Mission and Methodism

The painting depicted on the banner of this site is by Sri Lankan Anglican artist Nalini Jayasuriya.  I frequently utilize art in my teaching, and her work is often among my favorites. I am grateful for the work that the Overseas Ministries Study Center at Princeton Theological Seminary has done over the years in sponsoring Artists in Residence from all over the world who produce beautiful works like this one.

I especially love this piece these days. It is entitled Birds Sing – St. Francis Dances. I recently moved back to the Midwest where the bird species are the same as my youth. There are no cardinals in the Pacific Northwest! Visiting our family farm in northeast Iowa is just a few hours away now too. As I mention in a blog post on this site, “Ridge Beauty,” I am the sixth generation in my family to wander the woods of that beautiful place and listen to the sound of the evening whippoorwill.

St. Francis is said to have sometimes preached to birds, and this picture illustrates that good preaching goes in two directions and is interactive. I strive for that in my work at Eden Theological Seminary. Teaching and learning is not a one-way process but can be rambunctiously dialogical and collaborative. As I have meditated on Jayasuriya’s painting, I have wondered who is leading “the dance” here. It is not at all clear, and I think that is a big part of the point the artist was trying to make! Similarly, an important part of my growth as a teacher over the past twenty years has been in learning to follow the lead of students in the classroom as we work through a primary source document or as an experience in Contextual Education is shared that is rich with theological and pastoral insight.

Teaching, research, and writing also brings surprises in my life. I’ll close with a whimsical quotation by Ivan Illich that has long been a favorite of mine. I think Nalini Jayasuriya, St. Francis and their birds would enjoy it too.

“[Missiology is] the science about the Word of God as the Church in her becoming; the Word as the Church in her borderline situations; the Church as a surprise and a puzzle; the Church in her growth; the church when her historical appearance is so new that she has to strain herself to recognize her past in the mirror of the present; the church where she is pregnant of new revelations for a people in which she dawns…. Missiology studies the growth of the Church into new peoples, the birth of the Church beyond its social boundaries; beyond the linguistic barriers within which see feels at home; beyond the poetic images in which she taught her children… Missiology therefore is the study of the Church as surprise.”

                 — Ivan Illich cited in David Bosch’s Transforming Mission, p. 493.