Imagine that you and I are asked to improvise a scene in a shop; you are the sales rep and I am the customer.
You see me come in and say "Hello"
Does this help me to improvise? Of course I can say hello back, but if you had said "Hello, welcome to my clothes shop." then that would have been much more helpful, you would have given me some guidance as to what to talk about.
Knowing, now that it's a clothes shop scene, I say "oh I'm just looking around" again, is that very helpful? What if I had said "Oh, I'm looking for an outfit for my daughter's wedding." Now that would have really given you something to work with. You could talk to me about daughters, weddings, this year's fashions, how expensive every thing is etc. etc.
Do you see how we can say different things that will be more or less helpful to others in going on in relationship with us? In the same way, in the body of Christ, we can say things that can be helpful to discipleship (learning) or we can say things that are less helpful.
What might be an unhelpful way of talking? Well, one way would be to say things that 'complete' a story. What can someone else add if you offer the final word on any topic? What else can they contribute? Nothing, you've completed all there is to say! I would suggest that much of our ways of going on in the gathered church are about completion. Creeds, lectionaries, sermons (oh, especially sermons) all encourage people to say completion type things; what is true, what is necessary, what is required, what is happening. Of course all these activities can be done differently, but generally a gathering is led and the structure of it is (more or less) completed by the people up front.
So what do we pew fillers do? Well, I guess we receive it and act upon it. I suppose some chemical reaction happens inside us when the preacher's words hit our ears. Wonderfully, magically we are changed by what we hear so that we can "go and do likewise" err is that your experience? Let me backtrack a little: I'm not saying that gatherings are irredeemably bad. Of course good things happen at gatherings; what I am saying, however, is that the tendency at gatherings is for talk to be 'completion' talk, where the final word on God's, my, his or her reality is shared. I don't think that this is helpful to discipleship.
Are there other ways of relating? You'll be surprised to find out (given that there are more words below) that the answer is yes. We can talk in ways that invite response and contribute to the trajectory of our relationship. Notice here, I wrote contribute rather than complete.
So we can talk in ways that open up spaces or close them down
we can talk in ways that invite addition or acquiescence
we can talk in ways that intrigue, surprise, point towards or we can talk in ways that finalise
Now, I would suggest that one of these styles of talking (let's call it dialogical talk) will promote a discipleship of exploration, experimentation and the learning of new life whilst the other style of talk (let's call it monological talk) will lead to passivity and acceptance.
I would, furthermore, contend that the very dynamics of larger gatherings will tend to promote monological talk and smaller, informal relational settings will give space for dialogical talk.
It therefore only makes sense to me to up the potential of the body of Christ to meet in ways that promote learning and minimise the number of times we meet in ways that promote passive acquiescence.
and a logical consequence? Reduce the gathering and explore ways that we can develop mutual, generative conversations. I.E. cut the church services, cell (or home) groups and look for ways to make ourselves available to each other, look for ways of focusing conversations in such a way so as to contribute to a trajectory that leads to more faithful following of Jesus.
hmm, that's the trouble with half baked blogs, there's always more to say!
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