Unlearning to Learn

Freeing the space for imagination to reign freely so change can take place,

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I recall a year or two ago, accompanying my wife Sandy to a Victorian country town for an annual celebratory ecumenical lunch. Sandy was invited as their honoured guest in her role as the Executive Officer for the Victorian Council of Churches. And I was happy to tag along for the ride.

In the morning we attended the local Uniting Church for worship.

They have been without a minister for some time but, from all reports, seem to be keeping things going pretty well in service to the town’s community. There seemed to be plenty of leadership talent and experience among them.

But I was struck by a moment after the service when the worship leader apologetically expressed regret that the service might not have been up to scratch. It was as though she was saying, presumably motivated by Sandy’s presence, that only an ordained minister can conduct ‘real’ worship.

Not only was this congregation soldiering on without a minister, but they had lost their organist/keyboard player as well! So, given the circumstances, and expectations of ‘real’ worship, I reckoned they were doing well to keep everything going!

After the lunch a kind lady took me over to the Anglican Church. What a beautiful little church! I immediately felt spiritually at home there!

Then she told me that they were losing their organist - and what were they going to do without him?

I understand the grief of their decline and the lack of confidence to adapt; and I wondered who would help them know how sorely misplaced it all is?

If Jesus had running a church service in mind, would he not have chosen some keen, well-read Rabbis to be his disciples, not a ragtag bunch of fishermen and outsiders? And where in the Bible does it say you need an organ or a piano? Or seats in rows, for that matter?

I felt really sad for them. Their struggle touched me and I have been thinking of them ever since. I keep coming to that verse, ‘they were like sheep without a Shepherd.’ But they have a Shepherd! Just not one with a dog collar or a Bachelor of Sacred Music!

I’d like to suggest that a place to start a response might be to ponder a proposal put by Biblical theologian Walter Brueggemann, and spelt out in his book ‘The Bible and Post Modern Imagination’.

He proposes that every human construction - thought and organisation - is a consequence of human imagination. And if imagined, may be re-imagined. And if re-imagined may be de-constructed and then re-constructed.

The problem the churches I visited face is unlikely to be a lack of imagination. We all imagine in order to adapt to changing realities. But it may be that adaption creates a smokescreen for honest consideration of deeper, underlying issues. ‘Changing the deckchairs’, I suggest, won’t cut it!

I suspect that at the root of these situations, is a reticence to let go of our constructions - what was imagined to respond to situations faced by Christians in the past and constructed appropriately for those situations at that time. And in the case of these two country churches, that they don’t feel they have permission, or are qualified, to let go of those constructions that now weigh them down with a sense of failure. It is not easy to make a break with entrenched beliefs.

Considering some other examples may illustrate the point.

What a great idea, the internal combustion engine! Transport! The whole global car industry is imagined and constructed: oil exploration, refineries, networks of petrol stations… not to forget the wars being fought over those fossil fuels… Who would have the courage to give it all up for a new idea that could save the planet?

Along comes COVID and we have to work from home. We adapt. We zoom. We get the washing done in between. We have more time… then after a couple of years, when we have got on top of it, everyone has to come back into the city to their offices once again… otherwise, all that investment in skyscraper office blocks is potentially lost!

And what about the church? Great idea to get organised to fulfil what Jesus had to say about the poor, the widows, the disadvantaged, the sick, the imprisoned…and so through imagination and construction, establish buildings for worship, housing for clergy, hospitals and schools…and who would have the audacity to give it all up (even if it has been steadily handed to the State to prop up) for the belief that this may not be what Jesus had in mind?

Those who hold the keys are unlikely to change the system - most any system. That would threaten privilege.

What did Jesus have in mind?

I agree with Brueggemann, that the dominant, militaristic, consumerist paradigm we seem trapped in, as the accepted and expected pattern of how we live together, is not good news. It promises good news. But the evidence is all around us in consequences of inequality, possessiveness and self-interest.

I think we have to start with critical thinking, ‘accepting the science’ as it were; to seek out the truth, even if it is embarrassingly true. Then to open up free space where imagination can reign freely and change can take place, unhindered by ‘shoulds’ and ‘oughts’ - the kind of hospitality Henri Nouwen proposes in his book ‘Reaching Out’.

There is so much to unlearn - to clear the blockages that hinder the creation of space to imagine the new; and so continue to create communities of faith, hope and love that provide a life-giving alternative to the entrenched, dominant consumerist model on offer by the economically-driven world.