I speak
often of a group that I belong to and have the honor of mentoring in, and that
is Education for Ministry (EfM).
For those unfamiliar with the title, it's an educational formation program for
laypeople, but is open to clergy who, it may be used as part of a diaconal
process or who are already ordained. Most often studied by those who want to
know more about the church, the Bible, and most importantly, themselves. It's
not a self-help group to resolve problems. It is a four-year program, one year
each for Old Testament, New Testament, church history, and theology. By the end
of the four years people have a greater understanding of how all those things
work together and how they can use what they've learned not only in their
church affiliations and lives, but in their personal and professional lives.
One
of the basic things that EFMstresses is a concept called theological
reflection. It's a way of using tools to examine a potential problem, something
that a person would want to think more deeply about, possibly a different way
of looking at a familiar Scripture, or as a way of recognizing a position or an
action that a person can have or take on a given topic. TR's, theological
reflections, come in a lot of forms, but basically, they start at a point, identifying
something the person wants to consider and to examine in an organized manner.
The goal is to find either an answer or a direction pointing in a direction,
often one or the other being something that hadn’t been considered before. This
is my personal description of Do-It-Yourself Theological Reflection (DIY TR).
One
way of beginning to think about something, once someone has decided they need
to think about this a bit more, is to just write down what it is they want to
think about. Sometimes it's clear, and sometimes it requires perhaps a little
refining. A way EfM does this is to encourage people to create or use a
metaphor to visualize the situation they want to work on, whether with others
or just with themselves. It doesn't have to be a fancy metaphor. I have used a
picture of a man riding a quad runner over a jump when the back wheels come off.
To me, that represents a part of my life that is out of control and that I need
to deal with. It can be something funny, like the cute YouTube about cat herding,
one of my personal favorites, for times when things are going every which way
instead of in a general direction. It often helps to find metaphors to use, for
instance, when contemplating a piece of Scripture.
We
then go into the four areas that we want to examine in relation to our
discussion or conversation. Culture, contemporary culture that is, is a way of
examining what the world around me thinks about the subject that I am
contemplating. For instance, how does culture perceive the problem of safety in
schools for children and young people? How does culture reflect the ethics of
life that we see in our contemporary world? How do books and magazines
represent our culture and how does that affect us? It can also be expanded to
include different types of cultures, such as those bound together by country of
origin, religion, or perhaps even socioeconomic, racial, or almost any group
where community is a group of people who are joined together, whether loosely
or tightly, by common goals, interests, and sense of comradery. It's also possible
to examine this one area in terms of what socio-cultural life was like in Biblical
times if one were considering a TR based on a passage or piece of Scripture.
It may require some research, but research is learning, and learning is a good
thing. That's one reason we use theological reflections.
A
second area of interest in and examination is the tradition. Generally, we
think of it as the Christian tradition, incorporating the Bible, the church
traditions of feasts, seasons, and liturgies, the lives of saints, hymns, and
religious reading that we have done. One question I can ask is where in
Scripture have I found a similar situation to the one that I'm contemplating.
Sometimes I have to Google it, other times it springs to mind. There is also
the question of where is God in the situation? That is one of the core
questions to be brought out during a theological reflection.
There
is a third area of reflection, the position statement, which is an
"I" statement of what I believe, I think, I feel, and the like. It's
the trench I'm willing to die and, more or less, the line in the sand that I
don't want to cross. It's how I perceive the situation in relationship to
myself and my world around me. It's usually one of the most important parts of
the TR because it requires us to articulate very clearly where we stand on the
issue under reflection and why. Did we learn it from our parents? Is it the
result of study and experience? Does it come from the culture that surrounded
us? it could be any one of several ways.
The
fourth area is action: What are we going to do about this? This reveals impact
on our ministries both in the church and in the world. People don't always
realize that the work outside the church is every bit as important as the work inside
and is most often a ministry itself. Stay-at-home mother? Someone who helps
with the food banks and the homeless shelters? A cheerful receptionist at a
busy office? An orderly in hospital? Dishwasher in a restaurant? All have ministries,
even if they don’t think of them that way. Even the people who pick up the
garbage can be ministers because they are serving a community in a job most of
us wouldn't want but which is necessary and can be done cheerfully and
thoroughly. So, when we think about our action, we think less about the salary
we make and perhaps more about the pleasure and satisfaction we take in doing
our job well. What we do is see is God in the world around us, and we become
the hands of God to others, even if we never mention religion. It's vital to
find God working there with us.
So,
what's a TR and how do you know you’ve got one? You have a TR when you think
about things in a somewhat structured manner. It takes areas of your life and
places the question in the center and then seeing the impact or the change of
direction as one progresses through the four areas of interest. How do you know
you've got one? That's easy. You find a way for God to work through you, and
you understand what you are meant to do to make the kingdom of God appear here
on earth. When you figure out the answer to the question, or even a direction
towards the answer, then you have probably done so in some sort of reflective
way. Remembering to put God into the picture and adding tradition plus culture,
position, and action can bring you to a greater understanding of the Bible, the
church, the community, the world, and yourself and how all of it works together
for the good of all. Try it; it’s a very
spiritual experience.
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