  Rather uncomfortably, I found that the ground that God wanted to work on was my life!  I'm not so sure now that community is where I'm going but I do delight in these walks as time alone with God.  It seems very strange to me that, as a very talkative and gregarious person, I seem to be being led towards a more silent ministry (probably stop me saying so many daft things, I suppose! :-)

One of the things that I've wanted to do for a while now has been to support friends and church family members who try to do 'non-churchy' ways of doing mission.  I spent a year or so bemoaning the fact that no one seemed to be coming up with ideas of non churchy mission, until Jesus (with a loving but weary shake of the head) suggested to me that I look around for people who are already doing something non-churchy.  Well I did and I found some friends who had started a youth club of non-church kids, a retired couple who own a narrow boat and take it for long tours. Their prayer being that they will be a witness to the canal narrow boat community. Finally, there were a couple who lived in the next door town but who worship with us; they were wanting very much to witness within their own town but weren't quite sure how (well actually, the husband was mythering about it and the wife was just getting on with it, working with a group of young mums!)  So I've been praying for each of these groups and having them round to dinner every so often.  I confess I don't know if I'm being any help but I hope that I'm being available to them all, providing a refuge and a safe space and encouragement.  Not sure if I'm succeeding but that's what I'm trying to do.  It's a sort of adventure for me, doing something that isn't all organised beforehand, doing something because it seems right rather than because it's doing huge amounts of good.

Finally, I'm currently trying to set up some quiet days (see here, then head down to January 25th, 2007 and a post entitled "Quiet Days" -it's a terrific post by the way) and some lounge concerts (here).  I'm getting a little frustrated that both these are taking a bit of time to organise (struggling to find entertainers and will need the weather to warm up for people to be able to use my garden) but I still feel pretty certain that these ideas will provide another way of creating a liquid church 'without walls'.

So there I am, a bit puzzled by it all, not at all sure that I've got anything to post knowingly about but also certain that that this is a 'good' journey for I'm walking it with my Lord and as far as He's concerned I don't need to be successful and get it all sorted - He's just delighted that I'm hanging out with Him a bit more these days.

Church on the Edge

I'm reading a book by John B. Thomson at the moment called Church on the Edge.  I confess that it's a difficult read and I'm used to complicated poorly written academic stuff (and guess that I'm responsible for some of it:-(

Anyway, in a midst of his complicated reasoning there have been some real gems.  One that caught my imagination was Thomson's argument that we need to become fluent in our Christian language and he told a couple of stories to illustrate what he would call that Christian Language.

The Northumbria Community seek to live three questions in our day-to-day life, the last of which is "How can we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?" I found the idea of a Christian language linked well with that question and was really helpful. I started to think what that language might be (Thomson hints at it with his examples but doesn't take time to unfold this important theme, which is an example of why I am struggling with his writing).  I took some time out from work at lunchtime yesterday to think and pray that through.  The main features of a Christian language I came up with were Grace, Mercy and New Life. 

How can we live our lives, build our community and engage with the messy complications of our world in such a language? (notice this Christian language is not just about words)

I wonder if any of my readers would want to add layers to that language?