Pastors Week 2010

Pastors read the Bible and let the Bible “read them” at Pastors Week

Elkhart, Ind. (AMBS) - Coming to the biblical text hungry is one way Mary H. Schertz, AMBS professor, described the kind of Bible study modeled at Pastors Week, January 25–28. So on Wednesday of the week, participants were asked to fast until they received communion in the late morning worship service.

Schertz and Rachel Miller Jacobs, former pastor and currently a doctoral student, led the group in what they called “reading the Bible confessionally” and “reading the Bible contemplatively.” Schertz also described it as “reading the Bible as if our lives depended on it.”

Each day, a text from Luke became the focus of a three-part movement. First, the text was read, and this reading came from a fresh translation by one of the two leaders. Then the group was invited to “let the text read us,” by taking ample time for participants to reflect on how the Scripture speaks to them in their ministry and how their contexts speak to the text. The final movement was adoration and worship focused by the text.

This way of reading the Bible grew out of what Schertz called a “general sense that somewhere underneath our well-nourished exteriors, our busy and successful lives, our abundance of achievements and success, there are some ways in which we are still starving. Many of us seem hungry, some desperately hungry for something more.”

Schertz initiated this three-movement approach several years ago in a weekly Bible study with pastors sponsored by the seminary’s Engaging Pastors program, and she has continued to practice it with additional groups. From these experiences she has come to several convictions. “The Bible is missional,” she said. “The Bible draws us to God.

“We come to the Word to reorient our feelings and passions to the feelings and pa

ssions of God. That seemed to me to be a missing piece in my experience of teaching the Bible in the church.”

In the final session, Jacobs concluded, “For [the Bible] to be come lively in your life, there has to be some intersection between our lives and the text … . It must draw us into actual relationship with God, into adoration and worship.”

However, both Schertz and Jacobs cautioned that this approach to reading the Bible is not simply a new method of doing Bible study. The contemplation of the text, “letting the text read us,” is not a tactic added on to the end of a study session, the emphasized. It involves bringing our real world and real neighborhoods to the text and then listening. “Where is the Spirit asking us to wait? to rest? Where is the Spirit asking us to take up something or take up someone?”

After the movement of bringing our current contexts to the text, the third movement—worship—is the path back to God. “The last act of reading confessionally restores us.” Schertz said. “Paradoxically, our greatest emptiness is also our greatest fullness.”

The 150 people present joined in communion during the worship movement each of the three mornings of Pastors Week. Assisting Schertz and Jacobs with the worship were Barbara Nelson Gingerich, managing editor of the Institute of Mennonite Studies, and James Nelson Gingerich, medical doctor from Goshen, Ind., serving as worship and song leaders.

In the afternoons, participants joined workshops that explored additional aspects of Bible reading and congregational life. For example, Jacobs led a workshop on reading the Bible with youth, and Jennifer Davis Sensenig, Harrisonburg, Va., led a session on re-reading the Bible with Jesus at the center. Leonard Dow, pastor of Oxford Circle Mennonite Church, Philadelphia, Pa., led a workshop on worship as the invitation to radical hospitality; Jim Loepp Thiessen shared his experience with the Gathering Church which intentionally engages its neighborhood; and Cyneatha Millsaps, Bonnie Neufeld and Chuck Neufeld led one on becoming an anti-racist church.

Pastors reported that they valued the approach to reading Scripture that allowed it to enter into their experiences in new ways. Also, the more intentional integration of the Bible study and worship was a strength. The week was both “richly nourishing” and “extremely practical,” according to many comments from participants.

Recordings of the first and third movements of the Bible study during Pastors Week are available on the AMBS iTunesU channel. For information, see www.ambs.edu.

Mary E. Klassen / February 2010