On Pluralist Communities Part 1

If I maybe daring enough to say that the biggest threat to formation today is not provided by the external environment, it is set in the closedmindedness of some of the senior members of the congregation who will make up the formative community of todays' formands. Ergo, the biggest challenge to formators is not in so much in providing the right formative interventions (though that too is very important), but it is in convincing and training local communities to transform into formative environments.

An authentic formative environment nurtures the fragile religious identity shaped from postulance through novitiate, as well as sustain the learnings and insights from the various formation programs. It will not depend on the modeling of one virtuous member, it will hinge on the quality of the relationship between and among members.

I strongly disagree wtih some formators who warn/caution and prepare their novices about the sad realities of local communities and teach their candidates skills to survive the difficulties. Postmodern generation of formands are wired to survive, they dont need survival skills, they need consistency.

Thus it is important to see to it that local communities share the paradigms of the formation committees and the formators themselves. I would cite the examples done by the Religious of the Virgin Mary (RVM), the Carmelite Missionaries (CM) and the SFIC (Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate Conception) among others who really invested time and energy by allowing their formators to explain to all communities and members the formation paradigms today.

(next week: tips in forming formative communities)

Postmodern generation and easter

tuesdays with rei: tips on the postmodern generation of formands

A POSTMODERN EASTER

By John Soper

I have been preaching Easter sermons for three and a half decades, and most have been evangelistic in nature, or at least strongly slanted toward the C&E (Christmas and Easter) crowd. After all, if people come to church just once or twice a year, the message ought to make the issues crystal clear.

The tactic I used most often was apologetic in the theological sense of the word (that is, a reasoned defense of the faith). I gave the congregation all the facts supporting my belief that Jesus truly rose from the dead, marshaled all of the historic arguments a la Josh McDowell and compelled the listeners by the sheer force of reason to recognize the truth of the central claim of the Christian faith: that Jesus Christ was “crucified, dead and buried . . . and on the third day he rose from the dead . . .” My strategy was to use airtight logic (“Who Moved the Stone?”) and weighty arguments (“Ten Reasons to Believe in the Resurrection”—that was a long sermon!) to present the “evidence that demands a verdict.”

For most of those same decades, I have eschewed an approach that I perceived to be sentimental, subjective and entirely too “existential”—that of pressing the claims of the resurrected Christ on the basis of personal testimony. “You ask me how I know He lives? He lives within my heart” are lyrics from one of my least favorite Easter hymns. I didn’t like that approach because I thought every Mormon, Muslim or Hindu could claim it with equal authority.

But times have changed. In my role as a vice president at the National Office, I probably won’t get to preach an Easter sermon this year. That is just as well because my neighbors probably wouldn’t have gone to church to hear it anyway. And if they did, the historical arguments based on empirical facts and objective truth would not sound very convincing to them. You see, most people no longer believe in objective, one-size-fits-all truth claims. “If it’s true for you,” my neighbors would say, “that’s great! But that doesn’t make it true for me.”

In the postmodern world into which I have been dragged kicking and screaming (to borrow an expression from C. S. Lewis), people no longer wish to know if what you believe is “true.” What they really want to know is “Will it work?,” or more precisely, “Will it work for me?” and that becomes the starting place for evangelism. In the modern era, all we needed to do was to prove that something was logically true. And then, of course, it followed that it would “work.” In the postmodern world, we first have to show that it will “work.” And then, by the grace of God, we will have the opportunity to show that it works only because it is “true.”

But wait! Maybe this is not all that new. After all, the first generation of converts in the Book of Acts believed not because of a logical argument (e.g., Jesus fulfi lled more than 300 Old Testament prophecies), but because He “was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead” (Rom. 1:4)—and they themselves had witnessed the events surrounding that Resurrection. Next, they experienced the presence and power of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Then, and only then, did Peter’s argument from fulfilled prophecy make sense to them (Acts 2:14–41).

That was Paul’s story as well. Only after personally experiencing the presence and power of the risen Christ on the road to Damascus did the rational explanations of the disciples have an impact on him. His personal prayer was: “I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection . . .” (Phil. 3:10). A good friend reminded me that the life of A. B. Simpson, the founder of The Christian and Missionary Alliance, fi ts this paradigm as well.

I won’t be preaching the morning sermon at my church this Easter. But I am fervently praying Paul’s prayer. More than that, I am praying that His Resurrection power will be so evident in my life that my neighbors will be encouraged to ask, “Will that work for me, too?”

Tuesdays with Rei: Post-mod Gen Habits 5

Tuesdays with Rei: Post-mod Gen Habits

(The Tuesday edition is a simple exposition on the habits of the post-modern generation of formands. Again, fornators are to exercise caution and avoid using these researches as labels or judgments on the young people today. They are excellent aids in understanding behavioral or personality dynamics, thus they are tools of formation.)

a fascination for consistency

Kevin Ford, in Jesus for a New Generation, speaks about process evangelism, where postmodern youth (and also adults who are postmodern thinkers) are convinced of the reality of God’s love not by propositional arguments or one-time evangelistic rallies, not by retreats or recollections, nor by symposia or conferences, but by a daily consistent, practical demonstration that Christianity works and that God’s love is real.

Thus, they need to experience God's love through a loving, understanding, formative community.

Tuesdays with Rei: Post-mod Gen Habits 4

Tuesdays with Rei: Post-modGen Habits

(The Tuesday edition is a simple exposition on the habits of the post-modern generation of formands. Again, fornators are to exercise caution and avoid using these researches as labels or judgments on the young people today. They are excellent aids in understanding behavioral or personality dynamics, thus they are tools of formation.)




a short attention span

When asked to guess the average adult attention span, most people say around thirty minutes. According to statistics, however, the average adult attention span is actually only seven seconds.

That's right! Every seven seconds you go away somewhere. You think about something else. In fact, you could actually be taking a mental break right now! It is a normal part of how the brain integrates external stimuli like when your computer starts defragging for a moment while you type. It helps to pause from time to time when you speak. This allows people to integrate your information or ask a clarifying question. Also, include examples to anchor your concepts.

But the post-modern generation of formands have the capacity to dwell in the "fillers" rather than focus on the given moment. They can actually "divide" their minds: one apparently listening to the moment, while the other, to the scenery of their imaginations.

Our task is simply to become aware of what occupies their mind during those "fillers" and make them materials for formation and growth.

That is called post-modern counseling. We don't ask information, we listen to the stories that always play in their minds. Then allow the story to unfold. In the end, all these fillers are lines, pages and chapters of the ongoing narrative between this person and God.