Monday, August 26, 2019

Welcoming Dave Dobbyn to Listening in Mission

Dave Dobbyn, Waiting for a voice, from his 2016 Harmony House album, made it into my Listening in Mission class.

Dave Dobbyn – Waiting for a voice from Sebastian Beyrer on Vimeo.

I was teaching a Listening in Mission (intern) cohort. There are 4 sessions over 2 months:

  • Mission as gift, calling and promise
  • Being present and listening in neighbourhood/context
  • Cultivating congregational spaces for conversation and shared practices of missional attentiveness
  • Discerning and understanding local narratives

The four online Listening in Mission sessions support an action-learning project in which folk gather a group and work with them in listening in their local communities. So the online experience provides support, encouragement and resources. We offer this online support in mission to ordinands training for ministry. We also offer it separately as life-learning for the wider church.

The sessions is online, because we want to work with participants in their context, not in the artificiality of a lecture space. The online sessions go for about 90 minutes. So it needs some sort of break, to briefly stretch legs. So at the 45 minute mark, I announced I was going to play “Waiting for a voice” by Dave Dobbyn twice. Folk were invited to listen once, and take a short stretch the second time. It was a nice way to break up a class. It engaged senses other than talking. The cycle of a song makes it easy for participants to know when to return.

And of course, the lyrics are fascinating. The theme of the class was Mission as gift, call and promise. Prior to class, folk had been invited to visit a local body of water and read John 21:1-19. This is consistent with the ethos of the learning, wanting to work with participants in their context, to read Scripture in their communities. In John 21:1-19, when Jesus appears by the Lake of Galilee. Jesus is Gift and offers gifts in breakfast cooked. Jesus is Call and calls Peter at the same lake where Peter was first called to follow. Jesus is Promise and promises a feed of fish if they will just put their nets on the other side.

Returning as class, with “Waiting for a voice” ringing in our ears, links were made from the song to the theme of the class.

  • Mission is Gift – “I saw a stranger on the opposite shore; cooking up a meal for me”
  • Mission is Call – ‘waiting for a still clear voice’
  • Mission is Promise – ‘and sure as I’m living, i dined with the one; his words were brighter than a billion suns; he sent me running i never get tired, back into the valley where the world had died’

I have no idea whether Dobbyn would make these connections. But the lyrics make so much sense of John 21. It was an excellent way to pause a class and a great seque back into class. Thanks Dave, for your input.

Posted by steve at 12:23 PM

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