Learning to Be Community As a Spiritual Discipline – Transcript
Jim Latimer
Welcome to Coaching for Interims, we are about empowerment for interim ministry, best practices and quick help – wisdom from the field. This is our collaborative Wisdom from the Field project, featuring short interviews with transitional interim ministers, and others, with practical help and wisdom to offer those engaged in transitional ministry. Thank you for tuning into this episode of wisdom from the field.
Jim Latimer
Today we have the good fortune to have with us Reverend Dr. thom bower. Thom is a veteran of the interim space, having served as an interim not only in a variety of congregations, but across denominational lines, as well. And his background is in religious education, which is an interesting take for wisdom for the transitional space. And as I got to know him, I thought, Ooo, I want to capture some of his wisdom here, because he’s a deep thinker, and he can also apply it in a practical way, which is great.
Jim Latimer
And so, thom, we did an episode a moment ago, around transforming the work of committees and faith formation. And so, in this second episode, the topic you and I talked about was, quote, Learning to be community as a spiritual discipline. And when I think of community and what the Christian faith is about, I think about the Beloved Community, that really got my attention when you phrased it that way. Could you say more about that, please?
thom bower
Wisdom is an important word in education. And I think the practice of wisdom is also the practice of community. How we be wise is how we be in relationship with others. And so, to place community at the center of our faith identity isn’t a huge new theological insight. But putting that as our practice, often is that insight. So, coming into transitional positions and asking a congregation, Well, what does it mean for you to be a community, becomes then an essential question for them. How will you live together? What are your shared practices? What are the shared values that you build those practices upon? And just to be asking, What does it mean to be community? And to move it beyond the very familiar, Well, now we’re going to do community building activities. Those things and everybody, immediately grits their teeth and groans, Oh, we have to do another set of exercises. But when you start saying, Well, let’s attend to this as a spiritual discipline, it takes on a whole different kind of tenor. You also then get the questions, Well, what is a spiritual discipline? And, you know, there are a lot of different definitions out there. And there’s a whole catalog of what makes spiritual disciplines.
thom bower
So, I think part of what it is, is to say to the community, The spiritual discipline depends on the community that’s building the community. And so, what does it mean for you to have a spiritual discipline? And then what does that look like as community activity – with community as a verb? Now, I’m drawing an awful lot on corpus of literature in Christian education that was literally called the Community of Faith Model of Christian Education. And the earliest ones of those are like 1970s, and they reached through into the 2000s. So, it’s a wide span of time that this has been written about. But what I found at the core is really four different questions for these theorists. The first one being, What’s the issue that we’re facing? What are the dynamics? Sometimes those were church dynamics, sometimes those are social dynamics. But what are the dynamics we’re trying to address with faith formation.
thom bower
And then secondly, they were articulating the qualities of being a Christian community. Broadly, these theorists always saying to take particularities in the specific community. And then pairing those with the actions of Christian community. And those two, as you’re reading, often overlap. It’s not like anybody took this four-part formula and wrote to it, and pulled these out.
thom bower
And then obviously, you’ve got dilemmas, you’ve got the qualities of community, the actions of community, and then, What’s the role of the facilitator. Not necessarily the leader, not necessarily the convener, but the facilitators of community. And there’s often multiple facilitators with different roles. And so, they’re laying those out. And what I found to be more fascinating – I love theory, I love history, and all it’s great to go back and pull all these threads to take these four essential questions and start posing them to congregations. And this then becomes part of that interim work- part of that transition or work.
thom bower
So, we’ve got these four questions we’re going to talk about, What are the issues you’re facing? What do you see are the qualities of community? What are the main actions of being community in this congregation? And then who facilitates it and what’s their role? That then starts to flesh this out. And the community is aware of being community. And the whole thing with this process is that community then is the content of faith formation. It’s the process of faith formation. And it’s the outcome of faith formation.
Jim Latimer
Let me just stop you there, thom. Hold on. So, community is the…. Say that, again. Community is the content of faith formation?
thom bower
Right. It’s the process of faith formation. And it’s the outcome of faith formation. And I think that’s also a different orientation, is to be thinking community is these many parts of faith formation. It’s not just the product. It’s the content, the process, and the outcome.
Jim Latimer
Holy cow. Wow, that’s nice.
thom bower
It fits for interim work, doesn’t it?
Jim Latimer
Yeah. It does. It can really give some depth and some breadth to these three basic questions during the Interim time, Who are we? Who is our neighbor? What’s God calling us to do, or how to serve our neighbor? A colleague that I interviewed earlier on this, added a fourth question from her Doctor of Ministry thesis, Jill Small, What does our building say about who we are? How does that influence – our real estate and all that stuff? Often you hear community as a noun, okay, We have community. We’re building community. You know, an object maybe or something like that. But you’re using it also as a verb.
thom bower
Right? And the verb form of “community.” I haven’t found it in English yet.
Jim Latimer
Oh, communing. Yes. That’s got some noise in it. Okay, give me those four, again, thom, because they’re so foundational.
thom bower
I think what I’ve been discovering in this is that it’s bringing up questions of what is our heritage? What have we inherited in order to be community? But it’s also leaning into the future, What does it mean to be a community now? And that’s a great tension to have. And in our transitional work, that’s an inherent tension that we’re always working with. How do we keep what’s essential, and yet lean into the future where things are changing for us? And asking these questions about community, especially if it’s going to be content process and outcome, that gives us that good tension to be evaluating, What do we keep? And what do we move forward with?
Jim Latimer
What is essential? That question, What is essential about our community here at this congregation, this ministry? What’s essential? And then that leaves the question, How do we define essential? What does it mean for something to be essential? From a standpoint of a Jesus follower, right? You got to locate it somewhere. To what end essentials? Gotta have some end? Some something tied to it, right? Because it’s an evaluative term.
thom bower
And it’s that general, What does it mean to be a Jesus follower? But what does it mean to be a Jesus follower in this congregation? At this time in this neighborhood, with these dynamics?
Jim Latimer
Wow, that’s powerful. Very, very thoughtful. Well, thom, I’m about to start a new interim next month. I just signed a contract last night. And now I think you’ve given me a whole lot more. I want to say tools, but tools is not the word for this. But a breath of approach and some ease with that, because I love having models and things like that, but I don’t want to be model-driven. Right? But to give some breadth and some depth to approaching it. Because each interim is different, right? You don’t take a cookie cutter approach. If it’s organic, it’s gotta be different, otherwise, you’re not honoring the people that you’re working with.
thom bower
Because each community is different.
Jim Latimer
Wow. It sounds like we’ve come to a completion point here. This has been fabulous. Is there anything else you wanted to add to this one here?
thom bower
Thank you. It’s been really great being able to share these ideas.
Jim Latimer
Sweet thom, thank you so much. And I look forward to doing another one of these at some point in the future. I’m sure there’s a lot more where this came from.
thom bower
Thank you, Jim. Bye.
tom bower
Thank you very much.
Jim Latimer
Thank you!
tom bower
It’s a pleasure to share it with you, Jim.
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