Monday, September 26, 2005
Church as a laboratory
On the study tour heard an interesting quote from Paul Cameron, the Executive Officer with the Churches of Christ in Vic/Tas. He says that Churches should be a laboratory, not a museum.
It got me thinking….
What actually is a museum? It’s a place where people come to look at things from the past. It is normally backwards and focused on the way things used to be done. In a museum, you are a spectator, you’re not meant to touch the objects or get too involved. You look at a variety of different things, and your job is not to make the place better for anyone else, but to only pass critiques. Yes, lovely painting. Ooh, that sculpture, it’s terrible. A museum is something that doesn’t change very often, and let’s be honest, can be a bit boring. Going occasionally isn’t too bad, but you wouldn’t want to turn up too often. And in the end, there are some people who will just never go to a museum. There are some people that will enjoy going, some people that you can convince to go, and some that think the roof will collapse if they go to inside.
Sounds Churchy enough to me.
I haven’t been to a laboratory for quite a while, but when I used to go to them they were fun. You were always doing things that were cool, making experiments to try to create something new. A lot of the time what we did didn’t quite work, but that was all OK. Each mistake was another step closer to making it work. You never got in trouble for trying something that didn’t work, as long as you were experimenting and heading in the right direction. In fact I did get in trouble a few times for just talking to my friends too much and not bothering to try the experiments. The lab sessions were normally cooperative, as you relied on others around you. Sometimes we’d watch someone else in action doing an experiment at the front, but then we’d have the responsibility of doing it ourselves. After our experiments, we always had to reflect on what it was we’d just done, think how we could have done it better and see what we could learn from our experience. Occasionally there was an explosion, but it was all OK. I’m glad we have scientists who spend their time in laboratories, as by their coming up with innovative ideas and testing them in their labs, our quality of life improves as their experiments prove successful.
I like the idea of Church as a laboratory. Fun, looking to be innovative, experimenting with different things, getting people involved, reflecting on what we do, coming up with new ideas, making the world a better place when something succeeds. Rather than just locking Church into the formula that has been used for the last century, being prepared to use imagination to create new forms of Church, new methods of mission and new ways of becoming like Jesus. What if our best energies were taken out of TV, gossip, sport and making money, and put instead into re-imagining what Church could be?
It got me thinking….
What actually is a museum? It’s a place where people come to look at things from the past. It is normally backwards and focused on the way things used to be done. In a museum, you are a spectator, you’re not meant to touch the objects or get too involved. You look at a variety of different things, and your job is not to make the place better for anyone else, but to only pass critiques. Yes, lovely painting. Ooh, that sculpture, it’s terrible. A museum is something that doesn’t change very often, and let’s be honest, can be a bit boring. Going occasionally isn’t too bad, but you wouldn’t want to turn up too often. And in the end, there are some people who will just never go to a museum. There are some people that will enjoy going, some people that you can convince to go, and some that think the roof will collapse if they go to inside.
Sounds Churchy enough to me.
I haven’t been to a laboratory for quite a while, but when I used to go to them they were fun. You were always doing things that were cool, making experiments to try to create something new. A lot of the time what we did didn’t quite work, but that was all OK. Each mistake was another step closer to making it work. You never got in trouble for trying something that didn’t work, as long as you were experimenting and heading in the right direction. In fact I did get in trouble a few times for just talking to my friends too much and not bothering to try the experiments. The lab sessions were normally cooperative, as you relied on others around you. Sometimes we’d watch someone else in action doing an experiment at the front, but then we’d have the responsibility of doing it ourselves. After our experiments, we always had to reflect on what it was we’d just done, think how we could have done it better and see what we could learn from our experience. Occasionally there was an explosion, but it was all OK. I’m glad we have scientists who spend their time in laboratories, as by their coming up with innovative ideas and testing them in their labs, our quality of life improves as their experiments prove successful.
I like the idea of Church as a laboratory. Fun, looking to be innovative, experimenting with different things, getting people involved, reflecting on what we do, coming up with new ideas, making the world a better place when something succeeds. Rather than just locking Church into the formula that has been used for the last century, being prepared to use imagination to create new forms of Church, new methods of mission and new ways of becoming like Jesus. What if our best energies were taken out of TV, gossip, sport and making money, and put instead into re-imagining what Church could be?
Comments:
Post a Comment
