DM541
Professor Steve Taylor
Reflections by Dan Butler
As a personal reflection on my growth and development during the Steve Taylor course, Living the Text in the Postmodern Context, I feel as if I have emerged as a new man in Christ, at least in fresh desire and hunger to serve God’s people more effectively and to live out the bible in my personal life. As a result of the class, I have suffered a ministerial paradigm shift, and feel anxiety as the dust settles. I pray the God prevent me from falling into the old ruts.
I sense growth and development in several areas: my understanding of new and exciting ways of preaching the gospel, postmodernism, perception of community, and concepts of innovation, bible and culture DJing, imagery and variety.
Most impacting as a result of our class together, I see numerous new and exciting ways of preaching the gospel and making use of new and revolutionary concepts and means. Resultantly, I feel a strong challenge to make my ministry and presentation of the bible text more appealing and effective in the postmodern context. The many and varied ways that I observed the bible text come to life in class last week etched the bible texts into me in dimensions that far supercede my listening to an oral sermon; likewise I desire and now see the potential for my ministry to assume greater relevance and effectiveness.
Steve challenged me to look realistically into my present world and see postmodernism as the cultural paradigm to which I increasingly minister as more time passes. Although I had purposefully avoided this discussion, Steve’s videos and comments along with Johnson’s reading helped me to face myself and to see that our fragmented culture resists foundational and totality perspectives. Actually, I now perceive today’s culture as a living, dynamic, colorful, and changing collogue, disjointed and yet connected, that requires innovative but relevant means for me to communicate effectively.
Before our class, I had seen community as a purpose of the church, but after witnessing Steve work with and shape our classroom community, I sense community as a purpose of God, a shaping mechanism through which the Holy Spirit operates to mold individual lives into what God desires. When community functions, not only are individual needs to minister and to receive ministry met, but God’s purposes to shape the soul also occur. When I learn to trust the Spirit to illuminate the scripture, guide the speaker or preacher, move in and through the community, and speak to me individually, I learn that God uses each component – a preacher, the Bible text, and the community – to shape my soul according to His design.
The concept of creativity and innovation emerged as a biblical norm, when I see humanity as made in God’s image. Godly play and creative expression should occur instinctively and inevitably within us and my ministry just as a result of who we are. Hence, creativity and innovation should occur within a spiritual experience – church. With my new-found desire to foster creativity and enjoy the resultant spiritual experiences, I anticipate making more room for creativity within the context of my ministry. Additionally, the postmodern culture mandates creativity and innovation in order to maintain relevance in ministry; besides, variety is the spice of life.
DJing the bible and culture emerges as a beautiful opportunity and unique challenge. The concept of DJing gives me latitude and flexibility to implement applications that I learned in our class somewhat on a “pick and choose” basis – that I implement new and varied sermon techniques and communication forums on a “tailor-made” basis in my present ministry context, and thereby prevent anxiety among our congregation’s baby-boomer modernists. Additionally, as a unique challenge, DJing requires incredible wisdom and ability – to select what aspects of culture and/or scripture get amplified, subverted, or juxtaposed. DJing messages could potentially be miscommunicated as mockery or another unintended message and may cause misunderstandings and unnecessary problems. DJing without wisdom or ability may also allow my audience to miss the point of what I was trying to communicate.
Finally, I sense a crying demand for imagery and variety in my future ministry. Presently, I use pictures as accents; however, I anticipate using images as creative expressions that stimulate thought, open the mind and heart to deeper dimensions. I see that images need to help me communicate both intellectual and emotional messages, especially in an image driven culture. My “image” muscles appear weak in comparison to my “word” muscles, and I anticipate strengthening this aspect of ministry.
I look forward to the place of the bible in my future ministry in attempting to live the text and make the text come to life. First, I desire to swallow, digest, ingest and metabolize the word of God to where it lives within me; and rather than being a text that I read and observe externally with my eyes, I want the bible to emerge as a power, conviction, and truth upon which I live daily life. Hence, rather than the bible serving as encouraging words or recommended disciplines, I pray God’s word take hold into my personal living, and may people read the bible as they observe me. Accordingly, I desire to fulfill Paul’s declaration to the Corinthian church (2 Cor. 3:2-3) and to repeat John’s record of the incarnation, that the Word became flesh (John 1:1-14).
In walking away from Steve Taylor’s class this past week, I desire like never before to make the bible text come to life. Rather than the bible seen as dull, boring, half-dead, lost in lecture, words, and sermon, I want to see the text emerge into a rightful place of excitement with people enthusiastically engaging their bible and enjoying powerful, life-changing spiritual experiences as they interface with word of God in the community of faith. Though my ministry, may the scripture provide people well-rounded aesthetic, escapist, educational, and entertaining experiences. I envision utilizing all the methods presented in class: fresh sermons that include inductive, abductive, dialogical, multiple voice, and storytelling approaches. Among a cross-section of venues, I anticipate leading a variety of exercises that breath life into the text, including: stop light discussions, role-play, parable parallels, emotional exegesis, and dwelling in the word by leading people to listen for inspiring or intriguing aspects of God’s word and then to hear others into free speech.
I loved and sincerely appreciated this class and the instructor.
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6 comments:
Dan, I so appreciate your honesty about your struggle with the idea of postmodernity. Letting go of foundational teaching is frightening. However, I honestly believe that even the baby boomer modernist members of your congregation will appreciate the ability to connect emotionally, visually or even kinesthetically to the Bible. As someone that grew up among a group of modernist baby boomers in a church that opposed change in their styles of preaching, I can tell you firsthand that it might be difficult at first. However, I think you can DJ culture into sermons in a way that is subtle enough to be not scary. I guess my encouragement to you is simply not to give up.
Your statement that you use to see "community as a purpose of the church, but after witnessing Steve work with and shape our classroom community, I sense community as a purpose of God" really struck me. I have been wrestling with what it means to be in community within the context of church. In the past I have lived in intentional community where community was "easy to form" because of the proximity of living to one another. However, trying to find community in my local church where we meet once a week can be hard. However I should not necessarily be looking to my church solely for community, but also looking elsewhere to see where God can bring me into community. How can God draw me into community in my neighborhood? At work? etc. While the church is one place to find community, it is not the only place where community forms.
Taylor's Postcard 8 has informed a lot of my thinking about the place of culture in the gospel. Specifically, I appreciate his rejection of the dualism that seems to exist in many churches between gospel and culture...as you have seen, Christian culture needs to appreciate both.
Steve Taylor, "The Out of Bounds Church" p. 138
Your expression of feeling as if you have “emerged as a new man in Christ, at least in fresh desire and hunger to serve God’s people…and to live the [Bible] in my personal life” is very similar to my own experience of increased wonder and desire to read scripture and live my faith in a way that ministers to others in a similar way. I can also empathize with the anxiety that comes with having one’s world turned upside down, so to speak. I’m reminded of CyberCindy’s experience of consternation as she finds herself being enlivened by the experience of taking in scripture in a living and in-the-moment way (Rowell, 2003).
Lucy Rose’s book, Sharing the Word, speaks to the possibility of going beyond the traditional oral/verbal sermon based upon a “passive transmission of truth from the preacher or through the preacher to the congregation” (1997, p. 30), toward a vision of conversational preaching in which “a sermon’s content is a proposal offered to the community of faith for their additions, corrections, or counterproposals” (p. 5). Her vision of preaching affirms your observation that community is a “purpose of God,” stating, “First, conversational preaching is communal, growing out of the community ethos…” (p. 121) and later, “Conversational preaching emphasizes the importance of sustained conversation with other communities of faith and with those on the margins….” (p. 122). I know that I will be continuing to reflect upon the ways that I can re-envision how church can take place and how I can break free of the passive methods that I have developed for so long. I pray God’s blessings on you as the dust settles in your world as well. –Lee Perry
Rose, L. A. (1997). Sharing the Word. Louisville, KY: Westminister John Knox Press.
Rowell, G. (2003). The (Spiritual) Adventures of CyberCindy. Berkshire, England: Paternoster Press.
Dan, you sounded extremely challenged and blessed by this course and you came away with some “new and exciting ways for preaching the gospel” in a postmodern world. (I’d like to hear some of your new and improved sermons. Are they available on CD or the internet?) I identify with your cultural paradigm sift and your commitment to use creativity and innovation. I need to ask if you were challenged by Doug Pagitt the way I was. While I don’t accept many of his conclusions I think he is correct in identifying the serious problems with today’s sermons and how “preaching has degraded into speech making.” (1) He isn’t suggesting ways to improve homiletic delivery in order to stay fresh and interesting. He is arguing that preaching the way we understand it does not work and it needs a complete overhaul and to be radically “re-imagined.” He wants to engage the congregation in an environment of dialogue and participation instead of just a new and improved religious lecture. It’s quite a radical concept. Let me know your thoughts on Pagitt? I am very intrigued by his book and wonder how we can implement it.
1 Doug Pagitt, Preaching Re-imagined: The Role of the Sermon in Communities of Faith (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005), p. 48.
Hi Dan!
You have nearly 3 decades of fruitful ministry experience, yet you remain so teachable and open to new ideas. Your enthusiasm and learning posture inspires me! I was specifically encouraged by your comment, "I desire to swallow, digest, ingest and metabolize the word of God to where it lives within me..."
The concept of DJing excites me as well! I like what Jonny Baker says about DJing. Baker writes, "We have a history of over 2000 years of the Christian faith, the scriptures, the resources of theology and biblical studies, insights from the world church, sermons preached, the arts, as well as access to what is happening in contemporary culture in music, literature, film, blogs and the media. Where preaching is stuck in a rut we can take a leaf out of the DJs book and sample and remix tradition fusing it with contemporary culture to come up with some fresh inspiring and original sermons."1 That's exciting stuff!!! However, I do appreciate your wise counsel to be cautious when DJing. You help me to see how lack of wisdom and ability might do more harm than good.
Blessings,
Thomas Cheong
1 Jonny Baker, “Throwing a Hand Grenade in the Fruit Bowl: Something Has Got To Change”, 5.
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