I love writing about theological things for folks who aren’t academic professionals. One of the great benefits of being a New Testament professor is that there are thousands upon thousands of pastors and lay people who are interested in the ideas and capable of having insightful conversations about them.
But I discovered something.
I really only like writing about theological things for normal people when I get to set the rules. When I have to adapt to someone else’s idea of what it means to talk to normal people, I’m not so happy about it.
I should have clued into this a long time ago.
Once I was interviewing for a position at a church. They asked me what sort of curriculum I’d use for Sunday School. My answer was basically: I’ve got a seminary degree and a Ph.D.–I’ll use the Bible and other books people have written and make my own. They weren’t so happy with that.
But to the point for today.
When you are preaching and/or teaching and/or leading folks in your faith community, to what extent do you see your task as providing direction through difficult issues? And to what extent do you see your task as raising questions for them to wrestle with?
This week I was revising something I had put together for a “popular” audience. I was revising it under the direction of the editors / readers whose first comment was this:
Author: Please rewrite the introduction. Think of writing it for Sunday school classes – not to raise questions but to provide orientation.
My first (and enduring) response to this in my heart was: “Please tell me what church you go to, because I do not want to attend such a Sunday school!”
But there’s a both/and here. I know it. In fact, I see one of my most important roles as a professor and writer as one of providing direction for asking the right, difficult questions.
It’s more important for me to raise the issues surrounding who might or might not have written a book of the Bible, and allow you to be disturbed, comforted, or otherwise engaged with the issues as you read.
It’s more important for me to highlight the difficulties entailed in signing off on household codes than to provide an explanation for why a NT writer might have made them all better by introducing Jesus into them.
The direction I can give, the value I can bring to the process, is often to disturb the comfortable and cause us to wrestle afresh with the text. I’m less concerned that people will be troubled by issues and more concerned that they will fail to be troubled by important difficulties that have the power to transform our understanding of what the Bible is and how we faithfully live out the narrative contained there.
Just as I was grumping about having to turn my vintage Kirk piece into tame “Sunday School” material, I saw a friends link to this:
It’s a promo video for a new Sunday-School-like material.
At one point, a person in the video says, “I think Animate will spark conversations for adults because we’re not spoon-feeding them the answers.”
Bingo. Christian education for adults.
Ok, so it’s not one or the other. (Either questions or answers.) But still…
Having laid out my own proclivities (and, knowing that I’m more of a provocateur than answer-giver!), I truly would like to hear from you:
- When you preach or teach or lead, how do you think through how much direction to give and how much you raise salient, even difficult or impossible questions?
- When you’re in a group such as a Bible study or Sunday School class, to what extent to you hope the person will be giving direction, and to what extent provoking difficult questions?
- To what extent do you imagine that it’s the leader’s job to direct you–into difficult / impossible questions?!
I’d love to have good conversation about this.
(And, that Animate series looks great–though don’t ask me what “electric, carbonated space,” is!)
I really like Walter Wink’s take on questions in a theological context (in a book I just read called Transforming Bible Study). The value of bible study is in its transformative power, and transformation is inherently personal—it must be accepted/initiated by the transformee. Questions are a good way to enable this process, and answers typically aren’t.
I love the idea of this format. Most of my Christian formation took place in situations that did not allow questions or interaction. We simply listened. But…through many years of attending Bible studies and Sunday schools, I must add to this conversation that I have also been deeply, deeply frustrated in adult conversation-style classes in which the group comes to conclusions that I think are seriously flawed. Sometimes group conversations are fruitful, and other times they are poolings of ignorance. I think that the success of this format depends on a number of factors, not the least of which is a thoroughly informed and skilled leader.
In one sense, raising difficult questions to think about is simply another form of giving direction and leading. I don’t have a problem offering my perspective, but I seek to dow so not as an authoritative position but as a possible “answer” to consider. I don’t want to just, for example, raise the question, “I wonder if Jesus really existed?” I think having the right question with some good guidance is essential. But, it also depends on the setting. The reality is, some people (like yourself) are going to have insights that others will not have; yet, those other insights should be given “space.” Space to think, space to question or answer, which is vital for growth. I think this can be done while offering a possible answer with humility. I like the way John Goldingay put it once: He offered a view on John’s gospel but allowed for alternatives. He then said, “If you’re right about this, and I’m wrong, then I agree with you!”
One challenge I run into is this: I would say your perspective here is much more of a postmodern mentality (I’m okay with that). When this is presented (even humbly) to an audience bathed modernist, authoritarian methodologies (as I’ve done) – said audience will often misconstrue the method; they are looking for and expecting clear answers. To the degree that they are, they see the “raising questions” method as an answer and tend to reject it as mere skepticism. There are multiple layers of challenges in this, imo.
Good points, all.
I’m realizing that giving direction is important. I want to give direction as a way of raising questions. Perhaps it’s mostly a matter of emphasis: I want to bring direction to raise the right sorts of questions so that people are wrestling with the material in particular ways. Totally open-ended discussions or raising questions to give an assumed or spoon-fed answer isn’t going to get it done for me.
Given my history with InterVarsity, I like to “move the ball around”. Sometimes I throw out a question for the group. Sometimes I pair up people. Sometimes I lead from the front. Throughout the session I mix it up to keep the energy flowing.
I enjoy giving space for people to discover things for themselves, but I also enjoy making bold statements and let people disagree with me. I think that’s the most important thing I do. I’ll be myself, but make it clear that others may think for themselves and disagree.
I have been leading a Bible study in church recently using a different study tactic each week. My goal is to show everyone, “You can do this.”
The first comment that made me happy with the results was a middle aged woman who said, “This makes me want to go home and read my Bible more.”
The second comment that made me happy with the results was an older woman who said, “In my 98 years(!), I have never been in such an open Bible study where everyone participates. This is great!”
“A good conversation”, that would be the point … wherever 2 or 3 are gathered together sort of thing. Sometimes there’s a role for a leader, when there’s a topic to stay within sight of, when academic insight is valuable, but I don’t think doling out either questions or answers is it. I only get to teach children’s class, but I figure my role besides the above is to keep the energy level up while keeping the kids seated at the table. I think the most important thing is, when I ask a question, to engage with the answers. Which are often questions. That’s what I’m looking for, and it ain’t common.
“Open-ended”?? Only until Jesus comes back!
I meant what I’m looking for when I join a group. Not “answers”, not even my own answers; just the next turn of the spiral.
“By the time I understand the question, the answer is clear”. I forget who said that.
For me it depends on the context. You give a different presentation to folks gathered in a circle then you do folks gathered in rows. In a church setting where the crowd is comprised of people who have been saved longer then the speaker all the way through first time seekers I am uncomfortable communicating things in a murky way without the ability to clarify misunderstandings. In smaller groups of dedicated believers I throw out things I am still wrestling with because the folks know my heart.
I have seen people stand up and talk about what they don’t know and when the audience member who does not know them hear it they make decisions to go to a house of faith that has some things worked out.
As a preacher / teacher / leader I think you can only process areas of theological ambiguity with people you are in relationship with.
My “both/and?” comment on the facebook link was not glib. I realize you are more subtle here (using phrases like “to what extent”), but this still smacks of an either/or.
In some ways I think it might better be conceived of as a spectrum: on the far ends, there’s spoon-feeding pat answers or smoothing over problems with the doctrinal equivalent of #30 sandpaper and on the opposite end making more problem than is actually there or simply pointing out problems without helping students/readers/hearers see a positive way forward (which is not the same as “solving” the problem).
But I think most good teachers (pastors, leaders, etc.) slide back and forth in the middle-ground somewhere–pressing when people seem overly content or too willing to settle for a quick and easy answer, providing information and expertise when folks are genuinely perplexed and spinning their wheels (or in danger of getting stuck in cul-de-sacs).
I think a lot of the answer to this question has to do with context–both the context of the (imagined) teaching (i.e., where the learners are at) and your own personal context, Daniel, to which you allude. You have been frustrated with too great an emphasis on answers in contexts you’ve been a part of. I, on the other hand, come out of contexts where people have been given almost nothing to help them make sense of the biblical text or the questions it raises. Whereas you have historically dealt with people who’ve been given the interpretive equivalent pre-fab houses, my background (and the people I mostly deal with) was having been given little more than a handful of 2×4′s and some odds and ends of vinyl siding to help me construct a reading.
As for whether and how to raise difficult questions, this may sound like a cop-out, but I just have people read the Bible. I find that if they read it, they see the questions. I rarely have to say, “Don’t you see any difficulty here?”
Then (since you asked), I usually explain a couple of different ways the question has been addressed. We look at the strengths and difficulties of these approaches, try to see what best fits the immediate context of the passage and the larger context of the book and what the larger ramifications are in terms of theology and how we would live. Perhaps you would count that as no better than “giving answers” in the way you were asked to do and balked at, but there’s plenty of questions that are still not solved by this method, so I don’t think anyone goes home unduly comforted.
Well said, Judith.
May I add my thoughts….
I’ve noticed from my own teaching and from observing others that we profs/teachers almost always have in our minds a conception of the “right” answer. Teaching is really the art of persuasion. Our intention in making students/congregants question what they once held dear is a teaching tool, but on its own it is just a veneer. Our “leading” them into questioning preconceived notions about, say, justification by faith, inevitably is intended to guide them to not just question the centrality of justification by faith, but to see that it is either central to Paul or it is not, or both (?).
I have observed that profs/teachers are rarely content with one of their students coming out of their class with a “wrong” or “misguided” notion about something. On some topics/questions there is, of course, more room for multiple views. But we are fooling ourselves if we think that we are ok with our students/congregants disagreeing with our understanding of the “right” answer to certain questions. Deep down we want them to reach the same conclusions we have reached. We rarely ever want them to just question things and leave them to ponder, or worse, come to the opposite conclusion!
I’ve also learned that students/congregants actually WANT to hear what we think the answer is, AND they want to be able to disagree with it in a learned way. And they should have both, I think.
So, I’ve thrown the whole “don’t give them (your version of) the answer” mode of teaching mostly out the window. Perhaps I’ve tied it to a rope so I can pull it in the classroom on occasion. But mostly, I’ll give the answer, and I’ll use it to teach. I’ll tell them how I got there so I can also teach them to see problems as well as benefits in my answer and how it was reached. This, of course, works better in certain contexts than in others. So, as Judy suggests, flexibility with regard to context must be central.
But, yes, it all starts with “the question.” And, they also want and need guidance.
In the church context, you need to bring the questions to light, but you also need to get pretty close to a resolution. Most people will listen to your 30 min. And not crack the Bible open until next week (or a week or two later if their kids do sports). It’s impossible, but there it is. Open ended questions that were “gold” in seminars, get the pastor fired over time (if you can’t lead them to acceptable solutions, or at least narrow down to multiple choice while making your position clear).
Some great comments you have here.
I think sometimes it’s as simple as tipping your hand to the class on your methods. If there is an expectation that Dr. Kirk is going to provide the answers after a bit of back and forth, then provide the spoiler: they’re not going to get it!
But another important point here is to understand the context in which people come to the class. Reality check: They’re already dealing with a lot of uncertainty and ambiguity in life when they walk through that door. So their mind is not really looking for more questions, they’re looking for something to get them through the night. How you transform them into people who will wrestle with these things requires a delicate mix of the solid and the abstract. Part of what I think helps them is to see how YOU wrestle with these things, so some modeling might be useful.
Finally, the classes that have shaken my thinking the most came from someone I trusted and knew was honestly trying to get me to think and not just be provocative for its own sake. My bet is, from the books I’ve read of yours, that this skill is complete within your toolbox.
I respectfully suggest that you and some of your interlocutors need to give rather more careful though to what a church is and does according to NT patterns and examples. It seems to be a given that the meetings of churches are ‘services’ that centre on ‘worship’. Therefore, to get the interactivity you are talking about, and to exercise the teaching you desire, you have to propose some sort of separate forum, which you Americans often call the Sunday School.
But I can see in the NT no such idea of churches and their meetings — that is, ‘worship services’ where people sit in rows, absorbing/enjoying various spiritualised entertainments and listen to the rhetoric of a professional orator.
I see, rather, assemblies gathered for a common meal, which incorporates the Lord’s supper, in which there is a forum for many to contribute, to exercise gifts for the benefit of the whole body, and for the church (that is, the local body) to act as the pillar and ground of the truth. I see in the NT a format for meetings in which it is possible to fall into the errors and excesses of the Corinthians, the corrective to which is not to have formal ‘worship services’ but rather to exercise mutual love.
I concede that such an idea would be impracticable where crowds of hundreds, or even thousands are gathered in purpose-built ecclesiastical buildings (or theatres), but I do see that when the numbers got too big in Jerusalem, God acted through persecution to scatter them all over the place, upon which they could meet in hired rooms, houses, riversides, etc.
Within that sort of structure, the functioning of teachers and ‘leaders’ (a word I dislike) would be radically different from the current system, in which seminary-educated professionals give large passive congregations the benefit of their oratorical skills. Instead, those gifted to teach would have to develop methods of instruction that would both provide the body with the information it needs and the opportunities for it to act as the pillar and ground of the truth, and, actually within its meetings, for people to interact so as to show mutual love, deference and service.
Interested readers may wish to take a look at this material on the (UK) Anabaptist Network site:
http://www.anabaptistnetwork.com/node/321
… More:
So, walk away from the mega churches, where safety lies in numbers and credibility depends on high-profile big congregations. Stop imposing your ecclesial traditions on scripture. Instead, draw your church life and practice from the NT, your teaching on the interactivity displayed in Jesus’s own responses to questions and objections. Imagine how things could change if, instead of a single huge mega-church there were 500 cells, each acting as the body of Christ, each performing the function of a colony of heaven.
Church doesn’t just happen on Sunday; small groups meet midweek, not to mention work parties. I agree interactivity is essential for personal growth, and generally speaking Americans could do better with it … different where you are?
Jesus had his Twelve, AND he could talk to thousands.
Church doesn’t just happen on Sunday Who said or suggested that it does?
However, I have still to see any evidence or hint that the pattern, examples and instructions of and to NT churches provide any support whatsoever for mammoth ‘worship services’ or for people sitting, theatre-style, in rows to listen to oratory, or where the meetings are separate from the activity of mutual support, eating together and sharing, whenever they meet. It is a mistake simply to read back modern practice into the pages of the NT.
By the way, I am in England, and sadly must report that things are little different here from what they are over there. We are on the back of a long tradition of ecclesial practice which largely disregards the NT, replacing it with layers of tradition. There are few good examples in church history, and the 16th century Anabaptists seem largely to be among them.
Don’t know what’s happening to my feeble use of HTML…
I got you covered on the HTML, John!
Thank you.
I meant to suggest that eg Matthew 5 and 14 provide examples of Jesus preaching to a large audience that sat and listened to oratory. It seems to me there is a place for various modes of congregation. I do personally prefer our independent church of a few hundred, with Sunday morning coffee and communion together as well as collective singing and sitting in rows receiving instruction, and various things happening midweek. I also enjoy and find valuable listening to outstanding preaching on the ‘net. I don’t understand Evangelical practice in England, but it seems to be quite different than here.
I did time as an off-again-on-again Episcopalian in various churches and I share your frustration with “layers of tradition”. I also once visited Mark Driscoll’s home church in Seattle. I arrived perhaps 15 minutes early to find the vast hall quite empty and took a seat near the front. When service started I was quite startled to look back and find the hall filled. Afterwards everyone dispersed as quickly as they had gathered. There were no tables in the lobby, no one spoke to me at all, not so much as handed me a program. I so rarely understand what people think they are doing.
Without knowing much about them, it appears Anabaptists were on the right track, by me.
I’m not sure that the passages you cite say that Jesus preached to large congregations, and I suspect we are perhaps over-influenced by Hollywood when we read these. The sermon on the mount, for instance, was his conversation with his disciples, even though a crowd was there. ‘And seeing the multitudes, he went up on a mountain, and when he was seated his disciples came to him. Then he opened his mouth and taught them.’
He was certainly sometimes followed by multitudes, but that seems to have been because they were hoping to see something out of the ordinary.
It is difficult to imagine how he could have been audible to a crowd of 5000-plus without a PA system (Matt 14). I just think there is a lot of extra-textual baggage brought to these passages.
Even so, how are they to be seen as a pattern or example for church life?
There may be, as you say ‘a place for various modes of congregation’ but there seems little if any evidence from the NT that the very first churches saw things that way.
You seem to suggest that a gathering of a few hundred is a small enough and manageable number. I think the NT suggests, however, that it needs to be possible for there to be a personal relationship between all members of the assembly. We must certainly give some weight to the idea that the gathered church should not be so big that it cannot share one cup at the Lord’s table.
Whilst I have no doubt that you have benefitted from teaching on the Internet — as indeed I also have benefitted from hearing good things in situations that I don’t consider resemble the NT patterns and examples, this is beside the point. We take what we can get, wherever we can get it; but should that be the measure and criterion of what a NT church should be like?
And where do all these ‘services’ come from? Whence the notion of an audience — large or small — sitting in rows to have their little open beaks filled with masticated worms from the pulpit?
Well, in Matthew 13 clearly He is preaching to the multitudes; then he takes his private disciples aside and gives them a lesson on what to preach in a public sermon.
As to being able to project to a crowd without electronics, possibly few could do it these days but the golden age of American oratory was the 19th century; for example Edward Everett spoke at considerable length to well-documented thousands – as many as 15,000? – at Gettysburg. I think we should also assume that those thousands knew how to listen, another art lost in the amplified modern age.
More to the point, since I believe in continuing revelation (even personal revelation through the gift of the Spirit), I don’t see a need to be limited to NT practices, even if we understood fully what they were. It’s a matter of adapting not to the “spirit of the world” but to the state of human spiritual development, which has clearly advanced since Moses came down from the mountain and is not done with yet.
I appreciate yacking with you, fun & edifying for me. Message me at above if want to continue…
It is certainly the case that Jesus addressed a multitude in Matt 13; I grant that. But a ‘sermon’? And where do you get the idea that Jesus ‘gives his disciples a lesson in what to preach in a public sermon’? This is all supposition and embroidery.
It is also alleged that Whitfield and Wesley addressed huge crowds, but I have my doubts about the veracity of the records. It seems more likely that their words were relayed to the further parts of the crowds. I somehow doubt that public address technology has stunted our ability to project our voices. It isn’t the same sort of thing as the way in which, for example, literacy has impacted on memory. It seems so unlikely.
There was, however, nothing ‘sermonic’ about Jesus’s parabolic speech. It was given in very short sections. It was not a continuous discourse.
Even so, what would it prove? How does it inform our understanding of the NT’s concept of the purpose and nature of gathered churches? For that we need to look at the actual statements and examples given in the NT.
And here you and I must part company. Your belief in ‘continuing revelation’ puts you beyond the reach of rational debate. Whatever I say will be trumped by God’s personal revelation to you. I have not tried to adhere to some sort of regulative-principle approach, but rather the pragmatic understanding that God gave to his churches all that was necessary for them to live and prosper as the colonies of heaven in this world. Why should we need a load of things they didn’t? And why should we dispense with things that were necessary and useful for them? It would appear, from your position, that large parts of the NT have become redundant. In the meantime, we make up whatever takes our fancy, elevating it as God’s on-going revelation, while ignoring the patterns and examples which are pretty clearly set out in Acts and the epistles.
You wrote: “I’m less concerned that people will be troubled by issues and more concerned that they will fail to be troubled by important difficulties that have the power to transform our understanding of what the Bible is and how we faithfully live out the narrative contained there.”
It seems to me that as teachers the key for us lies in that last “and” in your sentence; that is, how we help, guide, encourage, and challenge ourselves and our students (of all kinds) to “faithfully live out” what we read in Scripture. Which questions help us all to do that?
Everyone’s “church” is different, but my experience with lay Bible study groups has not caused me to think that the problem lies in failing to grapple with hard questions about Scripture, but simply failing to grapple at all because Scripture just isn’t deemed as relevant. To be sure, this may reflect the church contexts in which I’ve lived and worked. But often (not always, but often) I’ve seen that the recognition of complexity and ambiguity has led to a kind of apathy about Scripture: no one agrees about any of this anyway; it’s all confusing and difficult; that was long ago and we don’t believe some of those things; ergo … why and how read this at all? There goes the baby with the bathwater.
I suppose the kind of orientation and help that teachers can give is a witness to how Scripture has shaped and does shape the life of the people of God; to model and wrestle with, without also distancing us from, this shaping function of Scripture.
Someone can correct me if I am wrong, but Jesus only directly answered a question posed to him three times. All other times, he answered a question with a question, a story or a statement. His example is a good one. Personally, I am not satisfied unless people leave our church on Sunday with more questions than answers.
We worked really hard to make Animate a conversation starter, not ender. Each of the sessions ends with a question — a big question — and not one that the speaker already knows the answer to.
Honestly, my problem with the Alpha Course is that each session title is a question, but Nicky Gumbell already knows the answer. Whereas the “Living the Questions” curriculum, ironically, does not use questions in its sessions.
We worked under the assumption that adults in church are pretty smart and pretty inquisitive. They’d like to work this stuff out for themselves, in a group, beginning with provocative questions. Hopefully, it get folks to stick around church for an extra hour on Sunday.