Drama in Corporate Worship: Yes or No?

There is an inherent dramatic element in almost all worship services. This is because Christian worship re-presents the story of the gospel through words and actions. Think of the Lord’s Supper and baptism. As Todd Johnson and Dale Savidge observe in their book Performing the Sacred, “Both involve participation, role-playing, symbolism and reenactment of historical events. Aside from their theological significance, they can be seen as theatrical events” (131).

But this point aside, should drama proper have a place in our corporate worship? What do you think of the observation by Johnson and Savide: “Theatre has a place in worship that reminds the congregation of its shared history and that connects our human stories with God’s story” (133-34). What are the benefits of incorporating drama into corporate worship settings? The disadvantages? I look forward to your thoughts…

Money Saving Tip: Blow Dryer To the Rescue

Do you dread that moment when you plunge into cold sheets at night, motivating you to keep the heat turned up higher in the bedroom? Never fear, the hair dryer is here! Taking ten to twenty second to blow dry between the cold sheets will warm them up instantly and make it much more bearable to jump into bed at night. You may even be brave (or crazy!) enough to keep the heat off in your bedroom completely, which is what we do. Of course, hot water bottles also add a wonderfully warm touch to a cold bed, but there’s nothing quite like blowing hot air over everything and then jumping in. This is one piece of advise you can try at home!

Son et Lumiere

On Friday night, Stephanie and I went to one of the first events of the St Andrews Festival spanning the weekend. Son et Lumiere is a sound and light show displayed on the walls of the old St Andrews Cathedral. It was an impressive sight, and we tried to capture some of the images, without great success. Here are a few, both on the large South Wall and the East end of the cathedral.

The Bible as Improv: Review

Make sure to add to your reading list The Bible as Improv: Seeing and Living the Script in New Ways by Ron Martoia (March, 2010, Zondervan). Here is an honest, creative, and challenging presentation of good, bad, and inconsistent ways of living in conversation with the Bible. Like Scot McKnight’s The Blue Parakeet, Martoia reflects with consternation on his Christian journey, riddled with selective and sloppy biblical application. His own journey started to take a new direction, however, when he viewed the Bible less as a repository of information, but as a life-shaping resource, a lens or worldview that helps us make sense of everything.

From this transformed perspective, Martoia describes how new metaphors are necessary to help us grasp how the Bible shapes our imaginations and lives. After a brief interaction with David Tracy’s metaphor of the Bible as classic, he dives into a promising interaction with jazz and dramatic improvisation. This is The Bible as Improv at its best, as these metaphors open new possibilities for the role of community, collaboration, and creativity in biblical interpretation and application. In short, Martoia asserts that Christian communities need to be immersed in the Bible as a script, forming creative and communal ways of improvising on this script today. On a practical level, The Bible as Improv presents several methods, including read-throughs and communal dialogue, for allowing the Bible to function as the foundational script for Christian improvisation.

Although improvisation is one of the most promising metaphors for understanding biblical interpretation and Christian living, The Bible as Improv is not without faults. For one, the title itself is a bit misleading, for Martoia present the Bible as script, and Christian living as improv (except for a brief mention that the Bible itself is a record of improvisations). Second, it is hard to reconcile a biblical script with complete improvisational freedom, as Martoia wants to emphasize. If the Bible is a script, is not improvisational freedom constrained in some degree by this script? Is script really the best metaphor, since it implies that we have set lines for living our Christian lives? What are the standards for judging a community’s understanding of the script and their lived improvisations? In this regard, The Bible as Improv would have been strengthened by more interaction with other explorations of this metaphor, such Improvisation: The Drama of Christian Ethics by Samuel Wells or The Drama of Doctrine by Kevin Vanhoozer, recognizing that others have wrestled with these issues as well. Third, even though I appreciated Martoia’s creative exploration of improvisational metaphors, the books would have been clarified by greater attention to the actual improvisational process, whether in jazz or drama, and how it relates to biblical interpretation and application. For example, how do actors interact with a script in order to improvise on stage? What are the constraints and freedoms inherent in this process? Fourth, I found myself longing for practical examples. The Bible as Improv raises lots of good and unresolved questions (a great place to begin!), but readers will be left to wonder: how do Christian communities actually improvise with faithfulness to the script and communal agreement in areas like women in ministry or giving possessions to the poor?

So in sum, The Bible as Improv is an exciting and creative read, and it convinced me even more than improvisation is one of the most promising metaphors for re-envisioning biblical interpretation and application. But as the book engages your imagination, as I think it will, you will begin to recognize its weaknesses. The Bible as Improv is an interesting foray into Christian living as improvisation, but it will make you eager for more!

Food and Wine: Toasting to Unnecessary Goodness

On this Thanksgiving Day, if you really stop to reflect on the gifts that God has given us, you should quickly feel overwhelmed. Consider just the gift of food, that most of us will enjoy in large and delicious quantities throughout the day.

Food, as many of us will enjoy it on this day, is totally unnecessary. Think about it: God could have worked it out so that the stuff that nourishes us is tasteless, odorless, colorless, pleasureless. But pumpkin pie a la mode?! Stuffing topped with steaming gravy?! The dark, savory meat of a turkey?! How could we even imagine food more tasteful, aromatic, colorful, and pleasureful?!

If you are like me and are stunned by the gift of food, I would highly recommend the slightly odd yet delightful book by Robert Farron Capon, The Supper of the Lamb: A Culinary Reflection. In this book, Capon imparts his wisdom about food preparation and presentation, but more than that, he communicates his delight over food. I think this sentence summarizes well his delight: “Food is the daily sacrament of unnecessary goodness, ordained for a continual remembrance that the world will always be more delicious than it is useful. Necessity it the mother only of clichés.”

And wine. Only God in his extravagant gift-giving could have thought of this miracle. Wine is a constant reminder that the world is gift and unnecessary goodness. Capon waxes eloquent: “With wine at hand, the good man concerns himself, not with getting drunk, but with drinking in all the natural delectabilities of wine: taste, color, boquet; its manifold graces; the way is complements food and enhances conversation; and its sovereign power to turn evenings into occasions, and to lift eating beyond nourishment to conviviality.”

And on that note, allow me to offer a toast to your Thanksgiving meal today, also from The Supper of the Lamb:

To a radically, perpetually unnecessary world; to the restoration of astonishment to the heart and mystery to the mind; to wine, because it is a gift we never expected; to mushroom and artichoke, for they are incredible legacies; to improbable acids and high alcohols, since we would hardly have thought of them ourselves; and to all being, because it is superfluous: to the hairs on Harry’s ear, and to the seven hundred and sixty-eight cell from the upper attachment of the right gluteus maximus in the last girl on the chorus line. Prosit, Dear Hearts. Cheers, Men and Brethren. We are free: nothing is needful, everything is for joy. Let the bookkeepers struggle with their balance sheets; it is the tippler who sees the untipped Hand. God is eccentric; He has loves, not reasons. Salute!

How NOT to Write

Part of what it means to work on a PhD is to read some pretty dense essays and books that are attempting to communicate profound things. Here is one example from my reading today:

We are concentrating on the fundamental paradox that both things are unveiled in my own presence-to-myself: namely, the absolute incommunicability of my own being (as “I”) and the unlimited communicability of being as such (which is not “used up” by the fullness of all the world existence in which it subsists). It would be a mistake to attempt to clarify this duality by attributing unlimitedness one-sidedly to being as such, while regarding limitation as a characteristic of “my nature” (as one among other men, as one individual of a species). For it is precisely in the experience of being “I” (and no one else) that I pass beyond all limiting knowledge of my nature and touch being (reality) in its uniqueness.

But here’s the good news for anyone out there working on or hoping to work on a PhD: you don’t have to write like this to be intelligent! One of the misconceptions that some PhD students have is that they have to write in such a way that only a few people in the world can understand what they are saying. I have a different approach. I figure that if I can’t write in such a way that someone with a normal level of education can understand, then maybe I don’t really understand it myself and am using big words to conceal my ignorance. Of course, sometimes big words and concepts are necessary and appropriate, but the point is, writing does not have to be obscure and dense in order to be intelligent and profound!

Bring It On!

We always know when the wind is strong because our bathroom vent starts click-clanking and we hear an eery howling coming down through the boiler exhaust pipe. Not only did we hear the tell-tale signs of strong winds, but we saw rain spattering on the windows…it was going to be a tough cycle into town.

But we bundled up in our rain gear and headed out. The moment I stepped out the door, however, and heard the high pitch howling in the trees, I immediately reconsidered. “Are you sure we shouldn’t take the bus?” I asked Stephanie. “Nah, bring it on,” she replied with vigor. “Besides, I think it’s going to clear up later, so our ride home shouldn’t be too bad,” she added.

So we set off, and as we reached the bridge over the River Eden and began our trek toward town, I knew we were doomed. Gale force winds were whipping in from the West, bringing sheets of rain pelting against our right side. The rain stung our cheeks, and several times we were almost blown off the path by strong gusts. At times, the wind would whip around behind us and give a momentary boost to our progress, and at other times, we could hardly move forward.

Halfway across the open field before reaching the shelter of trees, Stephanie yelled to me over the howling wind: “I think we should’ve taken the bus!!” But we battled on, and eventually arrived: wet, wind-whipped, and tired yet triumphant from our victory over the elements.

Everyone Can Improvise

“Everyone can act. Everyone can improvise.” Thus begins one of the most classic textbooks on improvisation by Viola Spolin: Improvisation for the Theater. The reason why Spolin believes everyone can improvise because that is what we do in ordinary life. We are confronted with situation and decision, and we act according to our intuition, reason, imagination, or whatever compels us to at in certain ways.

Comparing life to a drama is not new, either. The metahpor of the world as a stage dates back at least to the Roman philosopher Epicteus, although Shakespeare made it found with his lines in As You Like It:

“All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.”

In Christian circles, the metaphor of life as a drama and the world as a stage was picked up by Augustine, John Chrysostom, Calvin, Luther, and many others. Using dramatic metaphors for theology and ethics, therefore, is only natural, because they get at what life is really about. So you know one more thing about yourself today: you can improvise!

Hard to Find in Scotland: Syrup

If you are walking down the aisles of your Scottish supermarket hoping to find an array of choices like in the US, stop now, because you won’t find it! Stephanie and I have been putting chocolate sauce and marmalade on our pancakes, but nothing is quite the replacement for thick maple syrup. Does anyone know why syrup is so hard to come by here? The lack of syrup in Scotland also applies to corn syrup as an additive, which we are happy is hard to find!

How Free Are We?

When you start thinking about Christian living, one of the most central issues is freedom. To what extent are we free to make ethical choices? If God is sovereign, then how does my freedom action square with his sovereignty? In my exploration of Christian ethics as improvisation, the question could be rephrased as follows: what is the extent of our freedom is the outcome of the play has been prescribed?

These are really big questions, but I am mostly interested in how you deal with these things on a non-theoretical level, in the nitty-gritty of daily life. How do you think of your freedom in relation to God’s sovereignty? Do you prioritize one more than the other? Do you believe both and keep them in paradox? Are there certain metaphors or stories that have helped you understand this. I apologize for the extremely open-ended post, but I look forward to your thoughts if you are willing to comment.