Insights on Pastoral Ministry from Two Encounters
I do not make enough of encounters -- at least I do not write out my reflections on encounters enough. Sometimes I find it easier to just have thoughts and reflections and I am finding that it takes discipline to voice those thoughts either verbally or in written form. It seems that at times my attempting to articulate these thoughts through voice or in writing gets in the way of what I want to express. Need to reflect more on this later.
Getting back to my two encounters. I had two encounters this week that shed some light on the nature of pastoral ministry. One was with John Hayes of InnerCHANGE (www.innerchange.org)who has a unique way of revealing what is to be seen in Scripture. He sees Scripture from the perspective of the Story that God is telling us. Often when we read Scripture we look for the historical drama unfolding before us, the words spoken, the actions displayed -- and we get caught up in the event and try to make some sense of it for our life and living. However, there is another way to see Scripture as well. It involves seeing it as God telling a Story to us, His Story. And in telling his Story to us it is more than what the content of the Story is about, there is much to be learned in the hearing by how the Story is being told -- how the Story is structured.
So for example, John Hayes told the story of the 4 friends who brought the paralyzed man to Jesus to be healed in Mark 2. John Hayes opened my eyes to a whole new dimension of what is shared in this story, by seeing the way this Story is told by God to us -- almost allegorical, but not really. In hearing this Story being told we see things we normally do not see when we only take notice of the story's content and not its structure. Of significance is to note that when the 4 friends brought this paralyzed man to where Jesus was -- it was crowded. They could have said to themselves, "Well we did our part, we brought our friend to be healed, but there is a crowd here -- we tried our best." This reveals perhaps our attitudes in ministry -- trying our best but stopping short of engaging in what we know we need to do because of the barriers that always confront us. What is healing about this story -- at least the way God tells it -- is that barriers will always be there, but are we willing to climb to the roof and rip a hole in it to get those who need to be touched by Jesus in front of him. Powerful stuff.
The second encounter was hearing Linford Detweiler of "Over the Rhine" perform. A poet who has deep insights into life -- his own and ours. He read us some of his poetry, some to music and some without music. He shared insights in ways that drew you into the way he sees life.
In both of these encounters I see something that I think is to be descriptive of pastoral ministry. It involves "seeing the Story of God being told all around us." It involves "hearing the activity of God that is going on all the time." No mix up of words there -- seeing of Story and hearing of activity -- is what I meant to say. Something of what pastors are to be is being poets. As we live and serve amongst our people we are called to discern God Story amongst us, God's actions amongst us -- and we begin to give voice to these discernings. We begin to retell the Story of God with us, we give voice to the ongoing continuing unfolding drama of God in Jesus among us and around us. The only way this Story can be told is in the way it is told to us -- in Story. Often we try to take hold of it, capture it, reshape it, interpret it, recast it, through our preaching and teaching. But I wonder if there would be more power in the hearing of God's Story amongst us as God's people if we offered up our voices to the Spirit of God in ways that John Hayes and Linford Detweiler did this week -- and so become poets retelling the Story of God in the hearing of a people whom we are called to serve so that they may include their living, their struggles, their hopes and sorrows, their joys and despairs in this Story of God.
I see that as pastors our role is not to recast the Story in ways that show how well we know how to tell the Story, but we find ways of telling God's Story that people will give their lives to become a part of God's Story and somehow see their story being embraced by God's Story. Is this a helpful image? Let me know what you think?
Getting back to my two encounters. I had two encounters this week that shed some light on the nature of pastoral ministry. One was with John Hayes of InnerCHANGE (www.innerchange.org)who has a unique way of revealing what is to be seen in Scripture. He sees Scripture from the perspective of the Story that God is telling us. Often when we read Scripture we look for the historical drama unfolding before us, the words spoken, the actions displayed -- and we get caught up in the event and try to make some sense of it for our life and living. However, there is another way to see Scripture as well. It involves seeing it as God telling a Story to us, His Story. And in telling his Story to us it is more than what the content of the Story is about, there is much to be learned in the hearing by how the Story is being told -- how the Story is structured.
So for example, John Hayes told the story of the 4 friends who brought the paralyzed man to Jesus to be healed in Mark 2. John Hayes opened my eyes to a whole new dimension of what is shared in this story, by seeing the way this Story is told by God to us -- almost allegorical, but not really. In hearing this Story being told we see things we normally do not see when we only take notice of the story's content and not its structure. Of significance is to note that when the 4 friends brought this paralyzed man to where Jesus was -- it was crowded. They could have said to themselves, "Well we did our part, we brought our friend to be healed, but there is a crowd here -- we tried our best." This reveals perhaps our attitudes in ministry -- trying our best but stopping short of engaging in what we know we need to do because of the barriers that always confront us. What is healing about this story -- at least the way God tells it -- is that barriers will always be there, but are we willing to climb to the roof and rip a hole in it to get those who need to be touched by Jesus in front of him. Powerful stuff.
The second encounter was hearing Linford Detweiler of "Over the Rhine" perform. A poet who has deep insights into life -- his own and ours. He read us some of his poetry, some to music and some without music. He shared insights in ways that drew you into the way he sees life.
In both of these encounters I see something that I think is to be descriptive of pastoral ministry. It involves "seeing the Story of God being told all around us." It involves "hearing the activity of God that is going on all the time." No mix up of words there -- seeing of Story and hearing of activity -- is what I meant to say. Something of what pastors are to be is being poets. As we live and serve amongst our people we are called to discern God Story amongst us, God's actions amongst us -- and we begin to give voice to these discernings. We begin to retell the Story of God with us, we give voice to the ongoing continuing unfolding drama of God in Jesus among us and around us. The only way this Story can be told is in the way it is told to us -- in Story. Often we try to take hold of it, capture it, reshape it, interpret it, recast it, through our preaching and teaching. But I wonder if there would be more power in the hearing of God's Story amongst us as God's people if we offered up our voices to the Spirit of God in ways that John Hayes and Linford Detweiler did this week -- and so become poets retelling the Story of God in the hearing of a people whom we are called to serve so that they may include their living, their struggles, their hopes and sorrows, their joys and despairs in this Story of God.
I see that as pastors our role is not to recast the Story in ways that show how well we know how to tell the Story, but we find ways of telling God's Story that people will give their lives to become a part of God's Story and somehow see their story being embraced by God's Story. Is this a helpful image? Let me know what you think?
posted by Roland G. Kuhl at 6:47 AM
1 Comments:
mm,
One thought on "what gets in the way of telling the real Story and hearing the real Story" is that we often try to hear and tell this Story in isolation from the community of faith. We try to use this Story in evangelism, in making an reasonsed apologetic for the Gospel -- and the result is that we try to tell the Story and have others hear the Story uprooted from the context of the community of Christ, which is an ongoing demonstration of the reality of this Story. So when we fail to focus on where and how the Story of God is rooted in the community of his people, we begin to create barriers for the hearing and telling of the Story.
I am sure there are other insights on this, but this is one that I think can create a significant barrier.
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