Wednesday, June 22, 2005
‘Keeping and Talking the Word’ begins
Kent Hendricks, a student assistant at CICW, is attending Tim Brown’s Keeping and Talking the Word seminar here at Calvin. He files this report from Day One:
Keeping and Talking the Word:
Scripture Memorization for Contemplation, Formation and Proclamation
Timothy Brown, Western Theological Seminary
June 22, 2005
Dr. James Smith, director of Seminars in Christian Scholarship, introduced the seminar this morning and called it a place of “taking our faith and putting it to work in all kinds of fields and practices.” In our seminar we will be learning about the story of God and how it influences preaching. Jamie then described the three core values that ought to guide our work: hospitality, community, and Christian scholarship. He closed his opening comments by noting the communal nature of our work: “None of this is possible without friendship… the academy and the pastorate is often a lonely place.” Here we are refreshed and renewed.
Dr. John Witvliet, the director of the Calvin Institute of Christian
Worship (which provided the funds for the seminar), echoed Jamie,
saying that “some of the best learning happens in these kinds of
environments.” John was also delighted that “grant writing has turned
into faces and people” and that emails from the past few
months now turn into face-to-face conversations.
After John spoke, Dr. Tim Brown led us through introductions and
hoped that our time together would be both “conversational and
communal.” As we introduced ourselves to each other, I found myself
in a somewhat strange place, in that I have never preached a sermon,
yet I sit beside and among veteran preachers.
Each of these preachers is seeking some sort of refreshment or renewal
for both their preaching lives and their home churches. One preacher
recently returned from a difficult synodical gathering of his
denomination. Another is on his first sabbatical in thirty years.
This seminar seems to be the convergence of each of our own stories -
both trials and joys - around the greatest story ever told.
Tim loosely quoted John Calvin: “The peculiar power of Scripture can
be seen in this: That of all other writings, however artfully
polished, there is no other capable of affecting us comparably.
[Others] will assure, delight, move, and capture you, but betake
yourself from these writings to the sacred writings and you will see
that they breathe something of God.” Tim noted that Calvin “thought
of the Bible as living and active.”
Somewhere in that dynamism we place ourselves. Tim led us outside to
the Common Lawn and to the Seminary Pond. On our way, he preached to us
the Creation Narrative of Genesis 1 & 2. He spoke, paused, and we
pondered. We prayed. I felt, in a way, like one of Jesus’ disciples
who followed him as he walked and taught them. Suddenly I found
myself in the middle – literally – of the story of God. One person in
the seminar noted that too often we ask questions such as “How?” when
we should be asking of the text “Who?” As we walked and as he spoke,
the story came alive.
Tim noted at the end of the morning, “When the narrative is done,
really the preacher only has to say, ‘Any questions?’”
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