dmin: the abstract

[Various people have expressed interest in my DMin project, The Role of Intrigue in the Communication with Sceptics, which jumped its final hurdle earlier this week. So I have decided to post three little pieces: (a) the opening page, or abstract; (b) the final page, a postscript; (c) the story of the project, as it has evolved over many, many years. Hope you find it interesting.]


"The preaching of the Bible is located at the centre of Christian communication. While preaching is to be honoured, increasing numbers of people in the Western world resist being drawn into the orbit of its influence. There is a rising tide of scepticism, particularly among the young. This project identifies perceptions and questions of sceptics as they face the church. It then locates the sceptic within the postmodern turn and traces its underlying presuppositions. It argues for a communication with sceptics that is distinguished by its capacity to intrigue them, softening and opening them, and nudging them towards the way of Jesus.

It is argued that a model of a communication which intrigues is found in the parable. The history of parable interpretation over one hundred and fifty years is traced through five seminal descriptions. From these, nine distinct features of the parable are drawn, each of which contributes to the parables’ capacity to intrigue. The intention is neither to find a fresh way of preaching the parables of Jesus, nor even to replicate his message [... although that is still a critical thing to be doing at another time]. The focus is on the medium of the parable form and the mechanism by which it intrigues.

The focus then shifts to the question of whether there is a dynamic equivalent to this parable located in the contemporary and public world of the sceptic, that might be employed in order to communicate with them. The world of advertising in general is examined, and the billboard more specifically. An equivalence between the nine distinctive features of the parable and Mario Pricken’s analysis of the communication strategy of the billboard is established. The case for this equivalence is illustrated and deepened through the evaluation of three contemporary examples of billboards. [NB: Just as easily, I could have focused on political cartoons as an equivalence with them can also be demonstrated].

Church billboards tend to be a collection of the cliché and the strident. This project envisions a series of intriguing billboards brought together by a team within a local church, and provoking discussion among sceptics in the wider community. Guidelines are given on how to commence with such an initiative. 
Throughout the thesis care is taken to maintain a modest set of claims. The focus is on a mere nudge, albeit one that may open the way for a journey towards Christ. And while such a modesty characterizes the thesis, the implications are significant, inviting a re-examination of the way preaching and communication is understood and practised." 


nice chatting 
Paul

dmin: the postscript

[This is the final page of my thesis, The Role of Intrigue in the Communication with Sceptics - a postscript where I try to wrap it all up with a little bow...]

"Cicero considered that intriguing oratory could be the means by which the barbarian was transformed. The claims of this thesis are not as bold, and yet they are significant. The nudge of a sceptic towards the way of Jesus, rather than a transformation of the barbarian, has been the focus. It has been established that there is a role for intrigue in the communication with sceptics. 

However to be effective this intrigue will need to focus on more than mere words and images. The intriguing communication must flow from intriguing communities, living distinctive lives with distinction. Good words operate best when they are in unison with good works. A pluralist society offers the opportunity to step forward, rather than to step back, to be more outgoing, not less. To initiate a community-wide conversation through billboards which intrigue is one such way to step forward.

To be effective this communication will need to depend on more than mere human skills. It will require a sustained, prayerful dependence upon God, the one who opens eyes and softens hearts. The blindness and the hardness in the sceptic are real but this can change under the influence of the Spirit of God. To design a series of billboards which intrigue is to supply the Spirit with some tools with which to go to work.

To be effective this sceptic will need to be seen as someone who is more than a mere project. The sceptic is to be respected, to be understood and loved. Disputes can be delayed, preferring to loiter to intrigue, rather than rushing to persuade. Of Timothy Keller it is observed that he offers the sceptic the same respect he offers to a member of his church [see here]. Kinnaman and Lyons conclude that followers of Jesus must respond to people the way he did [see UnChristian, 213, 217]. These are the examples to follow.

The pulse which courses through this thesis is a mission one. There are large numbers of ‘skeptics, critics, and cynics’ and hostile UnChristians who resist what the Christian community represents. Are they to be left alone, just ignored? No. The small nudge of intrigue may lead to the big change of entanglement in the way of Jesus."


nice chatting


Paul

dmin: the story

This morning I received word that I have fulfilled all the requirements for my DMin... YIPPEE!

It has been quite a story. It starts way back in 1985 when I was required, as a brand new 'probationary' minister with the NZ Baptists, to write an essay in my first year as a pastor. I was looking for an excuse to read Kenneth Bailey's Poet & Peasant and Through Peasant Eyes (my cross-cultural upbringing resonated with his thesis) and with my love of hermeneutics at the time, I wrote something on The Progression in Parabolic Understanding. I sighted the original this morning. Plenty of white-out on display without a word processor in sight. My examiner was Ken McCormack, now an elderly retired Baptist minister in Christchurch, and his warm commendation of my work is something for which I have always been grateful. [NB: Bailey subsequently became enormously popular, but people forget that this seminal work was written as early as 1976. It was 10-15 years before he became widely read, with his insights filling many a sermon on the parables].

In 1990 I commenced part-time on the staff at the Bible College of New Zealand (BCNZ - now, Laidlaw College) working in the Extension Studies Department - thereby leaving time to commence an MTh programme with the Australian College of Theology (ACT). My first topic? The History of Interpretation of the Parables...but then on one fateful day things changed forever. My supervisor, Chris Marshall, could not attend a conference in Sydney in 1991 and I was invited to present a paper in his absence. I have people like Edward Sands and John Hitchen to blame for this! Drawing on my work on the parables and my interest in hermeneutics, I gave a talk on the New Hermeneutic. On return to Auckland I was urged to send my paper to ACT as part of a submission to have my MTh upgraded to a ThD (doctoral) project. It was all on...

In 1992 I commenced on the faculty of the residential college (BCNZ) with two courses to develop: Preaching (which eventually became two courses) and one I developed from scratch called The Gospel in a Post-Christian Society. These subjects took me deep within the world of homiletics/preaching and postmodernism. I began to see a parable-shaped gap in the communication to postmoderns. And so, when some study leave came my way in 1994, I titled my doctoral thesis as Towards an Integrative Model for Communicating the Narrative Parables in a Postmodern World.

Late in my time at BCNZ (1997) and then early in my subsequent time as principal at Carey Baptist College (2000) I was given additional study leaves - incredibly generous gestures from my employers at the time. I made huge progress and emerged with substantial chapters on the parables and on postmodernism - in the vicinity of 70-80,000 words each. But I couldn't quite pull the trigger on the final, and integrative, chapter 3. There were various reasons. One was the lack of confidence in my ability to complete the task as an academic. Another was the sheer complexity and endless verbage surrounding both parabolic interpretation and postmodernism. But then there were the massive demands on me as a youngish principal in a rapidly changing and growing college. Things lay fallow for some years. Maybe the naysayers had been right: 'why on earth are you going to Carey before the doctorate is completed?' God called me - that is why.

Then in 2004 ACT gave me the heavy word. I couldn't keep having extensions granted to me and so eventually my enrolment in the ThD lapsed. I looked briefly at transferring to another programme. I stared at the very real possibility of failure and a lot of wasted work. But at about this time my own sense of vocation was changing. I came to the realisation that I was never going to be a researching academic. While the college context was still my natural habitat, my involvement was more likely to be as a leader, than as a lecturer. A decisive conversation with Martin Sutherland helped change my focus...

And so against the advice of some family members and close colleagues (!), I decided to enrol in the DMin (a practitioner doctorate) in 2005. Three papers and then a thesis of 60,000 words (rather than 100,000). While probably more work in the long run, this felt more achievable as a principal and practitioner. Each year I knocked off a paper - on spirituality, on leadership, and on the book of Acts. Loved them. Stimulating and relevant. [NB: Jeff Pugh's courses on leadership are among the undiscovered jewels in theological education in Australasia].

Just as my time at Carey was drawing to a close in 2008, the ugly spectre of a thesis returned to haunt me. My thinking had continued to evolve and I had some creative ideas I wanted to explore, which were still related to the parable in the postmodern. But I needed a supervisor who would be creative with me, as well as both commend me and correct me. I found that person in Steve Taylor (formerly of Christchurch; now in Adelaide). As I wrote in my opening Acknowledgements, 'every single conversation with him has been instructive'. Out the other end emerged, in 2011, The Role of Intrigue in the Communication with Sceptics.

This is not really the place to repeat all my Acknowledgements - but, needless to say, there have been a whole heap of people who have helped get me to the finish line. To them each one I will be forever grateful, as I am to God who has enabled me to persevere. Now I can get on with the rest of my life :)

nice chatting

Paul

two women and a baby

I have been thinking deep thoughts and feeling deep felts.

There is Mary (not her real name). Mary and I worked together for seven years in a previous life. I think she would say that we were good friends. She had been a missionary overseas. There were little glimpses of life being difficult for her back then and I tried to listen and to love. Then we went different directions and lost contact, although she popped-in for an event when I started with Langham. In retrospect she did seem more subdued, a little spark-less, on that occasion. Mary went on to battle with clinical depression and one day decided that her best option was to take her own life. I was in Thailand when I received the shattering news - but made it home in time for her funeral.

There is Elizabeth (not her real name). Another mission worker. Another woman in her 60s. Unlike Mary, Elizabeth's story has been in the headlines. In fact she was receiving an award from Obama at the White House just before she came to NZ. Her husband and nine others were ambushed and murdered in a remote area of a Central Asian country a few months ago. I was in Thailand for her visit to NZ - but made it home for the final meeting. It was good to hear her story for myself. I was impacted by the willingness of her little family to remain in a war-zone decade after decade. They became known as 'the people that stayed' and this is what won the hearts of the locals. It intrigued them and their hearts were opened.

There is Micah (his real name, my grandson!). I was in Thailand when my daughter went into labour and she was still in labour when I got home. Being with Barby in labour five times was enough for me. I didn't like watching her in such pain - and now to think that my lovely Lys suffered for even longer... God knows (as do all the mothers in the world) that I couldn't go through it myself. But as with marriage, labour and birth is a picture of profound truth. The groaning of creation, the suffering in life which is healed, finally and climactically, in the second coming of Christ. The midnight gives way to dawn - eventually. It is the big hope that holds us. And it is the littler hope of holding Micah that helps enable labour to be endured.

Mary and Elizabeth and Micah have been happening while I've been studying Jeremiah 29, 1 Peter 2, and the book of Revelation - all at the same time.

Jeremiah 29 was for a sermon tomorrow and just when I am all hot and heavy about putting 'Jer 29-I know the plans I have for you-11' in its context back then and for people now, I discover the church has double-booked and my services will not be required... :) 1 Peter 2 is for a sermon at a conference in Malaysia next month. Although scholars (as far as I can tell) only ever see Jesus' light in 1 Peter 2.11-12, I am convinced that these two verses are light and salt remixed. Then as I prepare for Langham seminars in Asia next month, I am being reminded that Revelation has features in common with prophecy. For example, its symbols remain encrypted so that its relevance can have multiple fulfilments. Fulfilment works like climbing a range of mountains, not a single peak. There are lots of fulfilments, littler hopes, on the way to the higher and bigger hope - the glorious peak of Christ himself.

Jeremiah 29 is true for Mary. Let's stop being clumsy and cruel with verse 11. Let's place it within the eternal timeline with its supreme truth that 'we have been saved, we are saved, and we will be saved'. This is Mary's future and hope.

1 Peter 2.11-12 is true of Elizabeth. The life which intrigued for so long in Central Asia is now intriguing far more widely and will do so for much longer. This is because this life captured the tension in being salt and light: living a distinctive life with distinction right in there among those who do not believe.

There is even a hint of Revelation being true in Micah, together with his mum and dad. He is a little picture of hope fulfilled after hours of labour and weeks of discomfort. In that experience is glimpsed the big fact of history: there is something in the future which pulls us, and our world, through the present.

nice chatting

Paul

smiley and laughey

After my grumps and glooms, I was watching the Footy Show out of Sydney (for the first time in years) with Barby last night and this segment appeared. May it bring you as many smiles and laughs as it has done for me - although that will be unlikely:


http://tinyurl.com/7kmpskc
Cut and paste and split your sides with me.


And I might add that underneath the sporting humour this 5 minutes could benefit from some deeper cultural exegesis. In this smorgasbord of juvenile reflection on sport, politics, music, and media - there are all kinds of windows on the world:


1. beauty
[did I hear that the babies of celebrities are more beautiful than other babies?]


2. relationships
[did I hear a sharp conscience about cheating on girlfriends?]


3. media
[did I hear an ease in the recognition of tv shows and their personalities?]


4. culture
[did I hear a perception of cultural difference, starting with wrestling and burger size?]


5. power
[did I hear an expression of hatred towards a political leader?]


6. music
[did I hear a capacity to live within the narrative of contemporary music?]


7. community
[did I hear 'under-9s' being affirmed and valued by a distant generation?]


8. communication
[did I hear - and see - the value of image supplementing word?]


maybe you can hear even more...


nice chatting


Paul

grumpy and gloomy

Today I am a grumpy and gloomy sports fan. In a matter of days the transcendent Derrick Rose of the Chicago Bulls has gone down with a season-ending, maybe even career-slowing, knee injury ... and then, horror of horrors, New Zealand Cricket has let John Wright walk away from being the coach of the national side. I can't believe it.

In need of a cleansing cathartic flush, I thought I'd spread my grumps and glooms a little further and trawl the inner sports fan for more moans and groans and see if I can rid myself of the whole lot, all in one go. Here is a list of things that make me moan the most as a Kiwi sports fan (in no particular order):

1. So we have the Wellington Phoenix (soccer/football) - but why are the Warriors (rugby league) and the Breakers (basketball) described as New Zealand - rather than Auckland? Looking down the NRL table to find a bunch of Sydney suburbs followed by 'New Zealand' seems so odd to me. I think I know why it happens. So sensitive is everyone in NZ to the attitudes about Auckland that an effort is made to make these two teams to be 'teams for all New Zealand'. It doesn't work for me. [NB: this comment takes nothing away from back-to-back wins for the Breakers, the second time Penney-less - which not many would have predicted a year ago].

2. I enjoy following golf. Michael Campbell in the ascendency ten years ago was one of my great sporting delights. But why, oh why, are our male golfers - including Campbell - often so soft mentally? Time and time again they start a tournament well, and time and time again they fade in the final round. It is so frustrating. Some of them need an Ulmer-transplant, or a Devoy-bypass, or a Baker-retread. It is amazing how many of our solo female athletes have been just so mentally tough... Maybe Ryan Fox has the right genes!?

3. I've started watching a bit of the English Premier League from time to time. As my son said to me yesterday as we watched the Manchester Derby together, 'the commentators are like poets'. They are - they are wonderful to listen to. And across the Atlantic in the American sporting scene I am always so impressed by how much fresh and interesting information the commentators dredge up about players and statistics and the like. We don't seem to produce knowledgeable poets behind the microphone. Maybe we don't want them because they'll sound a bit smart for us - but I do miss them.

4. Speaking of the Premier League, it kinda annoys me that only four teams have won the trophy in twenty years. I know its popularity is staggering - I see it in every country in Asia. And in Africa they'll watch Chelsea vs Arsenal before Ivory Coast vs Cameroon. But it is a bit like the America's Cup in that it is the domain of the very wealthy and only the very wealthy can win it. I can't get too excited about that. They need a salary cap and keep a lid on things.

5. Speaking of the Premier League, one of the most intriguing aspects to follow is the promotion/relegation battle each year. When will NZ rugby embrace this fun fully? I suspect the smaller unions have far too much power and are too obstructive behind closed doors. And as soon as Super Rugby was introduced there was one too many layers of rugby in New Zealand. The provincial competition needed to become the new club rugby and then be energised by dramatic, cut-throat annual promotion/relegation battles.

6. As a basketball fan I have had to acknowledge that netball has some great qualities - but when will it embrace a true professionalism? The incessant whistle-blowing of the umpires, the tight non-contact rules which no longer seem to reflect the way the game is evolving, and the fitness of players all need an overhaul - not to mention the sensitivity to critique. The game has the potential to be a captivating Olympic sport, but please...

7. I am watching carefully, very carefully, to see how the NZ media and public handle Jacko Gill, this remarkable shot-putter, over the next ten years. The early fascination may be giving way to the 'tall poppy' syndrome, with a little bit of cutting him down to size and hanging him out to dry. We just are not good at nurturing this kind of talent without things going sour. But maybe this time will be different.

8. If the International Cricket Council is going to open up a window for the Indian Premier League (IPL) so that players can make their millions and India can show its power, please make the IPL a little more accountable to the good of the global game. One thing on which to insist is that the quota of overseas players in a team be lifted from 4 to 5 or 6, at least. If world cricket has to bend to this club competition in a single country, then lets have it contribute to the global game more fully.

Having said all that, I am not sure I feel much better!
As for John Wright and Derrick Rose - it sure was nice while it lasted.

nice chatting

Paul

the future of the global church

Patrick Johnstone's The Future of the Global Church is one for the ages.


I'll leave you to check out the website. Make sure you click here for the full Table of Contents and some sample pages from the book to get a quick sense of what the book covers. Here are my reasons for loving this book:


It is visual
The graphs and tables, the colours and maps, all combine in a stunning presentation. So many are so intriguing. Like the graph showing Mexico's collapse in population in the 16th century (8) - or, the really cool graphs like 'Two Millennia of Superpowers' (34) and 'Global Political Freedom' (16) which are filled-in, multi-coloured and track the changes across history.


It is informative
It is such a smorgasbord that it is critical that one eats slowly in order to digest it all. The material on the the major World Religions, particularly Islam (73-78), is useful. Johnstone's characteristically friendly engagement with things Charismatic-Pentecostal has always helped me see upsides that do not come naturally, as it is not my background. His passion is most evident when he engages 'The Unevangelized' (161-224). It is partly because people are so uninformed that they remain so unevangelized. There is so much for me to learn in these pages.


It is short
For all that it tries to achieve, it is still only 240 pages. There is so much crammed into so few pages, while still being visually appealing and readable. It is a remarkable achievement. I hope that academics, Christian and otherwise, don't get all elitist and critical about the book because of its brevity. Afterall the flame in this book is the very one that colleges and seminaries around the world have had a nasty way of extinguishing. Let's appreciate it for what it is and make it known.


It has lots of numbers in it
'It cites statistics in such a way as to incite hearts' (ix) - and it succeeds. I've always pored over population statistics. Love it. Love it. Love it. These numbers are even able to distract me from cricket statistics - and that takes some doing. For example, who would have guessed that Pakistan would be the fourth largest country in the world in 2050 - and just think about the lack of attention it receives when compared with the three countries above it: India, China, USA (3).


It equips
The aim of the book is to better prepare Christians for the 21st century. When it is devoured alongside its cousin, Operation World, the string of books by a person like Philip Jenkins (some of which I have reviewed here and here and here)- and that gem of a book by Miriam Adeney ... the reader is brought right into the heart of what God is doing around the world. It makes some of our debates in the West, like the 'emerging church' one of yesteryear, seem so very eddy-ish to what God is doing.


It is subversive
It offers a view of the world that is very different from that presented by the media and educational institutions. In these pages you find History, Geography, Anthropology, Sociology, Religious Studies etc - but, as a refreshing change, it is not tainted with the anti-Christian bias that seeps into secondary and tertiary curricula in so many parts of the world. It is another voice which does need to be heard if the analysis is to be fair-minded. The book opens with the 'Nine Global Challenges' (1-20) and these pages are loaded with information for school projects.


It innovates
For me, the undisputed heavyweight highlight of the book is the section on History. Johnstone writes 'I realized that no one had pulled the information together, century by century, to show the rise and fall of empires and the advances and retreats of the Church around the world' (viii). And so on double facing pages each century is covered, with the 'Empires' on the left hand page and the corresponding 'Christian World' on the right side page (21-63). It is the most remarkable visual and informational presentation on the history of the world I have ever seen.


It provokes
The book is littered with 'Burning Questions for Today' and 'Food for Thought' boxes. In the Preface, Johnstone writes that in designing the book he wanted 'passion and vision to be paramount'. He achieves this. There is a verve in what is written, and the way it is written, which engages both head and heart.


It is multi-purpose
Like Operation World, it belongs on the coffee-table in every mission-minded home. I think it will be the next book which we buy for each of our kids, for example. Every church Mission Committee needs to have it at its right hand. It is a text book for theological colleges, and a resource book for other colleges. It is a prayer book. It is a rallying cry to be join God in His mission in the world.


It is accessible
DVD-Rom, eBook, book ... take your pick. In time the website is going to have hundreds of ppt slides/presentations and all kinds of other downloadable components. As with Operation World, there is a refreshing servant-heartedness which characterises the people who lie behind this ongoing project. They are more concerned about getting the information out than with lining their pockets.


The only caution I can muster up is similar to the one I have with Operation World. All the acronyms and colour-codings and classifications can quickly become a confusing foreign language, if you do not keep speaking that language. You almost need to memorise pp x-xi, or at least sticker it for easy access.


Be in


nice chatting


Paul

chasing the apocalypse

I'm confronting my fears. Like so many preachers I have done my little series on the seven churches in Revelation (ch 2-3), but never have I worked right through the rest of the book. I could use the excuse that my time as a preaching pastor was just five years and I couldn't cover every book of the Bible ... but that would be a half truth!

Well - this year I have been asked specifically to do a session on Preaching from Apocalyptic Literature in one of the countries where I work. "Ahh - here is my opportunity." While in India through March I worked hard on a fresh set of notes and sent them off to be translated (with Laurie Guy's Making Sense of Revelation and Paul Spilsbury's The Throne, The Lamb, and the Dragon being helpful). As I worked I was overwhelmed by the relevance of Revelation. It may have been written for churches in first century Asia, but the churches in twenty-first century Asia need it just as much.

So I have set some goals to stick at it.
I've put a little strategy in place that keeps me chasing the apocalypse throughout 2012.

I am going to read through the biblical text with Murray Robertson's The Future of Humanity (all the very best in trying to locate it, as it is 'out of print' - but it is a short and simple gem) and Eugene Peterson's Reversed Thunder at my side, chapter by chapter. In the background I will be reading Richard Bauckham's The Theology of the Book of Revelation. 


Then it is off to the two largest M-majority countries in the world, just one week adrift from each other, to do my best to equip preachers in preaching from the book of Revelation. WOW - what a privilege that will be.

Returning home, I am going to chase the apocalypse a little more. This time it will be back to the biblical text with Craig Keener's Revelation and Darrell Johnson's Discipleship on the Edge at my side. And in the background being absorbed this time will be Michael Gorman's Reading Revelation Responsibly.


Then it will be off to Dunedin for a training weekend for preachers in the lower part of the South Island and I am going to make a case for doing a session on preaching through Revelation in the context of New Zealand.

After all this chasing and exertion, I will have a 'warm-down' (I think that is what the gym-junkies call it?) by reading N.T. Wright's Revelation for Everyone.


Then in 2013 I am going to have a serious crack at preaching a bit from Revelation...

nice chatting

Paul