Congregations in Denmark are often very complex. Some are professional religious people. Others are private religious. Some have a lot of practice in talking about faith. Others have very little. When doing either consulting or research I therefor almost always begin with an act of creation, with the main focus to create a common language. In order for this creation to take place, it is my experience, that I need to start in the known. Not only in daily life, but also within the personal “I”.
In practice it means that the very first task I give myself is to give a mandate to everybody participating – lay as well as ordained – by asking them to talk about something which nobody can challenge or contradict. As a way of offering an easy access to this stage of creation common language, I offer a physical element. Very often a printed picture. Nobody is committed to use the given pictures. They are there as a possibility. Having them in print – or having other psychical objects – puts the focus on the item instead on the face of the speaker. This creates a tiny safe-space for the person who is talking.
An example:
I have a stake of postcards, with three different motives. One is of the Danish flag, one is of a non-specific street from downtown Copenhagen and one is of a unique church-tower, which is a tourist attraction. I now ask: what kind of vacation-planner are you? The one, who only have a sort of direction (pointing toward the flag motive), the one, who has a bit more planned. Like a designated city to visit and perhaps accommodation in order (pointing toward the street motive, or the one, who has every detail planned and booked before leaving home (pointing towards the church tower motive)?
To me it is important to get everyone speaking at this stage. In my mind it is an invocation of the priesthood of all believers. I therefor follow the order in which people sit. This makes it evident who has the right to talk, taking away the discomfort of thinking: “is it my turn now?” or having two talking at the same time, with the following need to negotiate who gets to talk and who gets to wait.
However, the language needs to develop into a church and faith-oriented language. I therefor make another round asking: which type are you, when it comes to planning of church activities? Are you the type, who feels that a broad idea is enough and the Spirit and the joining people will provide the rest (the flag), the one who prefers to have the room, the food and other basics in order, leaving some to whoever joins in (the street) or are you the one, who prefers if every single detail is planned and in order, in order to provide a smooth-running activity for the participants (the tower)?
By giving the participants the right to talk about the one thing that no one can claim to know better – themselves – they are at the same time providing words into the common pool of words – the common language of the day. This becomes evident throughout the rest of the program, when the participants return to or refers to this stage. This can be by reference: As xx said. Or by actually grabbing the picture or item either to add on to what was said, or – rarely but always very interesting – to create a third round. Perhaps by offering a thought: “what if we decided to / look at it as / tried to…”
In this tool, there are elements from both games and playing, where games are understood as activities for which we decide on the rules before we start, and playing as an activity in which, we create the rules as we go along. For some people the shift forth and back between games and plays is very uncomfortable or confusing. When I detected such a discomforted among the participants, I take the lead as “gamemaster” and call out loud that from hereof we proceed either as game or as play. This is to re-create a safe space and to put focus on content instead of structure.
Does it work? Yes, it does. Two points to remember is:
1) make sure that the theme of this part align with the theme of the rest of the program, in order to be able to use the created language and
2) practice is not needed.
However, the less practice, the clearer the instructions need to be. And the more practice, the more obvious it becomes to everybody that this is not just a warm-up excises but a way of churching together.