One of the books I picked up on Tuesday in Leeds (I'm back in Stevenage now) was Christian Existence Today: Essays on Church, World and Living in Between by Stanley Hauerwas. I've been reading Stanley Hauerwas for over a year now and I find his work to never cease to interest and challenge me. This book in particular I had been trying to get hold for nearly a year and found it for £1.49 in Wesley Owen! I love a bargain!
One essay in particular in the book grabbed me. It's called 'The Ministry of Congregation: Rethinking Christian Ethics for a Church-Centred Seminary.' The essay is arguing in part how our training of ministers works out in practice - what does Christian theological ethics mean for the local church, say in Stevenage, or wherever. Hauerwas tells the story of 'an administrative board meeting of a local Methodist church' as 'an example of the kind of church that seminaries should seek to serve, enrich, an, if necessary, help create' (113). I won't try and tell the story here, but just describe some of the conclusions Hauerwas makes from it.
He writes, 'one of the essential tasks the theologian-ethicist performs is to help congregations ... appreciate the significance of their common acts ... it is the task of those committed to the theological enterprise to develop the linguistic skills that can help congregations understand better the common but no less theologically significant activities which constitute their lives' (123).
In other words, those of us who have some theological training are there to help the congregation understand how who they are and what they do fits into God's big story. So, we help show that the being and activity of the church is a witness to the God of Jesus Christ and so more than a social club or social action. This is one way the theologian (or theologically-trained) can be of service to the church. Where there is no theological description we don't appreciate or recognise the significance of our actions, for example, the simple act of attending Sunday morning worship is significant, sometimes perhaps miraculous. We don't go because we like the people or want to get our children into a church-school, we go to worship God.
'The task of Christian ethics, therefore, is simply the task of theology itself - namely to help churches share their stories truthfully' (125) - what I think Hauerwas means is theology 'makes little sense' if it cannot be told in the story of the church - the story of the church should enact our theological convictions, and sometimes shaping those convictions or being shaped by them. The role of the theologian is to narrate theologically the church's story. That is, to show how the God's big story, demonstrated in the worship of the church - through scripture and sacrament - is being told in the life of the church, to draw out the political and public nature of our worship and the theological and ethical nature of our life. In other words, to demonstrate the link between the two.
We need more storytellers in the church, and theological storytellers, those who know God's story and demonstrate its truthfulness in the life of the local ordinary-looking (can any church be ordinary in post-Christendom?) congregation. I'm excited by that task. Hauerwas says rather aptly in another paper in the same book: 'Theology and theologians do little to make the world better. Rather, our craft involves the slow and painful steps of trying to undestand better what it means to be a people formed by the story of God' (110).
Other posts I've written on, or quoted, Hauerwas can be found here, here, here and here
very interesting! I suppose it's no good being poetic and saying theology has an inate value in and of itself? probably not..
Posted by: -ash | April 01, 2005 at 09:35 PM