Week 5 of our unit for Uniting College for Leadership and Theology was about Context and Culture. What does it mean for the church to see that the “mission field” is here and not in some foreign land.
So I actually do a hypothetical where I get people to imagine that their congregation is transported overnight by the Holy Spirit to a foreign land to be on mission, and I ask them what would happen in the first month, the first year and the first five years. I used this photo from Cambodia for discussion. The activity raises a whole bunch of questions regarding people’s perceptions about mission.
We then consider how or why would things be different to be engaged in mission in our own culture or society, which of course is Newbigin’s question.
I talked people through a number of definitions and understandings of “Culture” and how the meaning of the word has changed over time. We end up with this summary list:
- A standard of excellence to aspire to
- An integrated way of life of a people
- Multiple subaltern communities or sub-cultures
- Ideological industries that exploit the masses
- Ways in which people make meaning of their lives
We did an activity using Storycatching Cards from Innovative Resources to talk about the culture of the neighbourhoods in which we live.
We then talked more about understandings of culture, using Lelia Green, Peter Horsfield and Michel de Certeau to discuss culture as a place where ordinary people make meaning using the tools and symbols that culture provides, appropriating and reappropriating them in different ways, sometimes to subvert the dominant culture.
Models of Contextual Theology
I created a set of slides and cards to explore Stephen Bevans six Models of Contextual Theology.
His models are titled:
- Translation
- Anthropological
- Praxis
- Synthetic
- Transcendetnal
- Counter-cultural
After walking people through the models, we used the cards and questions to consider which might apply to some particular missional activities:
- A couple of Adelaide Fringe shows that I had arranged with Pilgrim Uniting Church in the centre of Adelaide: a photo exhibition called A Moment’s Grace
- A multi-sensory, multi-station installation called The Landscape of Desire curated by Cheryl Lawrie her friend Blythe, and Jonny Baker.
Photos: jonny baker
- Tea and Be – Mark Pierson
(as a lead into this I talked about a conversation with a minister in Melbourne about hosting a Human Library in an outdoor cafe in a mall near his church)
Photo: Mark Pierson
– See video interview with Mark here.
– Article about Tea and Be with paper by Mark to download
– To Tea or Not To Tea Part 2
I had quite a few more examples of mission activities to discuss but we ran out of time. In my view the six models and questions worked really well.
EXTRA STUFF – Most weeks we don’t cover everything or I leave out something important so at times I’ve made a supplementary video, and I did that again this week.
I talked about Pete Rollins’ views on the hyperpresence of God from his book How [Not] To Speak of God.
However the main thing was to say that Bevans’ models can be used not only to analyse a mission activity, but to ask “Where is the Spirit at work in the world?” and how might we join in. So I ran through the six again, using each of them to explore that question briefly.