I'm currently attending the Emergent Village Conversation at Claremont School of Theology, where the Emergent folk are conversing with process theology. On Tuesday night Doug Pagitt asked how process thought might shape ministry in a congregation.
I decided to take a stab at that during the breakout session I led, so yesterday morning I thought of five different ways process thought has influenced how I do ministry. Note: I think one can come to these ideas other ways (particularly the final one), but process has been one way I've come to them.
1) Presenting possibilities. In process thought, God is the presenter of possibilities that lure us into the future. Whitehead also adds adventure to the list with goodness, truth, beauty, and peace as one of the ideals and goals of civilization. From my earliest days in ministry, I have used journey and adventure metaphors to communicate messages and structure programming (the name of this blog is itself an example). As a pastor I also consider part of my role to be the presenter of possibilities to the congregation, to be looking ahead months and years, casting a vision, entertaining and proposing and encouraging ideas, and keeping us focused on the future.
2) Freedom & agency of congregants. In process thought, each actual occassion (and persons are a particular kind of soceity of actual occassions), is free and has agency (higher ordered, of course, in more higher-ordered forms of life and consciousness). Nothing, not even God, can coercively impose themselves upon you (on a metaphysical, causal level) -- you are responsible for your own becoming. And this fits very nicely in a congregational, free church model. Every person is on their own faith journey and that journey is to be respected. Part of my role is to enable and facilitate people on their own journeys, not to impose my own or some denominational standard upon everyone. This also gives rise to our respect for ecumenical and interfaith relations and our overall comfort with pluralism. It is also part of the church's role to awaken and empower your agency and your responsibility for your own becoming.
3) Creativity/Novelty -- These concepts are central to the Whiteheadian metaphysic. The cosmos is ever changing and ever growing into newness, and we, as free agents, are co-creators in what becomes. Whitehead even says that the true conservative lives contrary to reality. This fits nicely with Reformed ideas of the church always reforming and has manifested itself in my own comfort with innovation and change. Church should try to awaken and empower congregants' creativity -- through art, music, worship, education, etc. And should try to orient congregants toward innovation and creativity as central modes of their religious/spiritual experience. This is part of the fun of working in a very traditional church -- how to be true to both at the same time. It allows for great intellectual creativity! Also, our UCC motto "God is still speaking," fits very nicely with process thought.
4) Persuasive power of pastoral leadership. In most process thought, God does not have coercive power, but only persuasive power that lures people forward. This has helped to shape my model of pastoral leadership, which is to use persuasive power through the presentation of possibilities to excite people's sense of adventure sot hat through their free agency we will together choose how to move forward. Persuasive power can be as direct as a call from the pulpit for people to be involved in something -- think of my repeated invitations to be part of the spring cleaning last year (and it worked!) to something as subtle as linking to an article about an issue or topic that concerns or interests me, and then watching how that plays out in the community.
5) Relationships and Community. For process thought relations are real, and our relationships actually help to constitute our identity. We are all, quite actually, part of one another. This was not the case in more traditional metaphysics. I have always experienced process views of relations as grasping the claims of Christian theology and making sense of them metaphysically. We are the Body of Christ and are all part of each other. One manifestation of this view of relationships and community is how I've used social networking to help develop and manifest the community.
Which gets me to the actual topic of my breakout: Blogging, Social Networking, and Process: Adventures in Ministry, which I will get to in my next (or at least a later) post.
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