Categories: uncategorized
Date: 16 April 2010 07:33:14
I didn't watch it; (i) I was at reading group and (ii) I can't get ITV for some unfathomable reason and so couldn't catch up with the end when I got home. So no insightful, or otherwise comment on here about that one. Was going to comment on J.K. Rowlings rant sticking up for single mums in The Times the other day, which comes to the conclusion we should all vote Labour, (suprise, suprise when she's a donor and good friends with the upper eschlons of the party), but have decided not to.
Rather on a day when I guess people want to escape politics I'm going to go for religion. At reading group we're going through Roger Walton's The Reflective Disciple, which I've spoken about on here before. As I was preparing for last night I was struck by what Roger says about language and our need to be billingual and also to be able to hold onto faith language we find important, whilst translating it into our contemporary culture.
It raises some important questions for me. (i) How do we find consensus about what is important "faith language"? and does that consensus need to be found on a congregational, denominational or eccumenical church wide basis?
How do we identify our "contemporary culture"? This may seem a wierd question but there are actually a range of contemporary cultures. We often talk about being culturally sensitive, and this can be in relation to either geographical, ethnic or identity based cultures each of these groups has a "contemporary culture" and our translation of "faith language" may need to differ between them. That is why I believe it is so important we become and also raise up interpretters. We need people who understand, and are preferably natural speakers of a particular contemporary cultural language to translate that culture for those in the church to understand it and for those in the culture to understand the church. We need these interpretters to be both within and beyond our churches. We need people ready to interpret if people from a particular culture enter our churches and also for people to be ready to go and connect with others in those cultures interpretting and then teaching them faith language.
I am passionate about the traditional, older forms of church that exist but I also understand that the language barriers are so great sometimes that people within a particular culture need to form their own churches or congregations. For this to happen, particularly where there are a lack of indigenous speakers within the church mission is required. People need to take time living within contemporary cultures, learning from them and respecting them in order to learn the language and customs in order to share faith language with them and also their language and customs with the wider church, so the church is ready to accept them in aswell as prepared to visit them where they are.
I guess that is what I am doing with the research in many ways. I view my main gifting as being an interpretter I think. In FE I have been interpretting complex academic ideas into a form that 16-19 year olds, often with complex and interesting backgrounds, can grasp and hopefully get excited about aswell as write an exam answer on. As a local preacher I am seeking to again act as an interpretter. Within my research I am seeking to do the field work to learn about single parents within churches and how their particular "culture", (if such a thing exists), relates to the evangelical culture they are worshipping within. Similarly with things like the talk I did in Sheffield and my contribution to Living it Out I have been seeking to act as an interpretter who is billingual in the language of both the church and "the gay community".
One of the difficulties I have at the moment, having worked out what I am, is how do I find a job which allows me to act as that type of interpretter? I love teaching, but am becoming more aware that I just want teaching (in some form, not necessarily the traditional), to be part of what I do. I have a love of languages, not foreign languages, (I'm naff at them), but cultural. I have a passion for effectively acting as an interpreter and using my billingual abilities.