Category: ministry

I said something in my last post (on June 7) on the community theologian and the theological community that I’d like to develop a bit.

“Christ dwelling in our hearts through faith is bedrock truth, and practical theology is Christology understood as transformative living truth embodied in discipleship and exalted in doxology. “

Christology as transformative truth lies at the heart of Baptist spirituality – not to the detriment of Trinitarian thinking but as the revelatory centre of our knowledge and experience of God. My personal commitment to community is inextricably linked to a profound conviction about the living presence amongst Jesus’ followers, of the Risen Jesus himself. We are the Body of Christ; when we gather in His name He (the defining theological centre) is in the midst of us as the Servant Lord, calling  us through the Spirit to obedient living after the pattern of Christ, as revealed in Scripture. Christology not only requires orthodoxy in our thinking, but orthopraxis in the purchase what we believe about Jesus actually exerts on who we are. And who we are determines how we will live, and why – and that takes us back to Christ.

  Now if a community theologian is seeking to accompany the community through faithful presence, and stimulate reflection and decision through their speaking, and encourage and heal through self-giving ministry, and both give and receive in the mutual costliness of love, then I begin to sense something quite deep is taking place. That last sentence is an extended paraphrase of two words – kenosis and paraclete – self-emptying and accompanying helper. When a community names Christ as its centre, the One dwelling in our hearts through faith, then that confession is also a surrender to the transforming grace of the living presence of the risen Lord. And if Christlikeness is about both practical imitation through Christlike actions, it must also be about convictions, attitudes, motives and ways of relating, through a Christlike spirit. And if I had to choose two words to help give a sense of what the spirit of Christ might be, I’d be pushed to choose better than kenosis and paraclete.

Do these two words both describe the role, and safeguard the style, of the community theologian? And if they were to become pervasive within the community, would they confer such evidence of authentic Christian lifestyle, relationships and personality, that it would be true to describe such a group as a community of theologians? Now I’ll want to pick up these two deeply Christian ideas, kenosis and paraclete another time – then I want to look at a couple of biblical stories – then I might have just about started to begin to get an initial idea of what a community theologian could, perhaps, look like – and more to the point act like!

Meantime here’s a quotation from a new book by Gabriel Fackre, Christology in Context. (Interestingly subtitled, A Pastoral Systematics – a combination of theological styles that I think is essential).

While mutuality means both enrichment and interpretation, it cannot be forgotten that these are movements from points of primary particular ministry. The “pastor and teacher” [for my purposes read community theologian] exist to equip the saints for their ministry, not to pre-empt it. And those called to the church scattered cannot domesticate their gift and claim it in the household of the church gathered. If the particularity of these ministries is neglected, the body is seriously crippled. That particularity is, as we have seen in our reflection on mutuality, not the monopoly by the ministers of identity and vitality of these functions, but their faithful stewardship of them. This stewardship entails seeing that the tasks get done by whoever can best do them, not by the steward’s compulsion to perform all of them by themselves. Particular ministry therefore is custodianship of those special ways  that keep the body  of Christ alive in its vitality and awake in its identity. (page 52)

That I think is a good description of the community theologian – and there are glimpses of my two chosen words, kenosis and paraclete…….going to think some more now……………

Jason wrote in a helpful comment

Jim. I think the answer must include the kinds of words you note, but must extend further less the theological conversation and attendant ‘discoveries’ or, better yet ‘revelations’ become reduced to no more than a life-sapping circularity in which the belief and practises of the particular community are only ever affirmed and never really challenged – leaving that local body unreformable and closed off to the prophetic and corrective word of Scripture and unaccountable to the wider body whose tradition and future it shares. Great challenges though, and worthy of life-long pursuit for any community of faith.

I’ve taken a few days to respond to Jason’s comment because I think what he is saying is an important caution against the wrong kind of theological community reflection, growing out of the exaggerated sense of a community’s own importance. I mean such community sins as spiritual introspection, intellectual self-indulgence, theological myopia, intentional ignorance of wider traditions, relational exclusion of those who differ, all of these and other communal expressions of that inward curving, self concerned overconfidence in our own insights that William Temple called ‘our original sin’.

Of course these dangerous distorions are the potential dark side of any community that makes ‘community’ ‘our community’, and ‘our community’ more important than that which calls us together, Christ, by the Spirit, in the name of the Father. When I talk of the reciprocal relationship of community theologian and community of theologians, I am thinking of Paul’s stupendous prayer ( in Ephesians 3.14-21), which is ontologically definitive for Christian community, and theologically definitive for that community’s way of doing theology together. The sheer scale and scope of Paul’s thought annihilates any pretensions that Christian community can ever be other than graced into being, called to God’s purpose, nourished and sustained by God’s love, part of a purpose eternal yet to be lived here and now, limited by human finitude yet touched by holiness infinite in both demand and gift. ( The image is of the Eagle Nebulae – my favourite Hubble photo – vast as it is, incomparably superceded by the breadth, length, height and depth of the love of Christ).

Ephesians 3.14-21 is one of those prayerful aspirations that act as a doxological corrective to self-fascination, but also acts positively by exulting in the incalculable possibilities of discovering together the transforming presence of Christ, inwardly and outwardly. The anchorage isn’t ‘the community’ but its rootedness and groundedness in the love that calls it into existence and sustains it. And what we seek to comprehend together is the impossible possibility of knowing the love of Christ that passes knowledge, though we will be lifelong learners determined to go on trying. And while a community can degenerate into a self-preserving, self-promoting, and yes self-destructive circle of self-loving, and become too full of itself, the antidote to all of this is to know the love of Christ and be filled with all the fullness of God.

And yes I know. That is ‘all very well in theory’. But for me an insistence on practice and pragmatism can never take priority over ontological truths which define what we practice, and how and why, with reference to the One of whom all our theology seeks to speak – humbly, but not without confidence. Practical theology is the practice of what we believe – and what we believe is truly discovered, tested and adjusted by practice – but Paul is right. Christ dwelling in our hearts through faith is bedrock truth, and practical theology is Christology understood as transformative living truth embodied in discipleship, expressed in community in the Body of Christ, and exalted in doxology.

So I suppose what I am arguing is that the community theologian is one who accompanies, facilitates, shares the mystery, encourages the seeking – but in a community centred not on itself but on Christ; founded not on its own values but rooted and grounded in redeeming, reconciling, mystifying and transformative Love. Paul has little time for the singular ‘you’ – and in this prayer he uses the inclusive you plural – this is indeed a community of theologians – true theologians are those who pray, and those who pray are true theologians. I’m still thinking about all this…….

Talking recently with a group of folk about ministry, community and how theology is an important element in a community’s identity. I don’t mean the hard edged, brand name, logo-protected kinds of theology like Reformed, Evangelical, Liberation, Charismatic-Pentecostal, Feminist and Womanist. I mean the theology that is this community’s own self-articulation of what God in Christ, by the Spirit, is doing amongst them, and what they are now doing and planning together in response to what God is already doing. I’m thinking of how a community has come to think of God, of themeselves, of their reason for being who they are, where they are, together, and what that means for their coninuing life and health as a community of Christ.

We began to wonder about each community having community theologians, perhaps each Christian community coming to see itself as a community of theologians. I posted earlier about every believer a theologian – I passionately believe that. So what I’m thinking about is not THE person in the community who does theology, reflects theologically, gives the theological lead; not THE person who is the professionally trained, academically best resourced, and whose theological education exudes an unearned authority. Forget that – theological reflection and conversation is at its best when it is an open shared conversation by a group of people who worship together, read and think about the Bible together, experience God and take that experience seriously – (and the togetherness is part of the experience) – try to serve God and love each other according to the Gospel, and have their own theological take on what God is about.

But most times someone needs to encourage such conversation; and yes someone needs to resource it with teaching, to accompany it in friendship and listening love. Such a community theologian is one whose gift is to interpret the community’s experience of God, of each other and of what is happening to them, in a way that enables each of us to see and trust God not only with MY life, but equally with our life together; and then to interpret that experience in the light of the Bible, the Gospel story, the call of the Prophets. And it will be a symbiotic relationship of each enriching the other, interpreting together the shared experience of people committed to each other in the risks of love, acknowledging that the theology of a community is not shaped, or directed, or conformed, to any one mind or style. The community theologian is the enabler of spiritual reflection, modelling but never monopolising theological thinking, praying with the heart and mind while in conversation with sisters and brothers, and together interpreting the life of the Spirit, the grace of the Son and the love of the Father as revealed in Scripture and experienced and enacted amongst us.

In any such 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?

Obedience is about listening and responding – the first presupposes the second. Who are the listeners amongst us, the ones who see trends, discern movement, imagine possibilities, and voice these not as an agenda to impose or pursue, but as a way of inviting further trustful conversation into a shared future?  A community of theologians, reflecting on God in Christ active in the Spirit, builds in a set of constraining and enabling criteria that test the blunt words of the prophet, respect the hesitant caution of the sage, stay alert to the persuasive strategies of the pragmatist, and are neither pushed around by the impatience of the initiators nor demotivated by the cautions of the conservators. Because what makes community theologians so important for us is the shared recognition that we are a community of God – and the two things we should know something about is God (Theology!) and each other (Community!). Anyway, that’s the thinking so far……….hmmmm.

Thirty years ago in an article called ‘The Nerve of Failure’, published in Theology Today, Leonard Sweet anticipated some of the themes that have captivated his readers in a stream of his recent bestsellers. My favourite quote is the one at the start:

"The quality that should mark the Christian church is not goodness, but grace, not merit, but mercy, not moralism, but forgiveness, not the enshrinement of success, but the acceptance of failure . . . Lacking the nerve of failure, we have suffered a failure of nerve-to dare to dream dreams, venture visions, and risk getting splinters that come from cutting against the grain."

And then there’s the wise reminder from John Oman, an unjustly forgotten theologian, "NO is a Christian word". By which Oman meant, not ‘NO’ as negativity and withdrawal, but ‘NO’ as positive engagement against whatever diminishes, demeans or dismisses our humanity – NO as cutting against the cultural grain….and to hang with the splinters. The book from which it comes is called Grace and Personality – now there’s two interesting criteria for a church – a place demonstrating, embodying, performing, the grace and personality of Jesus.

In 1986 Walter Brueggemann published his seminal essay, ‘The Costly Loss of Lament’. It is one of the most important attempts to bring biblical studies and pastoral care into the service of those whose lives have fallen in on them and who have lost the capacity to make sense of it all anymore. Swinton makes good use of Brueggemann’s work, and significantly builds beyond it.

The previous post on Raging with Compassion ( See March 24) dealt with Swinton’s experience of contemporary upbeat church worship failing to take radical suffering and loss with liturgical seriousness. The large central chapter of his book, pages 90-129 provide a rich, informed pastoral response under the title, ‘Why me Lord? Why Me?’ Having explored the nature of suffering as an experience that often defies rational articulation, Swinton reflected on the cross and the silence of Jesus. (March 24 again).

The next step Swinton takes, and invites us to follow, is recovering the practice of lament. The non-reference in church the following day to the Omagh bombing, distressed him but he suggests it was ‘psychic numbing and stunned silence…people lacked the confidence to ask legitimate questions of God…’ As in many places in this book, Swinton’s next move is dictated by his conviction that the key human response to evil and suffering lies in a creative dialectic between reticent silence and appropriate language. Out of the silence of suffering comes the cry of protest, and the lanaguage that is immediately appropriate is the language of lament. Referring to Jesus’ silence, and his cry of dereliction on the cross (taken from a Psalm of lament), Swinton senses there the clue to how human beings can be helped to respond to our own experiences of brokenness and despair.

‘…by rediscovering the "forgotten" language  and practice of lament we can develop a mode of resistance that can help us overcome  the hopelessness and voicelessness that result from evil and suffering

What follows is an account of biblical lament – honest expression of rage, the language of victim not culprit, questions taken into the heart of God, language of outrage against the status quo,- and thus not the language of escapist theologies of denial, but of trust despite apparent contradiction. It is the cry of the human voice against dehumanising experience, and its function is the rehabilitation of the sufferer. Disordered life is reframed; disorientation moves to re-orientation; alienation begins the long search for reconciliation. Because lament points to a crisis of understanding more than a crisis of faith; it is prayer addressed to God. Lament is then an act of faith and the remainder of the chapter explores what that might mean for the individual and the community, as through compassionate accompaniment and liturgical honesty, God and the experience of the sufferer are held together in raging compassion and trustful lament.

Building on the important work of Brueggemann and contemporary Psalm studies, Swinton provides in this chapter a key resource for pastoral theology – and a crucial corrective to the triumphalist fideism that signals a loss of nerve that can’t cope with pain. In liturgy, at worship, within the community of faith, radical suffering and the evil that often causes it, are to be confronted, acknowledged and given language in prayers of lament. Only so are human beings who suffer taken with sufficient theological and pastoral seriousness.