Tuesday, June 28th, 2005
Thomas H. Troeger in 1996 wrote “Ten Strategies for Preaching in a Multimedia Culture.” Thomas is on the faculty at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado, USA, focusing on preaching and communication.
Troeger starts by clarifying his terms. By preaching he does mean preaching in the sense of verbally communicating with congregations. By ‘multi media culture’ he means the world of audiovisually oriented people.
Quoting Pierre Babin he seeks to develop effective communication characterised by “resurgence of the imagination, the importance of affective relationships and the dissolution of national and cultural frontiers”.
He acknowledges the potential for distortion and resistance in engaging with emerging culture. Neil Postman, in Technopoly, wrote, “A preacher who confines himself to considering how a medium can increase his audience will miss the significant question: “In what sense do new media alter what is meant by religion, by church, even by God?”. Troeger responds with the continued call to take the risk of translation into new media. He appeals to what Andrew Walls has called ‘infinite translatability’ of the Christian gospel.
Troeger provides ten strategies for communciating with media savvy people, without the use of any television or computer screens.
1. Assume there is more to the story. Troeger points us to the legends developed around the magi who visited Jesus as an infant. Likewise the stories spun around Noah. He gives us his own sermon on the married couple who received large quantities of wine from Jesus at their wedding, enough to preserve for special occasions throughout the rest of their lives.
The other nine strategies:
2. Create a parable
3. Play with an Image
4. Write the Sermon as a Movie Script
5. Use a Flashback
6. Reframe a Sacrament
7. Let a little child lead you
8. Play a game
9. Listen to the Muffled Voices
10. Compare Translations
I appreciate Troeger’s avoidance of associating multi media culture with young people. Likewise his care not to assume that mature Christians will grow out of thinking in terms of movies, music, story and play.
I’ll be drawing on some of Troeger’s pointers as I work with the Uniting Church in Australia’s national Lay Preachers’ Conference this week. The topic: “Same light, new light switch: Preaching for new generations”.
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Monday, June 27th, 2005
Is a ‘postmodern organization’ an oxymoron? Richard Tiplady’s chapter in the book, “Postmission” explores the link between postmodern thought and organizational structure.
Richard’s a consultant based in the UK working with Christian Vocations, Tearfund, Scripture Gift Mission, USPG, Oasis Trust, Global Connections, World Evangelical Alliance Missions Commission, Radstock Ministries, Afrika In Touch. He’s well qualified for his contribution to Postmission’s exploration of the implications of generational and philosophical change for mission organisations.
Tiplady begins his article with a couple of riders. He reminds us that postmodernity is not necessarily a coherent concept that can be pinned down. Some corporations developed or run on postmodern principles have failed. He distinguishes between postmodernity and postmodernism. Postmodernity refers to the social and cultural changes perceived to be impacting the world at this point in history, associated with changes taking place over fifty years. Postmodernism is the thinking and ideas that have developed around those changes.
Tiplady draws on Stanley Skreslet’s description of the 21st century mission organisation:
niche oriented (more specialised with a clear focus in ministry or geography) and networked (an alternative to command and control).
Michael Foucault’s insights on power are used in an exploration of team diversity in the mission organisation. The development of diversity of gender, generation and culture brings to the fore assumptions about what is normal. Foucault identifies a definition of ‘normal’ as a use of power that marginalises. He is concerned that people work out of discourses or world views that know nothing of one another or exclude one another. Tiplady develops a power/resistance matrix to articulate different discourses so as to reveal the arbitrary nature of every rule and norm. For example Jesus healing on the Sabbath reveals the lack of consistency in the ways Sabbath laws favour those in power - male property owners.
Tiplady says that a postmodern organisation will marked by the encouragement of diversity and free exchange of opinions and views. Leaders will allow the exposure and challenge of previously unseen and unintended power plays at work behind all normal operating principles and procedures. The goal is not to arrive at new compromise of norms, but to develop an environment in which continued questioning can happen. The postmodern question: “Who says it has to be that, and not this?”
Tiplady finishes by drawing on the work of Gilles Deleuze on chaos and leadership. Chaos theory provides an alternative to classifying systems as closed or open random. In the 1960s Deleuze noted that fascism came from forcing a choice between disorder/anarchy and state-imposed order. Changes come about because chaotic/complex systems are highly sensitive to initial conditions. A amall change can push a system across the ‘bifurcation point’ into new and radically different behaviour.
Since 2002 Tiplady has published two of his own books on globalisation:
World Of Difference : Global Mission At The Pic’N'Mix Counter
Globalisation and postmodernity are combining to create a world characterised by difference and continual change. My latest book looks at how this will affect the practice of mission, and especially how mission agencies (and all organisations) can change to thrive in such a context.
One World or Many? The impact of globalisation on mission
Globalisation is a major factor in today’s world. This book, which includes chapters by writers from around the world, considers its implications for Christian mission. One of the key arguments of this book is that globalisation will lead to a more diverse, complex and plural world, rather than the homogenised Western one we so often assume that the term describes.
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