Rather than cracking open the Good Book alone, why not encounter Scripture in community alongside others seeking to know what\u2019s true about the text?<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the method \uc548\ub098 \uce74\ud130 \ud50c\ub85c\ub80c\uc2a4 \ubc15\uc0ac<\/a> uses with her preaching students at \uceec\ub7fc\ube44\uc544 \uc2e0\ud559\uad50<\/a> in Decatur, Georgia, and it\u2019s one she also recommends for more seasoned preachers as well as people in the pews who want to delve deeply, around a table or via Zoom, into God\u2019s Word.<\/p>\n Florence, a theater student while an undergraduate at Yale University<\/a>, has students actually rehearse Bible stories in small groups before preaching on the text the following week. In 2018 Florence discussed the technique in her book \u201cRehearsing Scripture: Discovering God\u2019s Word in Community.\u201d<\/p>\n On Wednesday, Florence was the guest of the Rev. Dr. Lee Hinson-Hasty of the \uc7a5\ub85c\uad50 \uc7ac\ub2e8<\/a>, host of the 30-minute \u201cLeading Theologically\u201d broadcast available on YouTube \uc5ec\uae30<\/a> and on Facebook \uc5ec\uae30<\/a>.<\/p>\n Once, Florence recalled, she asked students to rehearse Mark\u2019s account<\/a> of the rich man who kneels before Jesus and asks him, \u201cGood Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?\u201d Florence asked the preaching students to play the roles of Jesus and the disciples packing their things to dash off to the next town as this wealthy man keeps interrupting them. There\u2019s a moment in the text where Jesus looks at the man and loves him before telling the man he lacks one thing: selling all he has and giving the proceeds to the poor.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think we would have seen that if we hadn\u2019t packed our bags and had the person follow the students trying to have this conversation,\u201d Florence said. \u201cIt takes a lot of guts to interrupt somebody in that moment.\u201d<\/p>\n The \u201csneaky, subtle subtext\u201d of the book is bringing people together to talk and learn from one another, Florence told Hinson-Hasty. When the pandemic subsides, \u201cI hope there will be an openness to that need\u201d because \u201cwe will be hearing very different things in Scripture\u201d because \u201cour context has changed\u201d after years of living with the coronavirus.<\/p>\n \u201cI never thought of myself as an online teacher,\u201d Florence told Hinson-Hasty. \u201cThere are a lot of things about teaching in this mode that I love,\u201d despite being a self-pronounced \u201cdigital immigrant.\u201d One eye-opener has been using Zoom to get to know students in their home environment.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are in Adaptive Change 3.0 or 4.0 by now,\u201d Hinson-Hasty quipped.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s nice to think I am being adaptive rather than reactive,\u201d Florence replied. \u201cI\u2019ve always been in awe of students, but now \u2014 oh my gosh! Some of them can\u2019t even start studying until midnight, or they\u2019re in a small space with others.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis was not something I anticipated for myself,\u201d Florence said of getting to know students in this different way. \u201cIt has been an amazing thing to learn \u2026 Your students teach you how to teach.\u201d<\/p>\n What she\u2019s learned is to teach from what Florence calls a \u201csuspended workshop space\u201d where \u201cwe\u2019re not under pressure to decide what the text means. But we are trying to listen to what it says.\u201d The wisdom of those who taught her theater studies decades ago \u201cwas that some texts need to be rehearsed. You\u2019ve got to get out there and try all sorts of things in a scene to find out what seems truthful.\u201d<\/p>\n Members of church choirs are very familiar with rehearsing, \u201cbut we don\u2019t necessarily associate it with Scripture,\u201d Florence said. \u201cYou don\u2019t have to rush to what\u2019s right. But think about what\u2019s true.\u201d<\/p>\n For many years, the first text students have worked with at Columbia Seminary is Mark 5:25-34<\/a>, the woman Jesus heals after she\u2019s been suffering from 12 years of bleeding. Then they wrestle with the very next story<\/a>, Jesus raising the synagogue leader\u2019s daughter from the dead. \u201cYou\u2019d think I would have heard every possible question,\u201d Florence said, \u201cand still someone will notice a detail I\u2019ve never seen or thought to ask. You realize how impoverished you are as a reader if you do it by yourself and do it only once.\u201d<\/p>\n She\u2019s constantly telling students that the text \u201cgives and gives and gives. It just gives, in amazing ways that are always unexpected. When the group is together and the Spirit is moving, the text gives birth to us again. I think it\u2019s there to be our daily bread.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n She tries to teach students to \u201ccome to Scripture with freedom but also with precision.\u201d In addition: \u201cYou don\u2019t need to defer to people you think might do it better than you.\u201d<\/p>\n By hearing what people studying Scripture together \u2014 including the questions they ask \u2014 \u201cthat\u2019s what makes you want to take off your shoes\u201d because it\u2019s holy ground, Florence said. \u201cIt renews my faith.\u201d<\/p>\n Some time ago she joined with a women\u2019s lectionary group in South Carolina to study Scripture via Zoom. She\u2019s also used intergenerational groups in the same pursuit.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat I love is the way you gain reverence for the text and for one another,\u201d Florence said. \u201cYou come into a room thinking you will never agree with someone and you find you really respect what they\u2019re saying, even if you disagree with them theologically. It has helped me get over some of those barriers.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" And not just to raise a child. Studying Scripture works best in community, says Columbia Seminary preaching professor<\/p>","protected":false},"author":78,"featured_media":12737,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[117],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/presbyterianfoundation.louderstaging.com\/ko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/presbyterianfoundation.louderstaging.com\/ko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/presbyterianfoundation.louderstaging.com\/ko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/presbyterianfoundation.louderstaging.com\/ko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/78"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/presbyterianfoundation.louderstaging.com\/ko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12735"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/presbyterianfoundation.louderstaging.com\/ko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12735\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44980,"href":"https:\/\/presbyterianfoundation.louderstaging.com\/ko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12735\/revisions\/44980"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/presbyterianfoundation.louderstaging.com\/ko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/presbyterianfoundation.louderstaging.com\/ko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/presbyterianfoundation.louderstaging.com\/ko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/presbyterianfoundation.louderstaging.com\/ko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}