I had a dream last night that I was a kindergarten teacher. That’s weird but not too weird considering some of the other dreams I’ve had. What was really weird was that when I went to write to a friend to describe it in an email it took me fifteen minutes to describe my dream and thus far it is the longest email I have ever written. The reason this is baffling to me is that I could write a four-hundred word essay about what was probably only about a fifteen minute dream. I am learning slowly that humans are really good at making observations and elaborating on them. Most of our life is based on reacting to our perceptions of our experiences. The way we interpret our world explains why there can be a full book written about a sentence of scripture. Each word can be tied to experience and each phrase has an elaborate history. I think this is a truly beautiful thing about the human mind. It is my belief that this ability can be used in a way that embodies mission. Halter and Smay in their book, “AND,” advocate engaging culture as a key point in ministry. Alan Hirsch alludes to something similar in his book “the Forgotten Way.” Halter said that in a recent study of people involved in ministry most of them thought that it would take two years of being immersed in a culture before you could really belong in that culture. If we can write volumes about a fifteen minute dream or an entire book about one sentence, imagine what we could learn about a culture by living in it for two entire years! Today we went on a field trip to explore parts of the city we weren’t familiar with and in an hour we came up a plethora of observations about a community that we had barely experienced at all. If we took the time to really embed in those communities I believe the possibilities for mission, discipleship, and change could truly be endless.
Jack
I think you’re completely right. One of the things about being a writer I’ve found is that you have to learn to observe, yet the day’s exercise showed me that I don’t pay attention to some of the most vital things about my own city! I like what you have to say, it’s sort of an encouragement and a call to some greater responsibility.
One way in which yesterday’s exercise was helpful was in showing me the importance and effectiveness of a little intentionality.
Even though we only spend an hour or two in our different neighborhoods, because we were there to observe and pay attention, we all learned so much about communitites which we had barely experienced at all.
It also made me realize how little I intentional reflection I have sometimes given to my hometown/community. What if we paid attention to the places we already live in this way and attempted to be missional where we already are…is this possible? What an exciting challenge it seems!
Thanks for the though-provoking post, Jack!
I wish you would be a kindergarten teacher. And I concur. It takes time observation and analysis to really “earn the right” to belong to a culture.
Every single neighborhood is different just like every single person is different and the only way to truly know someone is to spend time with them, and a lot of it!
This is a truly amazing concept! What the human mind can do seems endless at times. I find myself continually over analyzing situations and my surroundings. However, one question I have, just in general, is; in a missional standpoint towards a given area, do you think it is even possible to over analyze? Sure you can go beyond your scope of understanding, but isn’t that the point of embedding yourself in a new culture? You should have an idea of where you are going and why, but you will never know anything about an area until you spend time there. Going out into the unknown is a call to mission and every little detail should be taken into consideration concerning a given area, I believe.
I think your observations on human observation are really true and inspiring, in a way. We love to take in, analyze, draw conclusions from what we see, so if that’s a gift God has clearly given us, let’s use it for the Mission!