|
Want a better
understanding of Monday-Saturday hopes, triumphs, needs, and concerns in
your congregation? Schedule some workplace visits! Here are
some questions to guide your conversation before, during, and after the visit.
Questions adapted from:
- Diane Jacobson and Pat Taylor Ellison,
IC3610 - Exercises in Biblical Theology
- Norma Cook Everist and Nelvin Vos,
Connections: Faith and Life
Before
- What will you experience visiting the
workplace?
- What is done at this place?
- What products or services are provided?
- Who are the people in this world?
- Who are the people who serve the
parishioner?
- Who are the people the parishioner serves?
- What decisions have to be made here?
- Who makes them? What are the frustrations
and gratifications?
- What's God up to here?
During
- What serious challenges or opportunities is
this organization facing, excluding issues of personnel?
- Can you describe one such situation in some
detail?
- What do you consider to be the underlying
difficulties?
- What faith issues are involved for either
you or your organization in this situation?
- As a person of faith, as a Christian, how do
you go about thinking or acting in this situation?
- What do you think God is doing here, in this
place?
- How does or might your community of faith
walk with you in this situation in particular and more generally in your work?
After
- What did you hear from the person
you visited? What is most important in your parishioner’s work
life? What were the cares and glories of this place?
- What were the operative theologies
in your conversation?
- Where is God active in this
workplace? How?
- What is the Creator doing here?
(What is being created new and what is being maintained?)
- What is the Redeemer doing here?
(What would be different if the Lord had not been crucified and
resurrected?)
- What is the Spirit doing here?
(How was the Spirit working in the visit?)
- From your perspective, what are the
underlying faith issues?
- How would you go about thinking
theologically about these issues?
- Does scripture help you to address
or think through these issues? How?
- In what way is God working through
your parishioner at the workplace?
- How is this workplace like and
unlike your own?
|
