Let’s Learn

A huge thank you to everyone who gave their time to tell their stories during the ‘Let’s Chat’ stage of the Appreciating Theology research study. We had over 30 people sharing their amazing stories about faith and work. The stories were a delight to hear and full of rich information for the study. The stories were recorded and have been anonymised and transcribed into documents. A number of these are ready for use in the next stage of the project called ‘Let’s Learn’ and the remaining transcribing will be completed by the end of October 2022.

Where are we now?

This research study has four stages and we have now entered stage 2 of the study called ‘Let’s Learn’

The diagram below has been previously shared in the ‘What is Appreciating Theology?’ section of the Blog. This is a diagrammatical representation of the research model I have developed called ‘Appreciating Theology’. This stage involves the development of a Learning Hub to explore the contents of the anonymised transcripts. 

The Learning Hub was established in August 2022 and we have met twice at the time of writing. There are 9 people in the Learning Hub recruited from the congregation of Kingdom Culture Church who will co-work with me for the next 12-18 months. This was an amazing response and there are a number of people not involved in the Learning Hub directly but who regularly enquire about our progress. 

The Let’s Learn stage is really interesting, it is where we get to look closely at the Let’s Chat discussions in an anonymised format and pull out some key findings and insightful comments from those who took part. The richness, wisdom and insight found within people’s stories never cease to amaze me. Christian believers are theological without even realising it as they articulate how they walk with God every day of their lives, how they apply the word of God and Christian principles and values in every area of their lives. 

As I listened to the recordings of the stories I was reminded of this bible verse:

Colossians 3:23-24 (New Living Translation)

²³ Work willingly at whatever you do, as though you were working for the Lord rather than for people. ²⁴ Remember that the Lord will give you an inheritance as your reward, and that the Master you are serving is Christ. 

Many people told story after story of how they were beginning to recognise they were serving God in their everyday lives and particularly in the area of work. Serving not their earthly boss but they were responding to a higher Master, Jesus Christ.

From this information, we are looking to identify key themes but also to create some visionary statements about our faith and work that are aspirational but also practical. The actions that support achieving these visionary statements will be developed in the Let’s Do stage of the study.

We will also be including a theological reflection model called the ‘Four Voices of Theology’ (Cameron, et al., 2010) which is explained in the relevant section of this Blog. 

This type of research is in my view the best research as we have no idea where the journey will take us or what the journey will produce. I imagine it as going on an expedition with friends, the exact destination is unknown, we must see where the information takes us and change direction as and when required. As a researcher, it is exciting but also a little risky to launch out into the unknown. You have to trust the process, the information and the insight of the Holy Spirit. Of one thing I am quite convinced, our church will never be the same again having engaged in a research study such as this. People are thinking and talking about their calling, what their ‘frontline’ is, where God moving in their work and how can they engage with God’s plans on a daily basis. This is what whole life discipleship looks like. 

References

Cameron, H., Bhatti, D., Duce, C., Sweeney, J. and Watkins, C. (2010) Talking about God in practice. London: SCM Press.