One Facilitator's View, Continued
Saturday, February 11, 2012 at 6:01AM Sorry, folks, my computer was a bit wonkified, so I'm restarting.
As to the process itself, it's difficult to get at, and may be difficult to rid ourselves of.
It's a conversation. I may find myself saying that a thousand times today. No, this is NOT a debate. We are NOT a deliberative or delegated body. We are NOT even "grass roots," imho. We are a company of the motivated who could afford to come (or who couldn't, really, and made significant personal sacrifice to come). I've walked through the process once now. It is helpful as a mutually educative tool. And it will feed into the discussions that the GSC will have about whether to have another 10 year goal, and if so, what shape that goal might have. It is just a conversation--to which people come with all sorts of expectations. Those who expect it to have legislative status may be disappointed if it turns out to be just 'guidance.' Those who want it to just be informative may be disappointed if it turns out to be informally 'binding' in some way. That said, it may be bound to divide, rather than unite. I hope that won't happen, but it may.
Please pray for the conversers, friends. Pray for clarity about what we are doing and what it will mean. Pray for charity as we listen more than speak. We who are here need you, that we might not be caught up in temporary enthusiasm, but be guided by Word and Spirit.
Reader Comments (2)
Paul,
I here reply to both of your posts.
It is good to find you expressing my concerns and hopes.
I anticipated Conversations as a potentially helpful event, yet one that, shortly down the road, could be misused. (I wrote about this here: http://www.chicagoinvitation.org/?p=280) Basically, I would not want the deliberations and results of Conversations to become in some way binding on the delegates of this next General Synod. The GSC might (for good reasons) be led to some specific proposals because of what they heard this weekend, but even that should not be viewed as binding or inevitable, as it would need to be a proposal that is offered to the delegates of Synod.
About worship at Conversations, I can say that I eventually (viz., by the third day) experienced worship at the last Synod as isolating. ("Physically assaulted" is such an evocative phrase!) I think the problem was in part that it was narrow in scope. Only a praise band (with the volume high enough that the voices of the assembled cannot be heard). Only songs of one genre of music. No choir drawn from the participants of Synod. Yet I, too, am deeply sympathetic to the difficulty in planning such times. It's not easy. It can be a thankless task.
And I do find it puzzling, and in the end unacceptable, that worship services led by RCA people would have no public reading of scripture. This last seems bound inextricably to no style of worship. I don't see why it can't easily be corrected.
I'm interested in reading your post-Conversations reflections.
I have just finished downloading and reading the "Initial Impressions" document that is the apparent out-product of the event and its "discernment" process. It is completely underwhelming; a generic power-point of single sentences and bulleted phrases devoid of any definitive interpretation. Like the public worship you described, this statement is also notable for its absence of Scripture; not even one bullet-point's worth.
The Conversations process, as described in the 49-page booklet handed out to participants, runs on the unspoken assumption that the Holy Spirit speaks most reliably, perhaps even exclusively, through the utterances of the gathered believers to one another. Scripture enters into the process only if individuals happen to read or quote it in conversation. But the process directs the conversations down the avenue of "What is God saying through the instrumentality of each individual's experience [over against how is our collective and individual experience confronted by God's Word]?"
I would suggest that this is an Exodus 32 process -- that is, this is how the impatient Hebrews wound up making an exquisite golden calf -- because, being molten, each god could be shaped according to the likes and dislikes of the gathering. The emergent calf could thus contain a bit of everyone's input and reflect the fashions and trends of the day.
In the Conversations process, what was actually said in small groups may or may not make it to newsprint and then may or may not be advocated strongly enough to make it into the writing committee's hopper and thence into the final statement. If whole thoughts and pure wisdom were uttered in the small group, that is as far as it circulated without dissection or shredding into catch-phrases. I have watched this same process in several General Synods and the reading back to Synod delegates of "what was said" summaries invariably meets with a muted reaction -- no one recognizes their own words in the digested format.
This is not a true discernment process. If anyone wants to see what it should look like, read Luke Timothy Johnson's Scripture and Discernment: Decision Making in the Church.