Simply Simon

Global mission in a local context

Today I’m off to spend a week with the Anglicans in the Diocese of Newcastle. They have graciously asked a Baptist (and a southerner, what’s more!) to talk about local mission in a multicultural society.

In preparation, it has struck me again that the call to mission is a call to live at the rather chaotic intersection between the global and the local. Our eyes and minds must move constantly between the distant and the immediate, the big picture and the detail, the horizon and what’s right in front of our noses. In my own experience, local mission that does not operate out of an awareness of its global context can fail to appreciate the complexity of its own backyard. Then again, global engagement that is not grounded in the messiness of the local ends up sounding like so much hollow rhetoric.

In his book Urban Christianity and the Global Order, the Anglican Andrew Davey writes:

“The strengths of the Church must lie in its ability to hold the local and global in its own dynamic tension, as it seeks the practice of human freedom in the presence of God in whatever human arrangements it encounters at local, national, regional and global levels. The Church need to understand and realize its potential as it connects and affirms the communities and individuals in the margins of the global city, communities which comprise significant numbers of women, minorities and migrants—those who really do live on the fault lines and in the back alleys of the new global order. While challenging the reshaping of the geography of power, the Christian faith is lived through presence(s), through communities that include, strengthen and give integrity to those at the margins. Local pastoral praxis becomes simultaneously global political praxis."

Davey concludes with the warning: "We must not fall captive to the simplistic analysis that rejects the global solely for the local—our world is just not like that (and neither is our faith)."

Andrew Davey, Urban Christianity and the Global Order: Theological Resources for an Urban Future, London: SPCK, 2001, 39.

Biography and Theology

In the introduction to his Experiences in Theology (2000), the renowned German theologian Jürgen Moltmann makes a frank and fascinating confession. Reflecting back on his substantial contribution to theology, he writes, “It took me some time, and some effort of will, before—at the urging of my wife—I dared to say ‘I’ in theology.”

I have just completed the end-of-year task of examining and second-examining copious essays and projects. And I have to conclude that Moltmann is not alone. A number of students continue to assume that the words ‘academic’ and ‘theology’ require the ‘I’ to be entirely absent—the pursuit of objective ‘truth’ leaves no place for the awkward subjectivity of their personal stories. My request for an intelligent engagement of biography and theology leaves them confused, sometimes immobilized.

Then there are others who assume that the task of personal story telling requires no intelligent, critical engagement at all. It’s all too easy and often self-indulgent. Undigested Sunday School phrases about God are happily inserted, as if in parentheses.

After his confession, Moltmann explains why he chooses to begin each section of his book with a biographical introduction. He argues that in his own experience, “two things belong together in Christian theology: the telling of God’s history with us, and the argument for God’s presence—biographical subjectivity and self-forgetting objectivity.”

To suggest that biography and theology ‘belong together’ is not to say theology is all about me. It’s not, thank God! Theology is God’s story, into which mine is gathered up. Biography is a rich and potent source for theology when it's allowed to point beyond itself to the mysterious, illuminating and empowering narrative of God.

Practicing theology II

In his book Practical Theology: On Earth As It Is In Heaven (a book I've commented on before), Catholic theologian Terry Veling draws a stark contrast between two methods of theology:

“Practical theology does not really have a head for great systems of thought, even though it may admire these systems as one admires a great cathedral. There is something wonderful about towering thoughts, but even so they still cast a shadow. Our serene theories with their grand visions of life too often deny to knowledge any origin in the practical difficulties of life, but rather seek to transcend these difficulties into a vision of Being that is pristine and unaffected by human affairs.”

“What is typically called ‘systematic theology’ is often tempted to gather everything into a ‘grand narrative’ as though it already knew the story’s whole plot—the beginning, the middle, and the end. Systematic theology seems to soar on eagle’s wings, flying high above life and offering us a spectacular, God-like view. What it then leaves for us is to take this grand vision and apply it to our lives, a task typically associated with the role of ‘pastoral theology’—taking what we have learned in the great system and applying it to the more lowly and everyday practices of Christian living.”

While Veling’s caricature has much to say about traditional approaches to theology, surely today’s theological terrane is quite different. As one who teaches in the field of practical theology, I have to say this picture of systematic theology is a far cry from the work of my colleagues in the field. Grand and soaring “visions of Being” that are “pristine and unaffected by human affairs” is, it seems to me, the furthest thing from their agenda.

Certainly, systematic theology offers the gift of an ordered approach to exploring theology’s riches. And in doing so, it invites us to move systematically through the nature of God (Theology), Christ (Christology), the Holy Spirit (Pneumatology), salvation (Soteriology), the church (Eschatology) Christian hope (Eschatology), etc. But in each case, today’s theologians struggle to earth these explorations in the realities of contemporary culture and human experience.

Perhaps it’s our bent to categorizing certain ‘fields’ of theology that keeps us from a more integrated approach. Certainly, to call one method of theological enquiry ‘practical’ can infer that all other methods are somehow impractical and removed from the practices of daily life. Veling himself argues passionately against this “fragmentation of theology,” and suggests that the very best of contemporary theology—of whatever brand—reclaims “a certain integration of theology into the weave and fabric of human living, in which theology becomes a ‘practice’ or way of life.”

That said, I have found in my own experience that there are different ways of approaching the task of theology, each one helpful in its own way, and each one essential to the other

Recently, I went with a friend to the top of one of Melbourne’s most prominent residential towers, and looked down on the city below. What I saw from that vantage point was so different from what I see when I walk along the city’s streets and laneways each day. From a great height, what stands out starkly is the city’s orderliness. What’s more, one appreciates the ‘whole’ in a way that one never can from below. If you like, it’s a transcendent view, a privileged one, a bit like the perspective of the chess player who sees the entire board in one sweep. Certainly, if I want to know the city, this perspective is instructive. It’s like having a map of the entire CBD, a guide to discerning where I am in relation to the whole, identifying the major thoroughfares, landmarks and connecting points. With map in hand, I can plan my journey from one point to another and appreciate that there is more to my context than I understood from below. Yet when it comes to ‘knowing’ the city, this bird’s eye view is not the full story. While it has truth to tell, it is certainly not the whole truth.

Those walking the streets below see and know the city in ways I’ll never know it from on high. What I might even find is that my planned route from one place to another is not as straightforward as I thought. It is only when my feet are on the ground, walking the city one block after the next, one laneway after another, that I really understand it.

Perhaps it’s like watching a football game at the Telstra Dome from the third-level stand as I do with my son. One can see the whole field and game in a way that those on the field cannot. Yet, I’ll never see the game as the players see it. I’ll never know the game in the way the players know it. To discern truth, we need both perspectives.

Exploring the big ideas and questions of theology—though I confess not something I do easily—has been an essential part of my theological formation. Barth’s multi-volume Church Dogmatics has significantly shaped my view as have other theological ‘aerial views’. But if this is all I have, without walking life’s streets one after the other, my theological perspective remains just that … a perspective, a theory, but not the practice of daily life.

Belief & Faith

Good Baptist boy that I am, I’ve never been short of things to believe. Or, perhaps more accurately, things I should believe. I’ve sometimes been given to making lists—personal creeds you might call them—things I believe to be true. Truth is, my list has sometimes been long and detailed, and at other times alarmingly short. But, as I reflect on this, perhaps it’s when my list is brief I come closer to knowing than believing.

For me, believing and knowing are such different things. To believe something is to hold to a proposition outside of myself. It’s primarily a process of thought. Knowing, on the other hand, is when belief takes root, deeply, in my experience. In some ways, my knowing is never as sure of itself as my believing. In other ways, knowing doesn’t need to be, for it is not beset with the same need to be right. It is more concerned with what is true.

In his essay, Reclaiming Faith, Mark Oakley refers to Jacques Ellul's proposition: while belief provides answers to people's questions, faith never does. Out of this, Oakley reflects on the difference between the two. His words resonate for me. Rearranged in a more poetic form, this is part of what he says:

Belief talks and wallows in words,
takes the initiative;
faith waits,
remains on guard, picks up signs,
seeks to discern complex parables,
listens to a silence poised for God.
Belief looks for regimentation.
Faith can be lonely:
it knows that holiness means being separated somehow.
Belief is reassuring,
makes you feel safe.
Faith is forever placing you on the razor's edge.
Belief can order God,
and normalize.
Faith knows this can't be done and,
as it were, puts the odd back into God.
Beliefs relates to ideas.
Faith knows that ideas can get in the way;
it embraces paradox and silence,
and often lives with city-like confusion.
If I discern the stirring of faith in me,
the first rule is not to deceive myself,
not to abandon myself to beliefs indiscriminately.
I have to subject them to rigorous criticism.
I have to listen to denial and attacks on them.
Faith will not stand for half-truths.

Christianity and common life

Wisdom from the Quaker philisopher and 'lay theologian' Elton Trueblood:

"Whether our religion is segregated from common life by being limited geographically (a religious building), or temporally (by undue emphasis on one hour a week, usually Sunday morning), or limited in personnel (by the assumption that religion is the responsibility of a special professional class called clergy), the damaging effect is the same."

"The major danger of our contemporary religion, then, is that it makes small what ought to be large. By segregating religion in place or time or personnel, we make religion relatively trivial, concerned with only part of experience when it ought to be concerned with the whole of life.”

What is required is "a fundamental denial of that kind of division of labor in which the majority have a secular responsibility and a minority have a Christian responsibility. There is always some need of a division of labor in life, partly because people have radically different gifts, but a division of labor is damaging and vicious when it leaves the promotion of the gospel to a few, while the others merely support them in such work."

"If Christianity is to be understood not as a retreat from life in the world but as an effort to transfigure life itself, if follows that the Church needs the service of men and women at the point where they are most exposed to the problems of our political and economic order."

“The older idea was that the lay members were the pastor's helpers, but the new and vital idea is that the pastor is the helper of the ordinary lay members in the performance of their daily ministry in the midst of secular life ... It cannot be pointed out too clearly, therefore, that emphasis on the vocation of universal Christian witness, far from lowering the vision of the function of the pastorate, immensely heightens it. Concern for the universal ministry, instead of making a specialized and highly trained ministry unnecessary, makes it all the more significant."
_______________________
Elton Trueblood, The Company of the Committed: A Manual of Action for Every Christian, New York: Harper & Row, 1961.

Theologian: Friend or Foe?

I sat with a pastor recently—the leader of a thriving and innovative congregation—who was noticeably uncomfortable when he learned of my profession. When I pressed him further, I discovered that his experience of theologians was of people disconnected from the real world. In his mind, teachers of theology were little more than theoreticians with no current, hands-on appreciation for the challenges facing the church at the coal face.

“With respect,” he said, “theologians live in their heads, in a world of ideas and abstractions that has almost nothing to do with the realities of ministry.” I listened as non-defensively as I could. “What do you wish we would do differently?” I asked. He softened. “I constantly hear theologians telling me what’s wrong,” he continued, “and why everything about contemporary ministry is theologically suspect. While sometimes I have a sneaking suspicion they’re right, I am out there doing it, on the ground, making a go of it the best way I know how. Frankly, I don’t need any more critique. I need help. If everything I am doing is wrong, then come and show me how to do it right! Quit writing books that tell me how wrong everything is. I need hope. And I need help.”

As I’ve thought about this since, I have felt both rebuked and encouraged. Rebuked because I know he’s partly right—no matter how good our intentions, the basic realities of an educational institution and vocation mean that we can be kept at arms length from the most immediate challenges of local church life. And encouraged because I’ve been reminded again of those teachers who have made the most lasting impact upon my life.

One of those was Ray Anderson, a professor of theology at Fuller Seminary where I did my postgraduate work. In some fifty years of teaching, Ray has never ceased to pastor a local church. And it shows. It shows in his teaching, his writing, and his relationships with students, most especially those in pastoral leadership.

I cannot say Ray writes well. Frankly, his books are often difficult to read. Regardless, what flows through is his passionate and optimistic belief in the church. Tellingly, in his book Ministry on the Fireline, he begins by quoting a firefighter in Northern California: “As long as those in the command post have themselves felt the flames and inhaled the smoke, I trust their judgment. But if they are only theorists and not firefighters, I have little confidence in their strategy.”

Ray Anderson, and others like him, are people who have felt the flames and inhaled the smoke. And as I’ve listened and watched, I have been challenged in significant ways. Most importantly, it’s theologians like these whose impact extends far beyond the walls of a classroom. They not only talk theology ... they live it.

The job for me!

A few years back, I was in a library scanning a new book by the Anglican priest and theologian Kenneth Leech. In the introduction, Leech made reference to his position as a community theologian in a struggling neighbourhood of London. I don’t recall much about the book--as good as I'm sure it was--but I remember those two words running ‘round in my head for days and months afterwards. ‘That’s what I want to be!’ I kept thinking. And it’s never left me.

The thought of being embedded amongst a particular community or neighbourhood, listening, observing, thinking, enabling connections, facilitating conversations and cooperation, asking good questions and, together with others of faith, discerning the presence and purposes of God for the community. It's still my dream job. I just need someone to pay me for it!

I noticed a few days back, Jim Gordon over at living wittily offered some thoughtful reflections on theology as a community task and the need for community theologians as intelligent and sensitive facilitators. My desire was reignited.

Here's a snippet from Jim’s post:

In any community there will always be prophets who see clearly and speak bluntly, sages who think wisely and speak hesitantly, pragmatists who think strategically and speak practically, initiators enthused by the new and conservators who value the way it is. Community theologians are in that sense the ones who take on all of this and more, and encourage theological conversation about who we are, why we are, what is God saying through the life we are living; how do we align ourselves with the movement of the Spirit in the culture and world around us; what is happening in this church, in this city, in the church in other places, that tells us what the Spirit is up to, and what is expected of us if we are to go on living faithfully to God's call?

That does it for me! Where do I sign up?

Practicing theology

I teach in the field of practical theology. Though it’s an arena of learning I feel passionate about, I realize it’s an enthusiasm not commonly shared.

There are those for whom the mere sound of the word theology spells boredom. To these people, the term practical theology is an oxymoron. What on earth could be practical about theology?

Then there are those invested in theology who dislike the addition of the word practical. For them, this unfortunate designation to one particular field of theology is an insult to all other fields of supposedly ‘impractical’ theological inquiry—systematic, biblical and historical to name three.

Still others judge practical theology a sort of second-rung theology, entirely derivative in nature and perhaps best for those who don’t have the mind for more intellectually rigorous and foundational pursuits. From this perspective, practical theology is simply the application of pre-determined theological truth to a particular context or challenge.

The first response is, at best, unfortunate. That people view theology in such a dismissive way is based on a sad misunderstanding of what it is. Importantly, it calls those of us who teach theology to do so in more accessible and life-connected ways.

The second response is justified ... mostly. Indeed, all theology is practical, or should be. The trouble is, it’s not. In my view, theology has often been its own worst enemy, unable to surface long enough from its own internal speculative quandaries to even notice it’s personal, social and political contexts.

But it’s the third response that most gets up my nose. Practical theology is not derivative theology. It’s not even applied theology. The designation practical theology gets at the heart of what the best theology really is.

It’s this that I’ve been appreciating most about Terry Veling’s book Practical Theology: On Earth as It Is in Heaven. According to Veling, the discipline, at its best, seeks to reclaim the “reintegration of theology into the weave and fabric of human living, in which theology becomes a ‘practice’ or a way of life.”

For Veling, practical theology is “less a thing to be defined than it is an activity to be done.” It is the practice of theology, not a pre-packaged box of propositions, but a theology discerned and known in the midst of the encounters and experiences of daily life. This jells so much with my own experience. For me, the life-giving nature of theology has never been in its provision of a speculative and grand system of thought through which every situation of life can be interpreted. Rather, it’s about a way of knowing and understanding that flows out of and into experience—mine, yours, ours. For that reason, theology has always been for me more fluid than solid, more open than settled, more pervasive than undergirding.

Veling says it well: “Practical theology wants to keep our relationship with the world open, so that we are never quite done with things; rather, always undoing and redoing them, so that we can keep the doing happening, passionate, keen, expectant—never satisfied, never quite finished. … Practical theology is suspicious of any theology that is too solid, too well-built, too built-up. Rather it is a theology that is given over to a passion for what could yet be, what is still in-the-making, in process, not yet, still coming.”

Perhaps this begins to get at why I feel so much at home in practical theology. For in it, I've found a way of doing theology that arises directly out of the most pressing, immediate, and deeply felt challenges of my life and the life of those around me. What's more, it gives these challenges and experiences an authoritative voice that pre-determined, pre-packaged truth can never allow.

Theologians Beware

Kim Fabricius recently posted ten propositions on being a theologian. This is his first:

1. Actually, there is no such thing as a theologian, anymore than there is such a thing as a Christian. Theologians are not solitary creatures. Theology is the outcome of good conversation, the conversation of friends. Though – the rabies theologorum – you could be forgiven for thinking the opposite! Which is why, in the interest of world peace, it is probably wise that theological conferences are held infrequently. Theologians are like horse manure: all in one place and they stink to high heaven; they are best spread around.

You can read his nine others here.

Mere Emotion

Quoting Patrick Henry:

“You're just being emotional!” is the ultimate academic put-down, often expressed with a fair degree of emotion. “Mere emotion,” “merely emotional”—it is as if these words themselves constitute an argument, … a magic formula that dissolves challenges so that they need not be dealt with or even faced. Yet the “mere” and “merely” are prejudicial in two senses.

First, lurking under the linguistic surface are ancient disputes about the bestial and the human, the feminine and the masculine, the civilized and the barbarian, the infantile and the mature, 'Medieval' and 'Enlightened,' Romantic and Classic, the superstitious and the scientific, ape and angel. Emotions are relegated to the category of the primordial, a kind of chaotic stuff out of which and beyond which 'we' have evolved, and the criteria for 'us' are determined precisely by the negation of what we are thought to have outgrown.

Second, “mere” and “merely” suggest that the emotional is insignificant, beneath the dignity of the true scholar. Serious thinkers simply have better things to pay attention to. If I am being “merely emotional,” I can hope that the aberration will soon pass, leaving little or no trace. We come to believe that the emotional is an unfortunate glitch embedded in the hardware; sophisticated software can bypass it completely. One just needs to learn the codes and implement them, exercise one's will, and get oneself together again.

... Indeed, “mere” is the mask we put on something that is not mere at all, but overwhelming. Maturity begins when I say either that my rationality is as mere as my emotions, or, better, that neither of them is mere at all. I am, thank God, both, and much else besides.

______________________
Patrick Henry, The Ironic Christian's Companion: Finding the Marks of God's Grace in the World (New York: Riverhead Books, 1999)