16 December 2009
Group 4, A Time for Burning
Group 4, reporting in.
Assessment.
Most of Vella’s 12 principles applied to the video, but we did not talk about all of them.
The group in the video spent a lot of time assessing the needs; their conclusions were based on the fact that there were black people living very close to the church, yet church embers had no interactions with them
They also spent a large amount of time discussing what the people needed to learn (and how they were going to go about doing that). The pastor seemed very empathetic and open to hearing other’s perspectives regarding what was necessary.
Most people agreed that the groups meetings outside of the church seemed like a safe place, but that the congregation didn’t seem to think that they were in a safe space. For some, this was expressed in the fact that many simply left and didn’t feel comfortable dialoguing. Small groups seem to make people feel safer. People’s remorse when the pastor resigned also demonstrated that they obviously did not feel safe standing up for him.
Praxis, or action with reflection, was inherent in the pastor’s way of being. It seemed as if he was trying to teach his people to move into this way of thinking and being, but they were resistant.
Moving from “small to big, slow to fast, etc” was also one of Vella’s assessments. The pastor seemed to think that he was doing this, but perhaps there were smaller steps that could’ve been taken.
In thinking of how to proceed, I thought the ELCA’s conversation around homosexuality. I appreciated that church has really stressed healthy dialogue in congregations, and have felt like many churches have done a really good job with that. In this particular situation, large group conversations might get heated very quickly, so perhaps one-on-one or small group conversations would be a good place to start.
-Julie B, Group 4
This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 16th, 2009 at 11:40 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through this RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
17 December 2009 at 2:14 pm
JBixby001 says...
Very interesting final paragraph. When I spoke to my pastor about this matter he responded that our church too was interested in handling the issue on a pastoral care one on one basis (a safe space discussion)rather than announcing a statement or position. He has been pressured to make a statement, with the consequence that funds will be withheld. But I really think that this is the right step. The conflict hungry will always feed of grand pronouncements and counter pronouncements, like a volley. But to really deescalate and come to profound discussion, we need to start small as well. What I wonder is if there is any way that the pastor in the movie could have moved any slower. I really doubt it, because, just as he said starting to talk really is only the smallest of steps. In this case, I think that some were so resistant that the mere notion that dialogue was going to take place reminded them that dialogue always means change, even if only perspective change, and any amount of change was unacceptable. Moral absolutes don’t survive well when we really seek to understand the other.
17 December 2009 at 6:58 pm
Frieda says...
Being older than a lot of classmates at Luther, I think younger people don’t realize there is a greater acceptance of change today than 40 years ago when this film was made. People move, change jobs more often than in the past and communities are more diverse. More women are in the work force now and having a stay at home mom to prepare family dinners with everyone around the table, including grandparents, is less common than in the time this film was made. The pastor and a couple of council members felt the urgency for racial integration that the majority did not perhaps dreading the thought of the Watts riots of 1965.
17 December 2009 at 11:51 pm
You make an interesting point about beginning discussion within small groups or in one on one pastoral care settings. I think that it does seem to make sense to create initial conversations in this manner, yet how can educational leaders effectively move into large group discussions? At some point these conversations will need to take place – how can they be led or facilitated effectively when the topic can be so dividing?
18 December 2009 at 7:39 am
hessma says...
One of the best resources out there for working on difficult conversations is a project called the “Public Conversations Project” which amongst other things offers a free guidebook to having difficult conversations (http://www.publicconversations.org/). I worked with them during my master’s degree, in the aftermath of the Planned Parenthood clinic shootings in Boston, MA. They have managed to draw on their family therapy/systems skills to help people facilitate discussions ranging from abortion, to race, to sexuality, to political challenges, etc.