This is part of the Postmodern sessions

1. Postmodern Imagination
and Mission
Session 9
Joshva

2. Main Missiological Themes
Missiological Imagination
Liberating Imagination
Evangelical Imagination
Reconstructive Imagination
Cross cultural Imagination
Theological Imagination
Empowered Self! Spiritual Imagination
Hope! Imagining New World!

3. Resources
Walter Brueggemann, The Bible and Postmodern
Imagination pp.1-57
Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination…
J Richard Middleton and Brian J W Truth is Stranger
than it used to be, pp.108-196.
Richard Briggs,Missiological Issues for 21st Century.
http://www.postmission.com/articles/mississc21.pdf
Sharon Welch Sweet Dreams in America: Making Ethics
and Spirituality Work. London: Routledge, 1999

4. Words under Question in
postmodern
No Truth but truths
No Reality but mediated
No The Meaning but meanings
No Objective knowledge but knowledge
No grandnarrative but Metanarratives
Selfs within self

5. Issues under question in
postmodern
Power
Claims
Authoritarianism
Exclusive
Institutionalised
Domination
Exploitation
False consciousness

6. Reaction to Modern
Suspicion of all narratives
Rejection of claims
Counter narratives
Question scientific methods
Alternative methodologies
Isolation of truths
Self-centred spirituality
Gratification for living today
Resistance for any compelling ideologies

7. Missiological response
Humbling
Emptying oneself
Dialogue
Relating people
Celebrating life
Challenging
Deconstructing
Reconstructing
Building communities

8. Missiological Imagination
In sum, Christian mission is nothing more or
less than “participation in God’s existence in
the world.”[46] It is about a respectful,
dialogical crossing of cultural, religious,
personal, racial, class and even geographical
boundaries; it is a “single but complex
reality,”[47] of proclamation and witness,
liturgy and contemplation, efforts at
inculturation, participation in interreligious
dialogue, commitment to justice, peace and
the integrity of creation, and engagement in
reconciliation.

9. Bevans
It is this method of practical theology--rooted
in experience and practice, nourished by the
Christian Tradition and moving to a more
faithful practice in an unending spiral--that a
systematic theology with a “missiological
imagination” will employ. Theology will have
as its starting point the life of the Christian
community as it strives to discern what God
is doing in human history and how the
church might be the sign and instrument of
that saving presence.

10. Dialogical
the contemporary missiological conviction
about the dialogical nature of mission might
point to new ways to conceive the divine
perfections--like those of omnipotence and
impassibility. If God is truly a dialogical God,
vulnerability, suffering and growth can hardly
be conceived as imperfect qualities. A
“missiological imagination” might lead
systematic theologians to a new level of
dialogue with “process” or “neoclassical”
approaches to God’s Mystery.

11. Biblical imagination
God imagines human beings as God’s
own image (Genesis 1)
Prophetic imagination – Critique and
alternative (Samuel and Saul)
Poetical Imagination – Participation and
celebration
Narrative Imagination – Descriptive and
relevance

12. God’s imagination of people
As God’s image (Creation story)
As not Uniformity but unity within diversity
(Babel story)
As not dominion but to serve (Genesis 1
and Gospel)
As equals not sameness (Exodus – alien)
As not gathering but Sharing resources
As one with him not merely claim

13. Examples from the OT
Nathan’s Prophetic Imagination 2 Samuel
12:1-14
There were two men in a certain town,
one rich and the other poor. … You are
the man! This is what the Lord, the God of
Israel
Nehemiah’s imagination of reconstruction of
his country
Amos’ challenges to the priests and religious
leaders

14. Bible and imagination
God’s Liberating Imagination
Human Leadership and Imagination in
liberating Mission
People’s participation, negation and
negotiation
Imagining destruction but invited for
Reconstruction (Nehemiah)
Imagining a New Creation and New World

15. Prophetic Imagination
by Walter Brueggemann
The task of prophetic ministry is to nurture,
nourish and evoke a consciousness and
perception alternative to the consciousness and
perception of dominant culture around us.
I suggest that the dominant culture, now and in
every time, is grossly uncritical, cannot tolerate
serious and fundamental criticism, and will go to
great lengths to stop it. Conversely, the
dominant culture is a wearied culture, nearly
unable to be seriously energized to new
promises from God.

16. Moses
Radical break from both the religion of the
static triumphalism and the politics of
oppression and exploitation. A. by
exposing gods of power who had no
power, mythical legitimacy of Pharaoh’s
social world is destroyed B. Countering the
politics of oppression with the politics of
justice and compassion

17. Moses a Prophet
Moses is the prophet, and his task becomes
ours: to criticize and dismantle the human royal
regime, and to energize toward the new reality
that God wants to bring in. This new reality
existed more or less until the time of Solomon,
when Solomon recreated within Israel the same
conditions they experienced in Egypt: affluence
of the ruling class at the expense of the poor,
oppression and enslavement, and static religion,
sanctioned and with access controlled by royalty.

18. Hope and prophet
Brueggemann notes that the traditional “liberal”
theological position has been excellent at the
prophetic act of criticism, but has lost any real
connection with God to allow for true hope of
energizing change. The best the liberal prophet
can do is critique. The traditional “conservative”
theological position excels at holding on to hope
of a future that energizes, but has lost any real
distance from the dominating culture to offer a
genuine challenge to what is. The best the
conservative prophet can do is hope for heaven
after a burned up earth.

19. Hope Imagination
by Walter Bruggemann
Jeremiah (2:2,13,32; 3:19; 5:6,22) asserts an
incredible freedom about God so that each he
speaks to God or about God, he has the
amazing capacity to create a quite new scenario
that keeps all parties open and in jeopardy. The
poetic language of Jeremiah is an invitation to
seek for language that is passionate, dangerous
and imaginative enough to make available the
passion, danger and freedom of God who
summons us to God’s own conflict.

20. Poetic language of Jeremiah
Jeremiah’s language is free, porous and
impressionistic
Poets have no advise to give people. They only
want people to see differently, to revision life.
Poets speak porously. They use the kind of
language that is not exhausted at first hearing.
The purpose of porous language is to leave the
poem and reality to which it points open for the
experience of the listener. (pp 21-25)
Jeremiah believes that God is able to do an
utterly new thing which violates our reason, our
control and our despair.

21. Liberative Imagination
Connor raises the issue of her race ("born of
white parents") and social perspective
("entitled") while asserting that "the abomination
of slavery and the ongoing implications of racism
could be linked to the failure of the imagination
of nonblack people who resisted seeing anyone
of color like themselves." She argues that slave
narratives empower non-blacks to share in the
experiences of the "dispossessed," allowing
them to imagine grace as they share in the
liberation of the enslaved while actualizing their
own liberation from prejudice and willed
ignorance. (Kimberly Rae 2000)

22. Theological Imagination
by Gordon D Kaufman
Theology means to analyse, critically
engage and reconstruct the image or
concept of God
The image of God a human construct -
developed through extrapolation of certain
finite metaphors and models – drawn from a
particular human experience
Christian reference points are metaphor –
God’s humaneness

23. Kaufman
Theologian assesses Adequacy in expressing
God’s absoluteness and God’s humaneness and
to reconstruct it for the contemporary context
God as ultimate point of reference to
contemporary forms of experience and life
Warned of idolatrous absolutization and
dehumanization must be relativised and resisted
in the light of that loving One who alone is
absolute

24. mission
Relational factor
Narrative factor
Communal factor
Process or journey
factor
The Holy Spirit Factor
Learning factor
Service factor