Mend and Tend – exploratory reflection – Asset Based Community Development meets Church

Mend and Tend – exploratory reflection

22 Mar 2024

art, geography, history, name, reflection, story

Introduction

2 Chronicles 7:14

if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

The starting point for birthing a service, for me, is prayer and in the season the church finds itself it has been called many times back to prayer via 2 Chronicles 7:14. In the unique position of moving into a new circuit without the usual welcomes and introductions that I find myself in I could do little else but pray about the move, the people, the place, their stories and names.

I am going into a fresh mission field because all expressions of church are now fresh. Finding an art piece that fitted well with this verse proved quite difficult. Millward’s prophetic piece might be too harsh an image to share with a congregation at the beginning of our journey together. Kent’s ‘Overwhelmed,’ might be too revealing of how I am feeling, showing too much vulnerability. I was drawn to Fujimara’s ‘Soliloquies – Joy’ but again would it be perceived as too flippant given the current climate. Weaver-Krieder’s ‘Mend and Tend’ however was perfect for the passage and brought in the new element of life in 2020: responding to racism.

The threads that have been running through Covid-19 times are geography, history, name and story. Over 4 Sundays in August the plan is to introduce this verse through the four threads using the image ‘Mend and Tend’ as the focal image. Word images that come to mind for me with this image are broken, hemmed in, difference, sameness, pattern, creator, work-in-progress and unfinished.

Geography

From the verse – heal the land, from the artwork – looking down on the land in Ireland a rich green quilt of fields is seen. This would tie the theme to both the verse and artwork. Although the churches are situated in small urban areas the vast proportion of the counties are rural, the congregation is a mix of urban and rural dwellers so they may view the image differently. Urban dwellers might see potholes, road works, uneven pavements and the brokenness. In contrast the rural folk might see the landscape of the counties with silage fields, fallow and ploughed, rape seed and turnip. In this week I am hoping the congregation will share their geographic location. If physically meeting by putting a pin in a map, if virtually meeting by sharing a photo or a word image. The Robert Graves poem, The Patchwork Quilt will be woven into the service.

History

This verse speaks into the history of the Israelites and into our history as the People of God. The artwork has history in the fabric; children’s dresses, tablecloths, even curtains hold memories or a shared history of a family. The congregations are not alone Irish so there are strands of history coming from all over the world; Europe, Africa, America and Asia. Given the climate of racism/ anti-racism this would be a good place for the experience of the ‘people who call themselves methodist’ to be heard. Physically this would involve the congregation writing words[1] they have been called and putting them on Bridie.[2] Virtually this might involve some extempore prayer in intercession, for the countries and situations we have come from.

Stories

Everyone has a story, and one of the things I am hoping to encourage is sharing testimony of the here and now encounters with God. The verse is a request/command for people to acknowledge God at work in their lives through repentance and forgiveness. The artwork lends itself to yet another layer in the brokenness of the world and of God’s people. Response in either physical or virtual would hopefully be one of sharing.

Names

Names are powerful, the way a name is said, the tone and nuance – from the mother’s cry to the mother’s roar. My own name changed two years ago due to a new layer of personal history being found that shattered the known story. Being attached to God by being his name – if my people, who are called by my name, Using the image I imagine God stitching each person into a giant quilt, knowing them by name. In this service a poem will be introduced (Engage by Morgan Harper Nichols)

The Last Service

This could be a service or a series of small meetings, or the beginning of a collaborative art piece or the envisioned social history project[3]. I imagine that a group theological reflection will interrogate a word. The word will be Covid-19. Previous pandemics like the foot and mouth disease outbreak of 2001, Spanish flu of 1918 and the Great Famine, 1845-49, ethnic cleansing of Protestants post-Easter Rising and formation of new state, are all historical occurrences that may be brought into the narrative, but it is the people’s story and they may choose not to include some of these. Church history will be one thread that I will introduce, not the old history of pre-Vatican II. But how the church has reacted to disasters like 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina. Again, this thread might be lost in the weave but it is important for the congregation to ruminate on it. It might be that coming from the interrogation of the word and the use of ‘Mend and Tend,’ will be artwork, a book of prayers, a local praise song or more. The possibilities are endless as to how the use of the image and the interrogation of the word will form into clusters of new thinking and creating. For the group, the model of theological reflection used will be Killen and DeBeer: 1. experience, 2. feelings, 3. images, 4. insight, 5. action.

Bringing the Threads Together

Whitehead and Whitehead (1980) states “theological reflection in ministry is the process of bringing to bear in the practical decisions of ministry the resources of Christian faith.” Kinast, (1990) asserts that theological reflection “…enable individuals to discover God’s presence in their experience, the difference God’s presence makes in their lives, and what God expects as a result”. The Methodist quadrilateral of scripture, tradition, reason and experience is a theological reflection framework. For the purposes of this essay 2 Chronicles 7:14 was the scripture, history and geography were the tradition, naming was the intersection of reason interrogating the word of God, and finally experience was underpinning story.

Bibliography

Killen, P. & deBeer, J. (1994). The art of theological reflection. New York: Crossroads.

Kinast, R.L. (1990). Caring for God’s covenant of freedom: a theology of pastoral care. In Hayes H. and Van de Poel (Eds.) Health care ministry (pp. 7-21). New York, NY: Paulist Press.

Whitehead, E. E., & Whitehead, J. (1980). Method in ministry. Minneapolis, MN: Winston Press.

Appendix

(best seen visually)

[1] In Ireland when a child is born the phrase is “Is it a boy or child.” Given as an example of inherent -isms in our culture.

[2] Bridie is a half mannequin I use for youth meetings.

[3] A project for the summer 20xx tourist season exploring geography, history, name and story for the Methodist community in XYZtown supported by photography, videography, collaborative artwork with historical and geographical stories on posters. I can clearly visualise the look but not the content until the stories unfold.