Six Church Practices

James W. Fowler's early definition of Practical Theology conjured up the idea that theological education could start with "the dimensions of the life and work of the church".(1) This idea has been the cornerstone of the Openseminary design. But what are what are the essential practices of the local church?

According to Thomas Groome, there are six classical practices: "koinonia (to be a life-giving community); marturia (to bear witness to faith); kerygma (to evangelise and preach the Good News); didache (to teach Christian faith); leitourgia (to worship as a community); and diakonia (to serve human needs)."(2)  I found this list very helpful in my search for the essential practices of the local church; they seem to provide broader descriptions of the kinds of things local churches do daily in ministry. I was, however, not convinced that there were sufficient grounds to separate maturia and kerygma. Taking my lead from Gabriel Fackre, I preferred to combine these two as kerygma (proclaiming the good news.(3) Also, didache was too narrow, referring mainly to teaching and perhaps ignoring the church's call to make disciples. For that reason, I replaced Didache with paideia (spiritual formation of believers). These considerations left me with five practices: Koinonia, Kerygma, Paideia, Leitourgia, and Diakonia. 

Edward Farley inspired me to add a sixth practice, Theologia. I believe that every church and faith community is responsible for developing a theological understanding of what it means to be a church within their context. This understanding comes through sustained theological reflection. Farley explains, "It (theologia) is the understanding required by the life of faith in the world. This mode of understanding is reflection or theological reflection.”(4) Fowler also points to this practice when he describes Practical Theology as “theological reflection and construction arising out of and giving guidance to a community of faith in the praxis its mission."

Churches are doing theology every day. Every day, pastors and leaders are required to do theology with their communities. As Fowler says, it arises from and guides their faith communities. But this does not mean they know how to do this; the process often seems intuitive, haphazard and unintentional. For Fowler, theological reflection ought to be intentional and iterative to lead to "ongoing modification and development of the ways the church shapes its life to be in partnership with God's work in this world."(5). Still, Fowler's definition of how leaders and communities do this is not clear.

Process

In Openseminary, the emphasis is not so much on theological content as on theological method. We want to know how churches, with their leaders, do theology. It is important to us that students, as members and leaders of communities of faith, have a working knowledge of the theological content of the six practices of the church. However, it is even more critical that students know how to do theology, which will lead to ongoing modification and development of the six practices of the church.

Initially, I turned to James and Evelyn Whitehead to design a process of doing theology. Just like in art, where the artist has an art process, we need a theological process for doing theology. The Whiteheads identified three overlapping stages in their theological process: attending, asserting and deciding.(6) It was clear to me that through these steps, students would learn how to listen to the questions that emerge from their community and themselves and how to look for answers in the Judeo-Christian Tradition, Social Science, and humanities. This would then lead to asserting one's convictions and deciding the best way forward.

The Openseminary used James and Evelyn Whitehead's three-stage process as a starting point. However, we must show that the cycle of doing theology must not just lead to a theoretical proposal for action, a decision to act, but must go beyond that and move to an intervention or action. For this reason, we identified three movements in the process: attending, asserting and action. We constantly tweaked this model. For instance, in Australia participants often remarked that they were uncomfortable to "assert" a position, this sounded like unilateralism. This allowed us to rethink what the labels represented. In 2015, we changed the stages within the process of doing theology to (1) Inquire and Immerse, (2) Integrate and Ideate, and (3) Improvise and Implement.

Doing Theology

While the process of doing theology goes through three stages, it is non-linear. It is an iterative process that plays itself out in various tensions. We have already seen that tensions between theory and practice lead to a transformative praxis: theory transforms practice, and practice transforms theory. However, as we look deeper, we see a similar transformative tension between the three couplets that describe the process of doing theology. The Apostle Paul reminds us "that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us."(7)

We are transformed when we immerse ourselves in the challenges we face in ministry and in the answers that have resolved such questions in the past. It takes time and effort to find the right question that, if answered, will help us overcome the challenge. This process of inquiry is personal and social, inward and outward. We must look deep within ourselves and the community to understand the problem. We are inclined to resolve the tension prematurely, to adopt an answer from somewhere else, perhaps from the latest book or podcast. But this typically provides only temporary relief. We have to stay in the creative tension.

We are transformed when we stay in the tension of inquiry and immersion. As we immerse ourselves in how this church practice is experienced by others, our understanding of the challenge becomes more explicit, and we sharpen our ability to ask the most critical question for this time and situation. It often requires us to move back and forth between the emerging question and the experience of the church practice to stay in that tension so that we can grasp the real issue and the next, best answer.

It takes time to acquire knowledge and experience to answer these questions, and we often want to make up our minds prematurely to go with our intuition. We know that there is always something else we can read, some other expert we can listen to, and we feel overwhelmed. Again, transformation comes when we stay in the tension and move back and forth between "what is" and "what if".  It involves more than intuition; it requires ideation. When we ideate, we imagine how it will be if the answer we have found is implemented and what could potentially go wrong. This requires serious thinking. Jordan Petersen says, "When people think, they simulate the world and plan how to act in it. If they do a good job of simulating, they can figure out what stupid things they shouldn’t do".(8)

We eventually reach a point where, in order to move forward, we need to commit to a solution that we can test in practice; we need to improvise.  The word improvise reminds us that our knowledge, ideation and experience are incomplete. Therefore, in this situation, our answers will only be one answer, which is the best answer for now. It is a kind of inventiveness, an ability to find a solution to a problem with what we have at that point and time. Improvisors make the most of what they have, putting ideas and concepts to unfamiliar uses. 

The final tension is between implementation and improvement. After so much effort and time, we want to consider it a job that has been done. But Jesus said: "unless a kernel of wheat is planted in the soil and dies, it remains alone. But its death will produce many new kernels—a plentiful harvest of new lives."(9) Similarly, we need to move from theory to practice, from concept to product, to test the idea to see if it will generate more ideas in the future. Our improvised solution will be untested if we don't do this final step.