{"id":2557,"date":"2014-10-08T19:28:00","date_gmt":"2014-10-08T19:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=2557"},"modified":"2014-10-08T19:28:00","modified_gmt":"2014-10-08T19:28:00","slug":"critical-thinking-and-wine-bar-ministry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/critical-thinking-and-wine-bar-ministry\/","title":{"rendered":"Critical thinking and wine bar ministry"},"content":{"rendered":"

Who wouldn\u2019t want to think more critically, who wouldn\u2019t want to increase their ability to be fair, thoughtful, informed in their judgments? Certainly Drs. Paul and Elder\u2019s book \u201cA miniature guide to critical thinking[1]<\/a>\u201d provides the necessary insights and tools. One of my major motivations for going into this doctoral program was to stretch myself professionally; so practically that means upping my ability to think logically, fairly, and critically. This guide to critical thinking is probably one of the most practical tools I\u2019ve seen for professional pastoral growth in a long time, and it\u2019s only 20 pages! That said, it can also be very disruptive to your norm. How so? I\u2019m thinking of our time with Krish Kandiah during our Cape Town Advance.<\/p>\n

Krish, reflecting on his newly published book Paradoxology[2]<\/a>, challenged us that it\u2019s too often the case that we don\u2019t encourage critical thinking in our churches. Family and friends are surrounding us in the pews and they will likely have some serious questions about their faith, specifically about what they see in Scripture. Are we simply avoiding the tricky passages, and therefore encouraging a lazy engagement with the Bible? If that critique reflects my own approach to preaching and teaching then I\u2019m providing a poor example, and, even worse, I\u2019m leaving them spiritually immature and rigid\u2014an awful combination especially when life gets tough.<\/p>\n

One of the points Krish made in his presentation was that a theology that doesn\u2019t question can become egocentric; we want our God to be small and manageable in order to fit into a tightly defined system of thought and sit on our idol shelf. Critical thinking is a form of arguing, of looking at things from various positions, taking into account a wide range of opinions. It questions commonly held positions or conclusions. All of which, in the realm of theology, can make us very uncomfortable. God won\u2019t be defined by a system and won\u2019t live in a box. And that brings us to the most often quoted bit of fiction, as Lucy asks \u201cis he safe?\u201d and Mr. Beaver replies \u201cof course he isn\u2019t safe but he is good.\u201d If we want God to fill our vision like Aslan filled Lucy\u2019s, then we must merge critical thinking into our ministry.<\/p>\n

\"logo2\"<\/a>How might we do that? I\u2019ll share my experience, but I\u2019d really like to hear more from my cohort on the topic. Last Monday night I started a new spiritual formation group. The venue, the content and the approach are all different from our norm. We\u2019re meeting in a pub called Cork Grinders[3]<\/a>, a trendy coffee and wine bar with a decent selection of craft brews.<\/p>\n

I chose one of the books from our reading list, \u201cTheology: A Very Short Introduction.\u201d From my traditional evangelical perspective I wouldn\u2019t have gravitated towards this book. It\u2019s ecumenical in its approach and academic in its tone. And frankly, it\u2019s not published by someone I know to trust (and it\u2019s published in the UK, what\u2019 with all these British books?). So I came to it skeptically and with a bit of a closed mind. That got me wondering, what would happen if I put a book like this into the hands of my parishioners? Would their concerns, their skepticism, their questions regarding theology also float to the surface? Would we, could we engage in conversation where it wasn\u2019t about spoon feeding brothers and sisters in Christ what they should believe? What if it was more about asking and exploring really good questions from very different points of view? And would such questioning encourage or discourage our growth?<\/p>\n

That leads me to the approach I settled on, because of the advice of a 16 year-old. In her humanities course they sit in a circle and take a Socratic approach. We review the book by sharing a brief passage that was especially meaningful or challenging, and then pose a question to the group. One by one the group answers or comments on the question from their perspective. Then the next person takes a turn sharing and posing a question.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve only met once, but in a relaxing public venue, with an open and critical approach and atypical content, it went very well. How do I define \u201cwell?\u201d We wrestled with great questions, had interesting dialogue, and heard different points of view. Best of all, a view of God\u2019s kingdom emerged that\u2019s bigger and stronger than before. God\u2019s kingdom can withstand some conjecture, and what I suspect will eventually emerge is a view of God holds to His trustworthiness when everything isn\u2019t answered or even answerable.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/a>1Paul, Dr. Richard, and Dr. Linda Elder. 1999.\u00a0Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking Concepts and Tools<\/em>. 6th ed. www.criticalthinking.org: Foundation for Critical Thinking.<\/p>\n

2Kandiah, Krish. 2014.\u00a0Paradoxology: Why Christianity Was Never Meant to Be Simple<\/em>. London: Hodder & Stoughton.<\/p>\n

3 http:\/\/corkgrinders.com\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Who wouldn\u2019t want to think more critically, who wouldn\u2019t want to increase their ability to be fair, thoughtful, informed in their judgments? Certainly Drs. Paul and Elder\u2019s book \u201cA miniature guide to critical thinking[1]\u201d provides the necessary insights and tools. One of my major motivations for going into this doctoral program was to stretch myself […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[444,506,441,528,529],"class_list":["post-2557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-critical-thinking","tag-dminlgp5","tag-elder-and-paul","tag-krish-kandiah","tag-wine","cohort-lgp5"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2557"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2557\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2560,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2557\/revisions\/2560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}