So,
the final year of my theology Masters (with Westminster Theological Centre)
has begun and a big chunk of the work this year will be on a dissertation. I
have to write 16,000-20,000 words on... well, on pretty much whatever
I want, as long as it's got something to do with Christian theology!
I've
got a few ideas, which I need to develop into a detailed proposal
over the next few weeks. I guess I'm writing this post to help me
straighten out my thinking and get me moving towards that goal. So
here goes with my ideas...
Firstly,
I'm really interested in what people call simple church, organic
church, or various other names. Church where the meetings are fairly
(or completely) unplanned and people all have the opportunity to
share what they feel would be encouraging and inspiring. It's
obviously not your standard way of 'doing' church but there are
glimpses through Christian history of Jesus' followers meeting
together in something like this way. And there are groups across the
world now gathering like this, in places like cafes, homes, sports
venues, offices; wherever people meet, really.
The
problem is, I need a clear focus for the dissertation. Something
like 'Current trends in simple church fellowships' would probably be
far too vague. We've been told our topic has to be narrowed down in
some way, such as looking at how a particular biblical author tackles
a certain issue. And nothing is really leaping out at me, in terms
of an angle or focus on the simple church movement.
Which
all leaves me with option two.
As
many of my friends know (thank you for your patience, friends!), I
have a thing about
sermons.
In many Protestant churches, certainly the more evangelical ones,
the sermon is the centrepiece of the Sunday service. The minister or
whoever's speaking will spend a lot of time preparing their talk, and
then all the congregation will listen (or not...) for half an hour or more. That's a lot of cumulative time! But to what end?
Basically,
it seems to me that sermons are intended for two main purposes;
encouragement and teaching. The former purpose, I can thoroughly go
along with. I've been inspired, challenged and spiritually
re-invigorated by plenty of talks over the time I've been a follower
of Jesus. Some people clearly have a gift of speaking to groups and
imparting a fresh vision of the joy and adventure of being involved
with God's kingdom and plans.
But,
again it seems to me, many sermons – perhaps most – have the goal
of teaching people about something or to behave differently in some
way. And this points towards the second potential topic for my
dissertation. Are sermons the most effective way of teaching people?
What other ways might work? Are there examples of churches
teaching, training and discipling their members effectively; how are
they doing it?
I'm
thinking about drawing in some ideas from educational theory, because
it seems that most churches pretty much ignore what educational
researchers have to say about how people learn. I don't think this
should be so; Christian musicians don't ignore music theory;
Christian counsellors don't cast aside everything that secular
counselling and psychotherapy have to say. Don't get me wrong, I'm
not suggesting that Christians should embrace without question
everything that comes from the secular world. But I really like the
idea of investigating how stuff like learning styles, blended learning and peer learning
might be of benefit in the church context as we help each other along
the path of apprenticeship to Jesus. It just doesn't seem right that
most churches rely on a mode of learning long since relegated to a bit-part role in
most secular learning contexts.
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