Summer '73 July 26, 1973

Team 17 Page 2

The PLC Construct unit of the Core Curriculum PSU initially did a spirit analysis grid of the clergy today. Out of this stew, a questionnaire was built and experienced PLC teachers, including local church pastors, were interviewed. Their answers were recorded by questions and each series of answers gestalted and recorded as recommendations. This data was then used to guide the revision of the PLC.

There was a general consensus among the pedagogues that the RSI section of the PLC should be left intact. Therefore, efforts were focused on the practice section. , The bug model was used as a basic rationale for changing the three sub­sections to Worship/Study, Discipline, and Mission. A major effort was made to rework each lecture into a single thrust that addressed the concerns indicated by the PLC pedagogue survey. The wisdp0~sf the Local Church Project and the recent summer research assemblies was incorporated as much as possible in order to share the most recent wisdom of the Movement. For example, spirit methods were emphasized in workshops and conversations in response to the local clergyman's need for a sustaining worship and spirit life for himself and his congregation. Social analysis techniques were updated throughout the lectures and the workshops. A shift was made away from creating "programs" and toward the teaching of tactical thinking and action. Methods used in the workshops are repeated and explained in order to enable the clergy grad to use what he has been exposed to. An atmosphere of collegiality and sharing has been a prime value in the PLC construct revision in response to the PLC pedagogue survey.*

The major issue in changing the PLC construct is whether to continue the parish, congregation, cadre format or to shift to the newly proposed format based on the bug model. The Church lecture and Niebuhr paper create the initial missional context for the PLC participant. therefore, the rationale for­revision is based on a clear need to emphasize the local congregation in mission.

By beginning the practice section of the PLC with the local congregation, it was felt that the clergy would be hooked in terms of where they are today as opposed to where they were in the 60's. In other words, the clergy today are lucid that before moving into the parish, they will need to have the sustaining corporate power of the local congregation Shat' is prepared.

• The PLC Pedagogue Survey with the criticism and recommendations of the pedagogues may be found with the final plenary materials for Core Curriculum, PLC, Team 17.

PRACTICS SECTION LECTURES AND WORKSHOPS
	WORSHIP AND STUDY	DISCIPLINE	MISSION
L E C T U R E S	RATIONAL OBJECTIVES: To teach the image of worship and study as life rehearsals within the context if a global-local religious community.	R.O. To provide images and methods of individual and corporate spirit care and to suggest loci for these dynamics.	R.O. To ground the concept of the functional ecumenical parish and guild in the times, the vision of the New Social Vehicle, and the dynamic of the global Spirit Movement.
	EXISTENTIAL AIMS: To occasion a recovery of the power of Christian worship and study as live renewing dynamics.	E.A.: To release participants to experiment with a recovery of disciplined care as the new secular/religious glue.	E.A.: To allow participants t grasp the cruciality of the local community, the local church and their own work to the future of the world.
W O R K S H O P	RATIONAL OBJECTIVES: To teach brainstorm, gestalt, block and tactical unblock methods in the context of a congregation problemat.	R.O.: To teach participants a spirit analysis methodology and provide the occasion for them to create practical plans for dealing with their congregation's malaise, including the creation of a cadres.	R.O.: To teach a method of gridding and problemating the local parish in the light of social imbalances, and to pull together into one timeline, the tactical activities generated during the previous workshops.
	EXISTENTIAL AIMS: To cut over against programmatic thinking and to impact participants with the efficacy of tactical thinking and planning.	E.A.: To make possible a sense of power and capacity to deal with the real depth issues which confront a congregation, including the need for disciplined troops.	E.A.: To move participants in the direction of understanding themselves to be comprehensively responsible for the world in general and their local community in particular.
Summer '73 July 26, 1973 Core Curriculum PLC Construct Week Four Team 17 Worship/Study Workshop Page 4

Introduction 1. Introduce the workshop methodology, including a short

Conversation course on brainstorming, gestalting, group methods and

consensus.

2. Conduct a 10 minute conversation on the ways worship:

a­sustains the interior, corporate life of the congregation

b­releases the congregation mission in the parish,

c­grounds the congregation in the historical church, and

d­enables the congregation in global mission.

Individual 3. Direct each participant to take a piece of paper and list

Brainstorm 3 ways in which the present worship life:

. a­blocks authentic Christian community in the congregation

b­hinders the congregation mission in the parish,

c­fails to ground the congregation in the historical church

d­frustrates the global mission of the church.

4. Direct each participant to take a second sheet of paper

and follow the same procedure in #3 relative to the

30 min. present study life of the congregation.

5. Divide the group into 2 smaller groups, assigning a

workshop leader and providing magic markers and butcher

paper to each group. Have one group get up all the

worship data on a piece of butcher paper and the other

group do the same with the study data. List the data

quickly and in any order. Brainstorm additional problems

and add them to the list.

Gestalt 6. Have each group do a simple gestalt, applying the symbol

Problems "" "" "" "" to the list of problems. Do this quickly,

allowing initial intuition to determine the gestalt.

Naming the 7. Once the 4 categories are established, have each person

Gestalts write a 3 word title for each category, The leader of

each group should then ask the group for 4 or 5 titles

for each category and write them on the board. Then

have the group quickly choose 1 title for each category,

45 min. allowing a maximum of 3 minutes per title.

8. Give a short course on what a block is (as different

from a problem) and have the group brainstorm 8­10

blocks that prevent the solution of the problems

gestalted earlier.

Naming the 9. Have the group decide on the 1 key block and the 4

Blocks secondary blocks responsible for preventing the solution

to the problems.

30 min. 10. Give a short course on what a tactic is, especially in

relation to a program and include an example or two.

11. Have each person write 5 tactics on a piece of paper.

12. Have each person share his best tactic and list the

Brainstorm tactics on the butcher paper until 25 tactics are up.

Tactics Ask for 2 or 3 more tactics that need to get up.

20 min.

1. Have the 2 groups reconvene and tape their workshop

data on the walls. Lead the whole group in a 25 minute

reflection on the workshop methodology, the data

produced from the workshop and the dynamics of the

groups during the workshop process.

Final 14. Conclude the workshop with a statement of the significance

Reflection of the workshop and send the group out with the short

25 min. ritual, "The Lord be with you."

Short Courses:

Workshop Methodology

Brainstorming

Gestalting

Group Methods

Consensus

Blocks

Tactics

Summer '73 July 26, 1973 Core Curriculum PLC Construct Week Four Team 17 Discipline Workshop Page 7

Opening la. Short course on contexting. Context begins workshop and

Spins is rehearsed throughout the workshop:

1­Relate workshop to all of history

Short 2­Explode imagination of group

Courses 3­Eliminate tangents and rabbits

4­Delimit arena

b. Short course relationship of available time to extent of

possible task. Put categories of External Situation,

Interior Crisis, Escape Patterns, and Existential Question

10 min. on board and spin briefly on categories.

1. Lay out time line and flow of spirit analysis workshop on board.

Do a short course that stresses need to push for universality of the

categories and hence, the universal malaise. Remind the group to use

brainstorm and gestalt methods to arrive at categories. One to one correspondence between the boxes is not necessary.

Spirit 3. Divide into small groups of 4­6 according to geo­social

Analysis locus of congregations (inner city, suburban, exurban,

blue collar, etc.). Have each group do a spirit analysis

35 min. of their congregations (as a group) using the following

chart and three word phrases in the boxes. Pedagogues

play the role of methodological consultants and rove as

needed.

SPIRIT ANALYSIS CHART
	EXT. SIT.	INT.CRI.	ESCAPE	EXIST ?
IN. CITY
SUBURBAN
EXURBAN

4. Do the Tillich short course (10% awake; 80% awakenable;

Tactics 10% zombie). Have each group brainstorm 25 tactics or

Brainstorm more that would begin to deal with the congregation

malaise indicated in the escape patterns.

10 min.

5. Remain in groups. Do a short course on clustering. Take

Tactics the list of tactics from the worship/study workshop

Clustering along with these tactics and cluster them in groupings of

related tactical actions. Arrive at 12 clusters, any number of

35 min. tactics may be in a cluster. Use the following chart with

12 columns to order the tactics into clusters. Then group

the 12 clusters into 4 super clusters of three clusters each.

Summer '73 July 26, 1973 Core Curriculum PLC Construct Week Four Team 17 Discipline Workshop Page 10

6. Have the group brainstorm out 20 practical steps to the

Cadre establishing of a cadre (corporate pastorale) which could

Establishment implement these tactical arenas and reduce them to 10

30 min. steps.

7. Come back together, share the spirit analyses and reflect

on workshop methodology. Possible conversation question

Workshop

Reflection What surprised you as you did this workshop?

30 min. What did you learn about your congregation?

How do you reach consensus?

If you were going to do this in your local church,

who would you get to participate?

Do short course on how local man participates in decision

making.

8. Send group out with short ritual.

Summer '73 July 26, 1973 Core Curriculum PLC Construct Week Four Team 17 Discipline Workshop Page 11

Short 1. Give short courses on guru prowess and workshop leader

Courses ship: controlling rhythm, diversity of methods (dividing

into groups, individual work, corporate writing), detached engagement,

killing demons.

Soc. Imbal. 2. Lead a brief conversation on the manifestations of social imbalances at

Conversation a global, continental and regional level. The purpose here is to let the

participants know that they can ground imbalances ­ all you're after

15 min. is a quick montage.

1. Short course what a parish is: missional, ecumenical, geo social unit which

they are responsible to care for.

Parish 4. Have the participants individually grid the parish they are called to be

Grid responsible for. Use appropriate lecturettes on gridding, the Kevin Lynch

model.

30 min. 5. Have 2 participants put grids on the board. talk about the grids, rationale

used. Put Kevin Lynch model up. Perfect the grids.

Imbalance 6. Divide the participants into inner city, suburban, and exurban groups.

Brainstorm Brainstorm manifestations of social imbalances in their parishes

30 min (economical tyranny, cultura1 collapses, political alliance with the

economic tyrant).

1. Assign 2 people in each group to write a paragraph stating the

sociological imbalances and their manifestations while the rest of the

group lists 20 signs the congregations could create in the parish which

would begin to deal with the malaise. Reduce to 10.

One Year 8. Create a one year timeline holding all the tactical activities created during

Timeline each workshop by quarter using the following chart:

30 min.

	WINTER	SPRING	SUMMER	WINTER
CADRE
SUPER CLUSTER
SUPER CLUSTER
SUPER CLUSTER
SUPER CLUSTER
PARISH SIGNS

Final 9. Have persons from each group read their paragraphs, and

Ref1ection end the workshop with a celebration of the group's work.

Summer '73 July 26, 1973 Core Curriculum SPIRIT CONVERSATION Week Four Team 17 Water - Contemplation Page 11

QUESTION 1. I've been wondering lately what it is about water that intensifies man's

experience of his own humanness?

CONTEXT 2. Some of my experiences with water are experiences that I find I am

extremely thankful for. (personal stories: going fishing, wading along

shore, water fountain)

LEADING 3. What is one of your most awe inspiring experiences with water?

QUESTION

DISCUSSION

EXPANDING 4. Where do you remember experiencing the power of water?

CONTEXT (waterfall, Niagara Falls, swift river)

TURNING 5. What movie or novel do you recall where the water impacted you?

CONTEXT (Moby Dick, African Queen)

EXPANDING 6. Now quickly, when I say water, what kind of picture comes to mind?

CONTEXT (Repeat "water" several times until a broad montage is out.)

TURNING 7. What images of water from history do you recall?

CONTEXT (Red Sea, Columbus, Pearl Harbor)

DIRECT 8. Water also holds the awe of death. Where have you experienced burning

QUESTION thirst? Where have you been terrified by water?

PEARL 9. Remember the flood of the Noah Story. Every civilization had flood myths.

A flood is dread filling. Yet there is a kind of joy in it. It washes the earth.

Water is a symbol of both judgment and mercy, of destruction and

cleansing.

FINALE 10. Where has water been associated with that kind of event in your life?

METHODOLOGY 11. Reflect on the Spirit Conversation methodology.

REFLECTION

OFF STAGE 12. Change subject to lead into the next section.

Summer '73 July 26, 1973 Core Curriculum LUKE CONVERSATION Week Four Team 17 Luke 8 Page 13

SCRIPTURE INTRODUCTION

In the RS­1 we use the art form method of conversation. That method is an extremely useful one for the recovery of the Scripture in our time. It serves to unblock UB from the ancient language, the ancient situation, and our own 19th century heritage so that we can hear the Scriptures in their universal existential meaning. Our purpose in these conversations is interpretation, the objective under standing of the text in its time and place and the grounding of its universal human meaning in our own time and place. This allows us to understand the Word and gives us the possibility of having our lives transformed by it. For today's conversation we are going to be reading the Gospel of Luke and we are going to use a different conversation method with a different purpose. Here we are not out to interpret anything. We are simply listening for the address upon our lives. We are out to talk about Your experience of the Scripture, to bring awareness to the experience of the mystery. We may have a little difficult doing this at first, for we are not used to talking about our experience of God. But we are not interested in intellectual conversation. We are out to locate the address upon our lives and to spin in our conversation until that address becomes transparent to the mystery of our spirit Journey and the Journey of every man.

CONTEXTUAL IMAGE

Listening to Luke and talking about the address upon us is something like what happens when you take a piece of paper and hold a match under it, but not too close to it. First you experience the heat, then you experience the turning brown, then the flame breaks through, and finally you have a hole in the paper which you can see through. In some such way we encounter the mystery in the Gospel. First there is an accompanying affection, something like heat, then we locate in the story a point which is particularly hot for us, it is turning brown and then the fume breaks through. This is what is happening when suddenly the whole room seems filled with awe. And finally our own interior deeps become transparent and we see through the awe to the mystery itself.

SPIN

LOCATING 1. Where specifically did you become aware of the heat?

ADDRESS

2. Where did you see the paper turning brown and the flame

spurting through?

INTENSIFY­ 3. How else would you describe the accompanying affections (emotions) you

ING experienced at that point?

ADDRESS

4. What is it that fascinated you? What fascination in your own life did that reveal to you?

.

5. Why is it that that burned a hole in you at this time?

TRANSPARENCY 6. What kind of fire is the awe for you? Is it more like a fireplace or a forest fire?

1. 7. What is it you now see that any man in the world could see if he were in this room right now,

experiencing what you are experiencing?

..

Summer '73 July 26, 1973 Core Curriculum PSALM CONVERSATION Week Four Team 17 Psalm 29 Page 15

CONVERSATION CONTEXT

Within our Christian heritage we have fundamentally been given images of devotional reading of the scriptures as a pious, virtuous, religious activity. The Psalms have especially been imaged as pious, edifying statements that came out of the Hebrew tradition. In order to appropriate the Psalms as 20th Century churchmen in our times you and I must operate out of our depth grasp of the way life is. You and I are aware that everyman experiences and struggle to articulate the profound mystery that is, and that is a secular experience, nothing pious or virtuous in that. Neither do the Psalms point to some private, pious religious experience, but to the experience of everyman's

Journey in the spirit. Those images of piousness and virtue trap us in moral an1 psychological and abstract categories which block us from experiencing hearing the spirit deeps being articulated. So in order to hear the Psalms you and I must decisionally listen to grasp the deeps of life that is everyman's experience.

COLISEUM IMAGE

Let your imagination go. You're 60 feet tall ­­ and you're looking over the top of a Coliseum, a deep, deep amphitheater. You're like Gulliver looking at the Lilliputians. The Coliseum is full of people and they are tiny, you're so high up, but when you get closer, they're your size.And in the Coliseum there's the arena and there's the gallery and the gallery is stuffed full of people. When you look closely at the gallery, all mankind is there. You finally spot your own face in the gallery when you are looking down. And in the middle is the arena, like a bull fighting arena ­­ a fifteen­foot drop with the walls around it.

I usually find myself on the third row about the fourth neat in. It's easier to spot yourself there because there aren't so many down there but I find myself tensely leaning forward. And out in the center there is where the performance goes on. That's where the Psalmist sings and in the pitch dark. The entire pit is thick darkness. But the Coliseum is equipped with the moat fantastic lighting scheme, spotlights, strobes, rheostats and many color schemes. Suddenly into the pitch blackness a single powerful spotlight slits the darkness and focuses on the psalmist. Sometimes when you look real close at that Psalmist you see your own face. And the Psalmist speaks.

Sometimes he speaks to the upper gallery, mighty pronouncements. Sometimes he beats the hell out of the immediate audience and says words of comfort and praise to those who must stand there and sometimes he acts like his soul is some kind of first name, and he says, "Bless the Lord, oh my soul," and the soul does what he's told to do. Other times he talks into that darkness in a very abject tone and sometimes he grieves a little bit. And sometimes he sings the most fantastic anthems into that pitch black. I am going to read the. . . Psalm. . .

CONTEXT THIS PSALM

The Audiences are in the dark. There is a spotlight on the Psalmist. He is pacing around a rock in the center of the Coliseum. He is looking intently up into the dark, black abyss over his head and is almost shaking his finger at the Mystery. The Audiences are in the dark listening.

PSALM Psalm 29

QUESTIONS 1. Images of the Psalmist that you remember.

IMAGES 2. Where did you stop listening and skip off to your own thoughts?

3. Where Start listening again?

ACC0M- 4. How would you describe the feel of the happening inside this Psalmist? What image from

PANYING nature holds the interior feel of the Psalmist?

AFFECTIONS

NOVEL 5. The Night before the Psalmist rose early and wrote this Psalm, what was happening in his

WRITING external life? Give a 20th Century example. Ask for another story.

DECISIONAL 6. How is the Psalmist's state of being fascinating to you?

DEEPS 7. What is this Psalmist giving us permission to Be?