Pub Theology as an opportunity to explore

January 28, 2020 / Brenda Kronemeijer-Heyink / Leave a comment

At Campus Edge we’ve been hosting Pub Theology for several years now. It’s an opportunity for people to talk about how faith and spirituality interact with current events and topics of interest (e.g., sexuality, racism, politics, technology, etc.). Pub theology is a place to learn how to listen to each other and make space for people who see the world differently from me. Its intent is not to convince people of the Christian position but instead to facilitate people learning from each other, being both encouraged and challenged that there is more than one way that Christians (and others) have approached difficult topics.

Pub theology has also been a place where people who are exploring Christianity can join us, and we’ve been delighted by how God has brought different people from different backgrounds to our conversations. People are free both to lament negative encounters with Christians and to ask pointed questions about what believing in God looks like. It is meant also to be a safe place to have one’s own views about Christianity and the Bible be refined.

Bryan Berghoef, who originally started pub theology, wrote an article about how pub theology might seem like a waste of time. After all, what real good does sitting in pub talking to other people really do? But Berghoef suggests that:

“One might be tempted to ignore or skip such a practice [of pub theology] in favor of ‘doing more’. But when I skip it, I miss out. I miss out on learning from people with experiences and perspectives that are vastly different from my own. I miss out on constructive dialogue on issues we all face together. When I am tempted to abandon the practice, I remember that for some folks, this is a first step toward re-engaging their spiritual side, or their first chance to speak honestly about their doubts, and is perhaps their only opportunity for deep, constructive dialogue and reflective thinking. . .
So is pub theology just talk? Yes. And no. It is deep relationships. It is barriers coming down. It is stereotypes being proven wrong. It is new friendships occurring. It is lines being crossed. It is deep thinking about the issues we all face as humanity, being discussed from varying perspectives. It is a movement to deeper understanding, where new possibilities are opened up.”
Bryan Berghoef, “Pub Theology is a Waste of Time.” (January 2014)

Tips for having difficult conversations

July 12, 2019 / Brenda Kronemeijer-Heyink / Leave a comment

As a follow-up from our winter study on difficult conversations, the Network from the Christian Reformed Church provides a list of helpful resources for engaging in difficult conversations. They highlight Richard Mouw’s book, Uncommon Decency, as well as the Colossian Forum, and a number of different blog posts and websites. For those truly interested in engaging in difficult conversations, the Network post is a great resource.

Unexpected Encouragement

June 27, 2019 / Brenda Kronemeijer-Heyink / Leave a comment

While we always hope that people are encouraged and challenged by the questions we provide at pub theology, it’s not always clear how the questions will be received. Nor is it always clear how the Spirit is present in the direction that our answers go. Yet, sometimes it’s fairly obvious that God is at work.

Earlier this spring, we started pub theology with a simple question: what do people notice about you? People reflected a bit: for many, it had to do with their physical appearance, for others, it was a specific emotion. But it felt like a hard question to answer because many of us weren’t sure what people noticed or even whether we liked what people seemed to notice. Spontaneously, one person started sharing what they noticed about another, and soon everyone heard about the good we saw in each other: one person’s courage and strength, another’s gracious presence, another person’s joy and enthusiasm. The question thus prompted a brief time of encouragement where we could recognize the unique gifts that each of us brings to our relationships and how we appreciate each other’s presence.

Leaving Church?

February 10, 2019February 5, 2019 / Brenda Kronemeijer-Heyink / Leave a comment

The last month has seen a number of recent articles on people leaving church. The Colossian Forum published an article about losing faith in church, a Christianity Today article notes that many young people stop attending church when they go off to college, and Christian Courier is publishing a series on why your church is losing numbers.

When talking about people leaving church (and faith), there is always the question of why. As Rob Barrett points out, the why is not always as obvious as we might think:

Christian doubt doesn’t always stem from intellectual puzzles or encounters with evil. Those sorts of difficulties are real and serious, but I focus here on a different, and perhaps more pressing, reason for doubt: disappointment with lived examples of the faith. . . . There was no compelling vision for Christian living. These representatives of the next generation were looking for a pattern to step into, and what they saw as available to them, both individually and corporately, was unconvincing.

As Barrett further notes:

Research by the Barna Group has revealed six themes young people cite in their explanations for their disconnection from the church. They characterize the church as overprotective, shallow, invalidly exclusive, anti-science, simplistic and judgmental about sex, and intolerant of doubt [David Kinnaman, You Lost Me: Why Young Christians Are Leaving Church . . . and Rethinking Faith (Baker Books, 2011), 91-93]. One way of drawing this together is that they find Christians unwilling to engage the complexities of the world as it really is.

Barrett’s words of advice about how to respond echoes how we try to talk about and live out faith at Campus Edge: an honest, transparent – even vulnerable – faith that includes our uncertainties and mistakes. As Barrett puts it,

We too often think that faith is bolstered by hiding the difficulties Christians face. Quite the opposite. Young people can sniff out hypocrisy from a mile away. The world is filled with people offering quick fixes and easy answers. Christian communities have the possibility of offering a richer vision of human flourishing, one that rings truer. When we confess our lack of easy answers and vulnerably invite others into our difficult places of struggle, the difference the gospel makes becomes apparent.

If you’d like to join others in discussing further the reasons behind why people are leaving church, including looking closer at the Christianity Today article mentioned above, come visit our Pub Theology on February 12.

Pub Theology: Analyzing statements on sexuality

January 23, 2019February 28, 2019 / Brenda Kronemeijer-Heyink / 1 Comment

In light of the recent uproar in the Netherlands about the Nashville statement, we spent the last two pub theologies looking at the Nashville Statement, including comparing it to the Denver Statement.

After looking at the Denver and Nashville statement, we had the sense that the Nashville statement discouraged dialogue. Numerous Christians in the Netherlands agreed with that, as can be seen by the following statement by Gert Jan Segers, leader of a Christian Socialist party that would be considered to be amicable to fairly traditional understandings of marriage and how to read the Bible:

I didn’t sign the Nashville Statement because I was worried that the conversation about belief and homosexuality would not be helped by it. The conversation about this is important, touches people deeply and must therefore – no matter what you believe – be held in a respectful and open manner. . . Jesus primary message to the world is not a list of dos and don’ts but instead an invitation that makes it clear that everyone is welcome by/to Him.
translated by Brenda; original Dutch post can be found on his Facebook page

The Nashville Statement did, however, do a good job of describing how sexuality has boundaries (even if some of us disagreed with those boundaries). The Denver statement, however, didn’t seem to give (m)any boundaries. Furthermore the Nashville statement seemed to be overly negative about sexuality and society; however, the Denver statement was overly positive, neglecting to critique the direction of sexuality in society today (e.g., pornography). While we disagreed with how much we appreciated (or disliked each statement), we did mostly agree that we’d like to see something that was a bit more nuanced (and somewhere in the middle of both statements). Perhaps we’ll have to return to the conversation sometime and look at the Catechism of Sexuality produced in connection with the Reformed Church of America.