Monthly Archives: March 2010

Any Given Friday (part III)


I held auditions tonight for the Lenten reflection ‘Any Given Friday’. Despite a rather poor turn out (1 male and 1 female) it was an encouraging meeting. The poor turn out was due to three issues; 1. The student theatre community is very productive at the moment and so everyone is involved in a show. 2. Not enough preparation and notice given for potential participants. 3. Not a clear communication of the vision. I’ll talk about each of these and what it means in terms of future ministry.

First issue. The theatre community in Durham is very active and is doing some amazing work and great choice of plays. The standard, from what I’ve seen, is very high which is exciting and a great thing to be a part of. This does mean there is an awful lot of competition for people’s time and commitment. If I am to build a community of people who will be committed in some way then what I am doing needs to grab them and excite them. It also means that there needs to be a great deal of time of supporting the work already going on and the people involved. I was involved in a workshop/audition for Durham World Heritage Day today with some members of the student theatre community. It’s a very exciting project and there was a real buzz about the room. It was a great opportunity for furthering my contacts in this community and my name is beginning to be known. The Lenten reflection is a great time for bringing in people who are interested in my ministry and what I am doing with the theatre community. I’d love to be able to make plans for the future so people can start thinking about it now.

Which leads me to my next issue. Because of work and time management issues, I was unable to dedicate my time to the publicity of auditions. This meant that the notice that went out was unclear and mediocre. The other issue was that I started creating this about two or three weeks ago when I was asked. In the theatre world that’s a rehearsal period and so if I was to get a group of actors from a community that didn’t know me I needed to be doing the ground work in January at the latest. Now that I’m getting my name and face around and people are beginning to discover that I’m a Christian training to be a minister, then, if I were to begin something, there would be more chance of people getting involved. As it is, this project had to stand on its own if it was going to attract attention from a busy student theatre community.

Which leads on to my final issue. The vision, in the audition notice, was not communicated clearly. Angela Shia-Jones talks at length about communicating the vision. It is simple marketing of an idea. People need to glimpse some excitement if they are to buy into it. I have never been good at expressing a vision in words. Let me talk and I can paint wonderful pictures and give someone a glimpse of the vision; that’s why preaching, for me, is at the centre of my ministry. I can communicate face to face but in the distanced word plays I struggle. For future ministry there is a necessity for me to meet with people face to face rather than communicate through email or facebook. (Ironic that I’m choosing words to communicate my vision to you!)

Having said all that, the meeting was a real encouragement. Both people got excited about the project and were enthusiastic. One asked if she could invite her friends to come along even though she knew it was a worship service. She is a Christian and is involved in an Easter service so this is a great encouragement and a wonderful new friend who I can talk about theatre and faith with. The other interesting thing about the meeting was the other person who joined us.

Last term I was introduced to this guy in the bar. He was directing his first show at his college and he invited me to come and watch and give him some advice. I duly went and watched. During the performance I reflected on how I was going to do incarnational mission to all these student actors. I could continue to hang around bars where they go after rehearsal but, I thought, in order to talk to them about deeper issues and get to know them and how to minister to them I would need to create a forum for those discussion. The place? The rehearsal room. And so it was, in the darkened theatre during this guy’s show my mind started on a journey which has led me to exploring this relationship between theatre and my ministry. Here he was, sitting, getting involved in my first steps of this journey and he was a catalyst for it.

God’s moving in these people’s lives and I saw a small glimpse of it tonight…

Praise God!

Sacramental Theatre (part I)


In my lecture today on Ordination we were discussing whether ordination was an ontological change or a functional change. I want to reflect briefly on what stood out, for me, as an important point and then move onto something slightly related about ministry in a theatre setting.

We were discussing the nature of ontological change and what the church meant by it. We were given a short introduction on Platonic and Aquinas thought on ‘substance’ and ‘accident’. My lay-man’s understanding of it is this: Everything has an accident and a substance. Take, for example, bread and wine. It’s accident is bread and wine as it looks like bread and wine, it smells like bread and wine, etc. It’s substance is also bread and wine. During the Eucharistic prayer, however, the Catholic church believe that the substance changes into the body and blood of Christ. It’s accident is still bread and wine but it’s inner substance is body and blood; hence why it’s called ‘trans substantiation’ The same could be said about a person in baptism and in ordination. That we still look the same (our accident is the same) but our substance is changed.

Confused?

I was.

Then a colleague offered the following thought. In baptism, our status before God doesn’t change, we are still loved fully and accepted by Him but we have gained responsibility. In baptism and, in the same way, ordination, we enter into a covenant with God. We make vows to do certain things. Baptism and ordination then become functional but also involve a different relationship with God. It makes baptism and ordination a big deal and something that shouldn’t be entered into lightly. The language being used reminded me of marriage. We are married when we make vows and sign a contract. As a husband I don’t always fulfil those vows and sometimes I do the opposite, that doesn’t stop me from being married. I am married because I’ve made the vows not because I fulfil them.

I hope some of that makes sense. I’m not sure I completely understand it yet. This is, however, not what I wanted to write about.

During the lecture the idea of sacraments kept coming up. Having grown up a Roman Catholic sacraments become an interesting topic as to what constitutes a sacrament and why. The understanding that to be ordained is to take on responsibility for ministering sacraments put into my mind the question; How could the theatre do sacraments.

I’ll start by defining what I understand as the sacraments. As an Anglican I would say, Baptism and Eucharist are sacraments. I’m slightly flexible, at the moment, on my personal opinion and I can see why matrimony, holy orders and others could be seen as sacraments, particularly if we use Augustine of Hippo’s definition

‘a visible sign of an invisible reality.’

Let’s not get bogged down in semantics right now!

Article 19 of the Articles of Faith says this:

‘The visible church of Christ is a congregation of believers in which the pure Word of God is preached and in which the sacraments are rightly administered according to Christ’s command in all those matters that are necessary for proper administration.’

If I am to explore how theatre can do church then the theatre community are going to have to engage with administering sacraments. Baptism is not, as yet, an issue for this hypothetical community. Eucharist, however, is. How often would Holy Communion need to be done? What needs to be said? How, in a workshop or rehearsal space, could this sacrament be given due reverence and holiness? (see ‘Sacred Space‘ post.) Could Holy Communion be a meal with some prayer said at the beginning? What counts as Eucharist and what is a meal with a community? What would this sacrament look like within the theatre context? Is there already some sacramental element in the theatre?

To answer one of the many questions, I’ve been thinking about the idea of the meal. The theatre community loves meals. We love sharing good food and wine, we love to chat over meals. This is not an alien concept to understand that meals are holy moments. The Communion liturgy is also about remembering a story. The presider tells the story and frames the moment by it. This would not feel out of place in a workshop setting. It just forces me into the understanding that if I am to think of this exploration as building a Fresh Expression of church then there needs to be an intent on all those present that this is an expression of faith.

During the lecture today the word intent was used. The church gathers with the intent to ordain someone. The Bishop comes with the intent to ordain someone. You’d hope, that the candidate comes with the intent to be ordained. Is this the same with worship and the sacraments? You come, with the intent to worship God. You come with the intent to share in the death and resurrection of Christ. I think there is an essential need to have intent. The theatre community needs to know that the service has the intent to administer the sacraments.

So one question still remains for me; how often is enough?