FIVE PREMISES: Chapter Seventeen and My Wider Work

First Premise:

Christ Exceeds Our Attempts to Capture Him in Language and Formulations

This is about Jesus Christ. And the limits of our expression.

Truth beyond my ability to capture, measure, express, exhaust…

What I'm saying has implications.

Even creeds don't say enough.

Even theologians can't.

And anyone who tries — even if you do a wonderful job — will find

(because of the way words work)

that it goes wrong for other ways (too):

* some people just won't 'get' your words

in the way you meant them

(falling short because how we speak and understand

draws from experience and association etc.)

* some may, but then be so enthusiastic about them,

your words thereafter become THE THING they believe.

(also falling short because it can be so much easier to have it

summed up, so we can use the summary version in future,

rather than going back and receiving something fresh and real

for ourselves.)

And so

there will be people taking sides on the basis of what we said

and people dismissing it all

and then

people gradually coming to think the next step is either:

— searching for a better way to say it, or

— explaining why the way was already good, but misunderstood, or

— the whole thing sidelined as exhausting and unproductive.

Christ included.

Second premise:

Christ is Not Distant, Even Now

Just because things feel difficult to interpret or express (for example, in the world we're living in right now) that does not mean that He is distant.

The gospel of John shows Christ infused in our conscious encounter and experience of things like water, dust, bread, wine, suffering and so on. (Infused may be the wrong word. What's more, even an 'exhaustive literal list' wouldn't scratch the surface.)

On this basis, even though the contemporary world seems a world away from Jesus Christ, there's no distance — EVEN NOW.

EVEN NOW — with current news stories, and divisiveness, and religious schisms, and political rulings, and cognitive dissonance, and contingency upon contingency of short-term situations set up as a sticking plaster to help avoid the real questions.

Third premise:

Christlike Hospitality Respects Human Freedom

Christ (and the Church) offers encounter in a way that respects human freedom as well as encouragement. My work seeks to embody an aspect of that hospitality. It is not Church, but (potentially) it offers an expression of and opportunity for communion.

My work intends to offer hospitality, like architecture, for coming in with your own expression and questions, and not having to shout or silence people or endure cynical partisanship.

And in doing so, my work intends to offer an aspect of what I think Church is (but hasn't been for some).

Jesus Christ offers free choice. He provides space for decision-making, and for walking away.

Jesus Christ doesn't pin things down for commodification and outcomes.

He seeks encounter with us.

And so,

some people encountering my work might think it's not devotional enough to be Christian, even as I try to avoid creating easy reasons for people to avoid their own encounter, while

some people encountering my work might think it's too preachy to be truly hospitable, even as the architecture by nature is intended to offer Christlike challenge and implication for people on both sides of a divide.

Convictions can be stirring before we recognise what's happening. That can be uncomfortable, or comforting.

• If it feels comfortable or uncomfortable for the right reasons — that's discernment.

• If it feels comforting for the wrong reasons — then perhaps we've either been directed to words that aren't the Word, or forced into a hospitality that isn't Christlike.

Fourth Premise:

The Project Has Purposes Beyond Fellowship, Community or Encounter

My project is not primarily attempting to offer fellowship, community, or even encounter. If that happens, it's as likely to happen with a slogan on a van going by, or a random conversation with a stranger. It has other purposes that aren't easy to pin down without metaphors.

• The Projector Screen

  
  

  The project aims to act as a kind of projector screen for watching and noticing (in this very loud and fast and busy and systematised outside world) what does and doesn't make for comfortable/uncomfortable discernment of 'the right reasons'. What words may misdirect us from the Word, and what hospitality may implicitly become unChristlike?

  
  

• The Tuning Fork

  
  

  Someone could bring their own project or simply enthusiasm into the mix of this project, and experience the testing and discernment for themselves. Not excluded for not qualifying to enter, not shot down for making mistakes, not excluded for reasons that boiled down to words and hospitality and wrong conclusions. Discernment doesn't tell them if they were right or wrong, it hones the experience of discerning, and the individual's relationship with the whole. If they're listening, they'll hear something for themselves that no one else could tell them. (That doesn't stop them ask others within the space for dialogue or support, but those words in themselves require discernment — all of it helping them attune to something beyond the words.)

  
  

• The Mic Drop

  
  

  In contemporary use, the 'mic drop' moment is where something is left hanging to speak for itself. Something similar happens in this project. It's not that there's a council of representatives, or a judge. What happens, happens. Although Author's discretion comes into play as to what may or may not be permitted, to ensure consistency of the project's aims, this is not a final word on the one who brought the offering. It's within this emptiness that the mic drop happens; similar to the project's own Empty Theatre, and Peter Brook's notes on The Empty Space.

• The Placeholder

  
  

  Whatever happens within the project, everything designed and constructed is seen as contingent; it's not the Word of God, it's a potential viewing point and invitation to interact. The shape can change, and some elements may be added, or removed. In this way it stands for all the things we do, which are basically dust, except for where God does something lasting and transformational. The focus is not on the quality of the construction, but on the Word of God, and the contingent nature of whatever happens within is intentional; change can and must happen, and any participant could be the catalyst.

  
  

• The Spaceholder

  
  

  Some silences need guarding and gatekeeping. Some questions left open. Some ongoingness permitted rather than closed down. The Author intends to model a kind of spaceholding that enables the whole to work as designed rather than become distorted. The Author intends to cultivate space as well as encounter.

Fifth Premise:

Outcomes can be fruitful without being immediately discoverable, and may not be detectable in ways we expect.

The aspiration and expectation of this project draws on verses such as 'My Word will not return to me void (Isaiah 55:11),' which suggests that where the Word is present, our participation and discernment teach us something — and that's not nothing. The Author's ability or intention isn't any kind of guarantee, any more than anyone else's offering. However, it is offered in faith, and aims for the project to be a place where the Word of God is central, and effective beyond our understanding.

NB: these five are working premises and subject to further editing…