|
My experience of pastoring a professional congregation
showed that people were struggling to find out what it means to
be fully human. There was an incipient hunger in the business community
for something which makes greater sense that what they currently
have. I also found an increased openness to spirituality - both
of which are symptoms of the same search for meaning and authenticity
and openness.
I knew the market was out there for a Christian model of personal
development, and business psychologists confirmed it. There is a
hunger for something that could offer a whole picture of life, and
not just treat people as commodities, but as whole people. This
vacuum is rapidly being filled with processes and products which
focus upon essentially non-Christian, new-agey notions of life.
There is an urgent need to contribute to the cultural reformation
- and I think that is a word I would use not just of the business
world but as an expression of society in general.
The 20th century church was marked by a cultural of retreat. The
evangelical wing restructured itself in pietistic lines, rejecting
the apparently more liberal social agenda and therefore culturally
retreating. At the same time, the religious institution of the church
has become more marginal in its social influence. So, you have got
both the theological and social marginalisation, and at a pastoral
level the questions church leaders are asked is: "What does
God have to do with my life five days a week?". Christian ministry
struggles to adequately address that in what it delivers on a Sunday
or in the pattern of church.
Now, in personal development within a business context the Myers
Briggs personality indicator is often used. This is based on a Jungian
psychological model - Jung had notions of the spiritual but notions
of personhood that could not in any way be described as Christian.
And yet, the church has also latched on to Myers Briggs and used
it as the major tool for self assessment and theological development,
which raises a question: Are we as a church simply called to baptise
secular models, or should we refer to the paradigms of Daniel and
his colleagues in Babylon? They led the way in their culture, rather
than simply following it and adopting what was already there, by
creating a new way.
The church should take the lead and create a shape in the culture
rather than operating within the shape and space which as been created
by the world.
Our personal development model - Human Ecology - goes beyond the
Myers Briggs notion of personhood as a balance of opposites. I would
say that a biblical understanding of personhood is the proper relationship
of the other, from the worldly "take-do" relationships
to a "give and receive". It is about acknowledging that
the other person, or the other in yourself, is not there to exploit
or manipulate, or abuse. It is to respect and to love, to honour,
and to give yourself to in the model of trinitarian relationships.
The trinity isn't about the balance of the different persons of
God. The Godhead is three persons in relationship, giving themselves
to each other in their otherness and in their difference.
So that is why our tools are about understanding the differences,
and then transforming the way you handle that difference from a
"take-do" relationship to a "give-receive".
We are trying to transform the world, which is corrupted. We are
trying to change the pattern for the social agenda.
Simon Walker was curate at Christ Church Abingdon
in Oxford for four years before beginning doctoral research at Oxford
University into Cultural Psychology and Spirituality. He is Director
of Human Ecology, which takes Christian personal development and
management consultancy into the business world.
email: Spwalk@msn.com
|
