Next-Wave Ezine > church & culture

Hearing Voices
By Matthew Reece

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I’ll never forget the first time my wife came over to have dinner with the family.
We had been together for a while, were falling in love, and she had met most of my immediate family. However, she had yet to have a meal with everyone at one table. I curiously watched as my outgoing, intelligent, people person wife sat in silence, eyes wide open, barely making a peep throughout dinner.

Afterward, I sat stunned as I was driving her home, until I eventually asked “What happened? Are you OK, you barely said a word the whole time?” We both laughed as she replied, “It seemed like everyone was talking at once, I didn’t know where to jump in!”

You see at our family table we often have, what we have come to know as, ‘Jewish conversations.’ My mom’s side of the family is Jewish-- and both my brother and I (and eventually even my Dad) picked up a conversational style from the dinner parties my grandparents would throw in our younger days. Everyone was invited, everyone was family, and everyone would talk and listen at the same time.

Stories would begin and then morph as someone else nearby added their two cents. One conversation drifts into another so before you know it religion becomes politics, becomes cooking tips, becomes comparing our new favorite films, becomes a rant about people who take up more than one parking space at the mall-- and somehow this all circles back around to the beginning. Topics would weave in and out well into the evening until the children, myself included, were curled up on the floor fast asleep.

We continued this tradition into our own family meals, and later on those rare yet wonderful occasions when we have everyone together in one room as adults-- We ended up calling this ‘Jewish conversation.’

I often thought this was a carry-over from the tradition of Rabbis who would ‘talk Torah.’ Dialogue around Scripture and faith was seen as a living tradition. The point is not just to ‘get the point’ of a text but to enter into it, allowing it to enter into you. They were conversation partners with both the interpretations of the past and the issues and challenges faced by living out faith in their current context.

Recently, however, I was surprised to stumble into something that made the idea even more resonant.
A traditional form of Russian dialogue, essentially a mode of storytelling, was integrated into the Russian Judaism which is part of my heritage. One person would start a conversation, or start telling a story. Those listening would eventually chime in. The whole story would take twists and turns until it became something much greater than when it started. In this way people saw themselves not as passive listeners, but participants in the story-- They were creating it as they went along, using the information they had about the people and places involved as well as their own unique perspective on events.

Fast-forward to my family braving a boat ride to Ellis Island, and several generations later, us sitting around a dinner table having a lively chaordic discussion.

Something is happening. Some of us in this emerging conversation of the last several years think, re-discovering what ‘church’ means also involves re-envisioning what we mean by ‘theology.’ How we live and talk about faith in emerging culture should be similar to the conversational style that my family has come to embrace-- A dinner table conversation.

Theology, for too long has often been qualified by the word ‘systematic’-- In other words, linear answers to pre-determined questions. The agenda has been set; we are merely to fill in the blanks, like a Mad Libs version of faith. There is room for improvisation; however that only happens in ‘application,’ not at the heart of theology itself. The questions and challenges that theology addresses read more like a laundry list of yesterday’s hot topics, usually discussed in a single voice, with no interaction or variance necessary.

What would it look like if theology became more than a monologue-- A single voice discussion.? If instead, voices from differing perspectives all contributed to a single discussion on church? Less like an informational lecture delivered by a solo professional ‘expert?--‘ more like family sitting around talking over dinner.

Of course there should of necessity be guidelines and focus to such dialogue; there is Christian community, there is a faith, there is a context.   But the unique response to each gives a fuller, multilayered view of how we might attempt the journey. In other words, theology should become more about narrative anthology-- People discussing the living and doing of faith in the ecclesia, within our ever changing context, from their unique perspective.

On July 23, the first book in a new project was released that attempts to do just that. Volume I of the Wikiklesia project; Voices of the Virtual World: Participative Technology and the Ecclesial Revolution(1), hopes to create a “collective, chaordic conversation.”   The book draws on perspectives from “technologists and theologians, entrepreneurs and pastors.” Over forty different authors all in dialogue about how emerging technologies are influencing the way we think about and live out faith in community.

The book went from concept to publication in just a few weeks. Even the website follows a ‘wiki’ format so that readers as well as authors may participate. All proceeds from this premier Wikiklesia volume go towards the Not for Sale Campaign, to help end global slavery and human trafficking in our lifetime.

Some may ask which ‘box’ such a project fits in: Is it a new form of self-sustainable publishing? A theological conversation about the ecclesistical implications of new technology? A grassroots campaign to raise money and awareness for global slavery and human trafficking? An emerging dialogue around faith and culture that is slowly taking the shape of a movement? Maybe even attempting to document an ecclesial revolution?

The answer is yes. It might be all of the above, and more. As we reach for theological engagement, praxis in whatever this new emerging era is bringing, the old categories fall away. The lines are blurring.

Let’s continue to blur the lines-- In conversations like these (and future Wikiklesia volumes), and through the new ways we continue to find ourselves as God’s people in our place and time.

In the recent words of Robert Webber, “You don’t analyze a conversation as you would an artifact of history. Instead you enter the conversation without a full grasp of where it came from or where it is going,” by “sitting at the same roundtable” (2) So, jump into the conversation. Hear the ‘voices’ that are talking and listening from their unique perspectives to create a multi-layered, 360 degree view of how we can live as faithful followers of the Way of Jesus in the midst of a world of immersive technology.

Let’s continue the revolution.

Find out more about Voices of the Virtual World, and the Wikiklesia project: www.wikiklesia.org
Voices of the Virtual World e-book is on sale now; soft cover version will be available at the end of August: www.lulu.com/wikiklesia
The Not for Sale Campaign: www.notforsalecampaign.org

1. www.wikiklesia.org
2. Robert Webber, “Assessing Emerging Theology,” in Listening to the Beliefs of Emerging Churches, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007), P. 195-196.

Matt Reece is Pastor of Community at Missiongathering; a progressive, emerging church in San Diego, CA. He is also a musician, ad-hoc theologian, and husband to his wonderful wife Jessica. His chapter ‘Whoever Has Earbuds to Hear,’ is included in Voices of the Virtual World.

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