Down to business - Cross-cultural communications

July 21, 2008 Today’s entry will be a bit brief. The reason is that I am already quoted in Episcopal News Service as one of the Episcopal bishops interviewed for this date. Please see the article here.

Following yesterday’s remarkable worship event at Canterbury Cathedral, we finally got down to the “business sessions” as the Conference Design Team has set them. For those wanting a legislative approach, this model will be somewhat uncomfortable. In the end, the time of listening to one another should, I hope, allow us to better understand the unique contexts in which our respective ministries are offered. In this way, we will be better positioned to address the “issues” as currently before us and those others that may emerge from our time spent together.

I found the two Indaba listening group sessions, totaling about three and a half hours today, to be instructive. Between the forty or so bishops in our group, we speak five languages. It has become for me something of a metaphor about how important it is to find common meaning beneath the changing languages we speak at Lambeth, in the Diocese and among one another.
I have for years quipped that I am tri-lingual: English, Episcopalian, and Baptist. There is a deep truth in this. A hope I have for the Conference is that we will all leave having spent significant time and energy in becoming “linguists” of God’s mission. The Archbishop used this, among other terms, to describe something of the calling of a bishop. But my work of ministry is really about equipping each of you to do your work of translating the languages of those around us into the language of God’s love.

To fast forward to the close of the day, Dr. Brian McLaren of A Generous Orthodoxy fame, offered an engaging presentation on “Changing contexts: breaking open our models for evangelism.” In it he spoke of “What does Evangelism look like in modern, post modern, colonial and post colonial contexts, and how can bishops deal with the complexities and opportunities of these diverse contexts? In a summary of his presentation that does not do it full justice, I believe it fair to say he spoke to a large extent about the languages of word and culture that we use to engage an unbelieving world with the good news of Jesus Christ. He challenged us to think of the ways in which the gospel we proclaim needs to be liberated from the forms of old that do not speak to those who hear it today. While I was not completely ready to accept all that he said in this regard, I found his observations to be worth our consideration as we seek the 99 who are outside the fold rather than the 1 who is inside. Yes, I am aware that this is not the Bible story of old, but it may more accurately describe the world’s story of today where more are outside than “in.”

I close with a general description of the sub-group discussion in today’s afternoon Indaba session. We were discussing the “signposts” of the Anglican way, and among the topics being discussed was the role of worship as an expression of our relationship with God and one another. The group in which I was participating also consisted of two bishops from Korea, their interpreter, and a bishop from Bangladesh. It was clear to me that carrying on the very “English” set of questions posed by to our group was going to need facilitation by means of patiently rewording each of the questions the Conference design team asked us in such a way that my fellow bishops might have a better chance at sharing their perspectives from within their own contexts. However, I thought you would be glad to know (or at least not surprised to hear) that some aspects of worship are cross-cultural. I found this to be true when one of the bishops, speaking of teaching in the context of worship, noted that “sometimes the sermons are harder to understand than the Bible.” If we get that one solved while we are over here, it would certainly be a gift to the whole Communion.

You continue to be in my prayers, my friends. Please keep all of us in yours. +Don