Diana Butler Bass @ LPTS January 19

I have just confirmed with Peggy Owens and Jay Magnus that, thanks to a partnership between the Presbytery of Mid-Kentucky, the Episcopal Diocese of Kentucky and the Lifelong Learning Office of Louisville Seminary, Diana Butler Bass will present four lectures in Louisville the third weekend in January.

Bass is the author of the Publishers Weekly "Best Book of the Year" Christianity for the Rest of Us, and a major interpreter of the emerging church movement in the United States.

Her presentation at the Episcopal Cathedral on Friday evening, January 18th, will be for clergy. On Saturday, the 19th, she will give three presentations in the Seminary Chapel. Both events will require advance registration and space is limited.

More information on costs and how to register will be available on www.lpts.edu when the links are up and available.

Updates on LPTS Lifelong Learning Events Calendar

The published calendar for Lifelong Learning is always a changeable feast. Here are some of the changes to watch for and check the online version (www.lpts.edu/lifelonglearning).

• The Susanna Heschel event originally planned of September 9 has been moved to the first weekend of December. She's coming sponsored by Interfaith Paths to Peace. Terry Taylor will get us more information soon.
• The Presbyterian Pension Board Events were switched on the printed calendar: The January 29-30 event is the pre Retirement seminar "Growing into Tomorrow Today." And "Getting In Shape Fiscally" is offered on May 6th, adjacent to the new "Render Unto Caesar" event on the 7th. Registration for these events is through the Pension Board's website http://www.pensions.org/.
• The Seminary Luncheon for Louisville's Festival of Faiths, Monday November 5, will feature Dr. Gene March, A. B. Rhodes Professor Emeritus of Old Testament, and storyteller Mary Ellen Hill, on the topic of "Interpreting and Retelling Creation Stories." Lunch is $15, register online through www.brownpapertickets.com. The overall theme of Festival of Faiths is "Birth and Creation Through the Eyes of Faith."

Church Shopping--Signs of Life

My 35 year old son was just transferred to Raleigh, North Carolina, for nice promotion in his work for a large mutual fund company. I visited last weekend to see his new digs, see the communities of the "triangle" of Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill, and gladly give it all my paternal blessing. Since he has had little to do with church since college but continues his interest in things spiritual, I asked if we could hunt up a church to attend on Sunday. He agreed. We immediately rejected the little church on the corner near his apartment which looked pretty "closed up and uptight" and had on its signboard something about pleasing God by following "His" commandments--strikes two and three! Not surprisingly that church has no website. But there are lots of other Presbyterian Churches in Raleigh, so we looked them up. Looking through the eyes of a 30-something, most of them looked pretty "stuffy" with late middle-aged white men in leadership (not that there's anything wrong with that) and what looked to me like "business as usual/the status is quo" church life. Now understand we're both coming from a pretty progressive point of view so some things jumped out as objections pretty quickly.

Only one church showed what I call signs of life on the web site. North Raleigh http://www.nraleighpc.org shows a picture of an appealing woman pastor, an unusually interesting mission statement and goals ("a vibrant spiritual life" for example), and descriptions of programs that went beyond the usual everyday couple and family oriented church programs. It's not in Dan's neighborhood, but we were willing to make the half-hour drive for the level of interest the website generated. We were not disappointed.

• The building is fresh, attractive, welcoming, and well-maintained.
• The service was relaxed but thoroughly Presbyterian, which Dan liked.
• The sermon was clear, interesting and pretty gutsy (she tackled the "women keep silent in church" admonition of Paul),
• and the congregation of about 150 that morning included a full range of ages.
• They even took in four new members and with some children in tow on that Summer Sunday!
• The pastor who is very confident and easy with people promised to contact Dan based on information he gave on the registration pads,
• and a few members greeted us after the service.

I think he was impressed--not an easy test!

If you're looking at your own congregation, check to be sure there are "signs of life" all around, especially on the web if you want to attract the young folks.

Reflections on Mormon Territory

In a week and a half in Utah, including six days in Salt Lake City I could not avoid reflecting on the phenomenon of the Mormons, "The Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints. Their culture and influence is powerful in that territory. Although I can't find a lot about their current expression to agree with, and think it was a desolate place for them to settle just to get away from critics, I still admire the spirit of Joseph Smith's willingness to critique the Christianity of his time and to take the risk to believe that God could still speak to humanity with some new insights.

The Mormons emerged during the time and spirit of the 19th Century Great Awakenings that also produced the Campbellites, the Shakers, and the Harmonists of New Harmony, Indiana. My wife's family are descendants of another of those spiritual/social experimental groups, the Icarians, who settled in Nauvou, Illinois after the Mormons left.

What hits me now is that old-line protestant groups like my own Presbyterian Church are currently in conflict that may just be a resistance to any new inspiration from God on social and spiritual issues. We are so caught up in that fight that we are missing the opportunity to stretch and grow and be transformed by discernment of God's moving in the world. The United Church of Christ has it right with their motto "God is still speaking."

I'm wishing for more zeal and enthusiasm and risk-taking to move us into new possibilities to become a spiritually awakened and attuned church for the 21st century. If we don't, the zeal and enthusiasm of the Mormons and the evangelicals and the emerging churches will simply move on and leave us in the desert!

vacation time

I'll be away from the seminary for three and a half weeks starting Wednesday, July 25 returning to the office Monday, August 20. The intervening time includes the COM/CPM Conference for the Presbyterian Church in Salt Lake City, vacation in Snowbird UT, some time at home for house chores, attending Deborah's son's wedding in Chicago, and visiting my son's new home in Durham NC. While I'm gone, keep on learning!
David

Church Conflict

This may fall under what NPR's Car Guys call the "shameless commerce division." As I get ready to head for the PC(USA) summer conference in Salt Lake City, I'm wanting to be sure my new book continues to have a presence on the Internet.

Hope in Conflict: Discovering Wisdom in Congregational Turmoil (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 2007, http://www.thepilgrimpress.org/) offers a new approach to church conflict. Instead of a problem to be solved or managed, i urge leaders to look deeper into conflict and see how conflict calls our attention to changes God desires for the church and ways the congregation either resists the changes or is rocked by them. The book is both practically and theologically grounded with plenty of real case studies (fictionalized to protect the identity of the congregations and their leaders) for clarity. In contrast to many current writers and consultants, I have drawn from the structural and strategic family systems theory to focus on structures, stories and symptoms as ways to look beneath the surface for the inner wisdom of the conflict. The leader and the consultant need to find loving, positive and hopeful frames (hypotheses) for the conflict before trying to challenge the accepted realities of the congregation.

This approach works well for judicatories to "train" conflict teams in helping congregations utilize conflict. Contact me if you'd like me to come to your area and work with your team. I would also like to continue to consult with congregations along with judicatory teams to keep proving and improving this approach.

For two opportunities to study with me using my book see the LPTS website, http://www.lpts.edu/ . The first is an online seminar this September with the Wayne E. Oates Institute (http://www.oates.org/), and the other is a seminary class offered this Spring every other weekend, Friday evening and Saturday morning, Feb. 8-April 26: "Church Conflict Utilization." Register through the Registrar's Office at LPTS.

Critical or Appreciative Approach to Practical Theology

Reading two very helpful books on practical theology brought to the fore a conversation that needs further exploration. Is practical theology "critical theological reflection on the practices of the church..." as John Swinton and Harriet Mowat of Aberdeen University define it in their fine book, Practical Theology and Qualitative Research (London: SCM Press, 2006), or is it better understood as an appreciative interpretation of the faith tradition and the "signs of the times" taking into account different and often competing interpretations, as Terry Veling of Australian Catholic University of Brisbane suggests in Practical Theology: On Earth as it Is In Heaven (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2005).

Most practical theologians draw from the well of earlier proponents of the discipline who used the word "critical" with great emphasis (Don Browning's "mutual critical correlation" for example). Where did Browning and others find this emphasis? If it is a carry-over from the old, enlightenment academic culture of competition and criticism, it needs to be reframed for the post-modern mindset.

I'm drawn to the term "appreciative" from its use by my old process theology teacher Henry Nelson Wieman, who characterized a major part of his creative process as "appreciative understanding" by which persons in relationship take each others' unique perspectives into themselves, from which new perspectives and enhanced community and ability to take mutual action ensue. It is also used in an organizational assessment and change methodology drawn from corporate consultants and used extensively in church circles, "Appreciative Inquiry." In AI, the strengths and assets of an organization are identified through listening to the stories. Instead of looking for problems, new energy can be released by finding the true goodness and deep positive identity of a group or church.

In practical theology, we move to find a deeper and more complex understanding of situations, not by criticism, but by recognition of differences and competing claims of theology and social sciences and sifting through them to find new interpretations that are positive and true and hopeful.

In my writing of the Doctor of Ministry research methods I urge clarity of thinking instead of critical thinking. The emphasis is that clarity only comes with a deep and complex understanding of situations in the context of faith tradition and other human knowledge.