The first television set my parents bought had a big cabinet, small screen and a lot of snow when they tried to adjust the rabbit ears and pick up a signal. I remember seeing a football game and only being able to tell teams apart because of their dark and light jerseys. When my parents brought home our first color TV, it was a vast improvement in the television viewing experience. I could see the colors of the teams, the green field and the blue sky. Three years ago, my wife and I bought our first High Definition plasma television. Suddenly our viewing experience took a quantum leap. The colors were more vivid than anything we had ever seen on screen and when we watched a football game we could see the scratches on a helmet, the blood on uniforms and the little clods of dirt on the field. We saw things we had never been able to see when we were watching standard definition television.
I have gone through a similar journey in my Christian education. As a child, my parents took me to Sunday School where I learned Bible stories and sayings. If I missed a week, I would miss a story; if I missed a few weeks, I could miss a character; if I missed a month, I could miss a century or a millennia of history and never know it. In High School, I had a Sunday School teacher who introduced us to theological thinking by reading to us The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis. We learned to think deeper about sin, temptation, and personal free will. However, it was in graduate school that I discovered the depth of detail that I had been missing in all of my previous education. We explored biblical and church history with the aid of historians and biblical and systematic theology with the aid of theologians. We engaged in broad conversation with leaders in many academic disciplines with the goal of enabling us to influence our churches as High Definition Christians.
In the local church, most denominations use the catechetical approach to Christian education in their effort to produce High Definition Christians. We give people brief summaries of the basic principles of Christianity in question-and-answer formats and are happy when they come back with the “right” answers. We give basic instructions on subjects that matter to the church and fundamental principles or beliefs that we expect to be accepted uncritically. The goal of the catechism is to give people highly defined “right thinking” so as to help them defend themselves against “wrong thinking.” However, this is not High Definition Christian Education, but rather Standard Definition Christian Education.
What happens when congregants so educated run into people who are different thinkers? Tension, confrontation and schism!
The conversational model of academia is a more productive approach to achieving the goal of developing High Definition Christians. Standard Definition Christian tools like the Doctrines, Creeds, Discipline, Book of Worship and Hymnal are actually produced by High Definition Christian conversation with people of alternate and even opposing views contributing to the development of a finished product. Standard Definition tools represent our answer to the question “What?” - What do you believe as most representative of the whole body? However, in the prior constructive conversation, many participants learned the value of listening carefully to diversity and reflecting deeply on the more important question “Why?” – Why do you believe that? Learning to ask the “Why?” question and explore possibilities in multiple meaning was an exercise and experience ultimately more valuable than the tools they helped produce.
The local church needs to do more than teach a catechism. We need to nurture conversation in which participants are encouraged to become “Why Thinkers.” When we respectfully ask one another, “Why?” and listen carefully to responses, we all make progress toward becoming High Definition Christians because we see so much that was missed in previous faith systems and iterations of standard definition tools.
Here is a word that can change our thoughts, beliefs and even our community’s life: Why?
Copyright 2009 by Kenneth L. Morrison All Rights Reserved
Dr. Ken Morrison
Pastor
Via de Cristo United Methodist Fellowship
7430 E Pinnacle Peak Road, Ste 134
Scottsdale, AZ 85255
480-515-4490
Recent Comments