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
www.viadecristo.com
ken@viadecristo.com
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