past weekend at Linfield College. We worshiped in Ice Auditorium. What a great experience. As we envisioned this visioning process Steve and I thought it would go in a nice, neat linear progression. It hasn't worked out quite that way. One of our biggest hurdles is trying to figure out what we will do, and what we won't do. Or, more precisely, where do we have to say no, to what is probably a good and worthy idea.
The text for Sunday was vineyards. In John 15 Jesus compares the church to a vineyard. "I am the vine, and you are the branches" he tells his disciples. Steve and I do dialogue sermons occasionally and we were doing planning for this one. It was great. We were going to be doing a big planning session later on about mission priorities for the church. We thought that would be a lot like the pruning that Jesus talks about in John 15. We had some art from Ron Mills for our projection that day. In the series, Ron has used twigs to help sculpt the paint to reveal patterns and shapes, so that tied in nicely. Everything was going well until we thought about who actually does all of the pruning. (Here's a hint, it ain't us.)
We also discovered that we were not going to be able to get all the way to a common ministry focus in one afternoon. It's going to take a bit longer, but we're getting there.
All of this reminded me of the Theology of Jazz class that I've been visiting for the past few weeks. It's taught by Paul Adams who coordinates small groups for our church. Paul was sharing bebop jazz last week. I confess to you that I have never understood this form of jazz. It's a jumble of notes with no coherent theme or recognizable melody. Some people get it and love it, and some people are more like me and mostly confused as they listen. Having Paul explain what was going on, and knowing that this form of music was a rebellion against jazz music which had been taken over by white audiences helped.
They are also using a very cool book, called "God, Creation, and All That Jazz" by the Lutheran theologian Ann Pederson. (Got to love that last name.) Pederson's premise is that God has created the world with certain givens, and it's our job to take those and creatively improvise our lives around them. One of the things that the bebop class brought home to me is that creation is amazingly complex and hard to understand. The more we study anything in nature the more we come to realize that there is so much more to learn.
That is very true for me when it comes to theology. It's also true about wine. You can spend your whole life studying either one and never feel as though you've come close to knowing everything there is to know. I've made it a goal to learn something new every day. I don't want to know it all, I just want to keep learning, and I want to keep doing that for the rest of my life.