4 minute read
Wanted: Imaginators
VIEWPOINT
by Ron Thomlinson with the Rev James Macfarlane
I AM an incorrigible drama queen, exaggerating everything that happens to me. However, for my moments of crisis and confusion I do have a solution: I create a mind map. I tape two A3 pieces of paper together – but only on one side – so that my fountain pen glides over the surface. For me, the physical contact of a pen on paper is itself part of the healing process. I am always amazed at the clarity this exercise brings.
In these days of Covid-19, seeing the effect it is having upon the Church, I wonder if the same principle of mindmapping might be applicable to worship communities.
While I was mulling this over, the word ‘imaginator’ kept popping up. Imaginators are essential to any creative process. I knew of one company director who regularly spent time with his colleagues just imagining. They literally put their feet up on the coffee table, relaxed and dreamt up their next move.
There is an Academy of Ideas in the UK, and an Institute for Ideas and Imagination at Columbia University. So why shouldn’t there be a Salvation Army department for ideas and imagination? A department in which, unhindered, people dream dreams, see visions and answer the question, ‘What now?’ Spiritual imagination or vision is not the sole prerogative of lonely leadership: God speaks to people of all ages and position.
The problem is: where in organised Christian structures do the imaginators find their voices? I remember a discussion at the training college about whether the Army always manages to insulate its prophets.
Where are the Salvationist imaginators today, Jim? How can and will the churches encourage, facilitate and listen to Spiritinspired imaginators?
‘Ron, yes, at every level the church needs imaginators, individuals with creative vision. This has always been part of the biblical tradition from prophetic geniuses through to the spiritual explosion encapsulated in the New Testament. All through Church history we see the same pattern of courageous innovators, and the Army is not without its own examples. Think of George Scott Railton. Having pioneered Army work in the USA, on his return journey he also held the first Army meeting in Canada – he’d missed a boat connection and decided to do something useful!
‘Closer to our own time and from a different tradition we could cite Holy Trinity Brompton. Their study courses at a local church level developed into the Alpha course, used extensively by many congregations as a useful tool of development and evangelism. This is a prime example of imaginator skills in action.
‘Let me add a word of caution though. Imaginator techniques drawn from management training are, nonetheless, morally and spiritually neutral. They can be used either positively or negatively. The brilliant and imaginative Sherlock Holmes has his opposite in Professor Moriarty, a prince of darkness if ever there were one. Moriarty is also an imaginator, but of the wrong kind. God’s foot soldiers – that’s most of us – need imaginators of the right kind who can show compassion, goodness and enduring faithfulness as well as cleverness.
‘When he was a middle-aged priest, Joseph Ratzinger wrote somewhat downheartedly in his 1977 book, Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life: “However did we arrive at that tedious and tedium-laden Christianity which we moderns observe and, indeed, know from our own experience?” His immediate imaginator response to this tedium was through his books – full of ideas, learning and challenge.
‘Almost 30 years later, more in footsoldier mode, he was made CEO of the largest Christian denomination on planet Earth: he was elected Pope Benedict XVI. The truth is that imaginators and foot soldiers need each other.
‘You mention the Covid-19 crisis as an example of an external event hammering the activities of congregations everywhere. True, such a crisis needs instant innovation. Panic is the first response to a crisis. But we also need to see the big picture. It is not easy to do that. To the battered nation of Judah, on the verge of historical extinction, one of the greatest of his people’s visionaries said this – as from the mouth of God himself: “Now I will tell you of new things to come… Only now am I making them happen… That is why you never heard of this at all, why no word of it ever came to your ears” (Isaiah 48:6–8 Good News Bible).
‘There is a divine imaginator who is the supreme factor in the creative spiritual life. That divine dialogue is essential if our own creative imagination is to work for the good.’
