Encountering the Other: Curation and Pastoral Identity
by Eric Worringer
Eric Worringer, M.Div., is the vicar at Saint Paul Evangelical Lutheran Church in Arlington, Massachusetts, and is a candidate for the master of theology (M.Th.) degree in pastoral theology from Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota. Most recently, he served as an on-call chaplain at Hennepin County Medical Center following his time as a chaplain resident at Mercy St. Vincent’s Medical Center in Toledo, Ohio. He lives in Lawrence, Massachusetts, with his wife, Emma, who is a family physician.
For the last three years, having spent significant time as both an interfaith chaplain in inner-city hospitals and as a pastoral leader, the question of coming into contact with those other than myself, the Other, has been at the center of my forming pastoral identity. This work emerged as a way to reflect academically on the practical realities that I was encountering, as well as my emerging sense of a need to look outside of traditional locales by looking particularly towards the curator in contemporary arts for the purpose of forming a pastoral identity in the environment of twenty-first century religiosity and leadership. While my primary focus here is on an identity of Christian (and specifically Lutheran) pastoral leadership, it is my conviction that the idea of a curator and the depth of meaning it holds is translatable to other religious contexts.
At the core of religious faith is an encounter with the Other. And at the core of pastoral identity is an intentional curation of spaces and relationships of encounter, encounters with the Other, both with God and with neighbor. The first half of this article will provide some theoretical grounding for the notion of encounter with the Other through Emmanuel Levinas and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The second half will focus on the unique practice of leadership in the arts, particularly curation, and its connection to the curation of encounter in pastoral ministry.
The Other in Encounter and Space
For nearly three hundred years, since the inception of what we now call modernity, pastoral ministry and Christian theology, particularly in the West, has been largely preoccupied by a “fetish of the individual.”1 In contrast to this came a new articulation of being, away from self and towards the Other. Critically, from a religious perspective, came articulation of Otherness from Emmanuel Levinas and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. For Levinas, his concern for the Other arose because of his belief that theology and philosophy in the West had been dominated by the idea of the self, something he described in various places as “totalitarian ontology.”2 The inclination of Western thinking has been, as Levinas argues, to make knowledge and comprehension the center of what it means to exist.
This looks like the tendency, in various places of pastoral leadership, to begin encounter with the “I,” and to use power to turn the Other into an object whom I must comprehend. The object’s feelings, thoughts, and background must be conceptualized on my own terms, instead of acknowledging and approaching him as Other, and recognizing his very being and existence. Levinas writes that,
Eric Worringer, M.Div., is the vicar at Saint Paul Evangelical Lutheran Church in Arlington, Massachusetts, and is a candidate for the master of theology (M.Th.) degree in pastoral theology from Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota. Most recently, he served as an on-call chaplain at Hennepin County Medical Center following his time as a chaplain resident at Mercy St. Vincent’s Medical Center in Toledo, Ohio. He lives in Lawrence, Massachusetts, with his wife, Emma, who is a family physician.
For the last three years, having spent significant time as both an interfaith chaplain in inner-city hospitals and as a pastoral leader, the question of coming into contact with those other than myself, the Other, has been at the center of my forming pastoral identity. This work emerged as a way to reflect academically on the practical realities that I was encountering, as well as my emerging sense of a need to look outside of traditional locales by looking particularly towards the curator in contemporary arts for the purpose of forming a pastoral identity in the environment of twenty-first century religiosity and leadership. While my primary focus here is on an identity of Christian (and specifically Lutheran) pastoral leadership, it is my conviction that the idea of a curator and the depth of meaning it holds is translatable to other religious contexts.
At the core of religious faith is an encounter with the Other. And at the core of pastoral identity is an intentional curation of spaces and relationships of encounter, encounters with the Other, both with God and with neighbor. The first half of this article will provide some theoretical grounding for the notion of encounter with the Other through Emmanuel Levinas and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The second half will focus on the unique practice of leadership in the arts, particularly curation, and its connection to the curation of encounter in pastoral ministry.
The Other in Encounter and Space
For nearly three hundred years, since the inception of what we now call modernity, pastoral ministry and Christian theology, particularly in the West, has been largely preoccupied by a “fetish of the individual.”1 In contrast to this came a new articulation of being, away from self and towards the Other. Critically, from a religious perspective, came articulation of Otherness from Emmanuel Levinas and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. For Levinas, his concern for the Other arose because of his belief that theology and philosophy in the West had been dominated by the idea of the self, something he described in various places as “totalitarian ontology.”2 The inclination of Western thinking has been, as Levinas argues, to make knowledge and comprehension the center of what it means to exist.
This looks like the tendency, in various places of pastoral leadership, to begin encounter with the “I,” and to use power to turn the Other into an object whom I must comprehend. The object’s feelings, thoughts, and background must be conceptualized on my own terms, instead of acknowledging and approaching him as Other, and recognizing his very being and existence. Levinas writes that,
A human being is the sole being which I am unable to encounter without expressing this encounter to him. It is precisely in this that the encounter distinguishes itself from knowledge. In every attitude in regard to the human there is a greeting—if only in the refusal of greeting. Here perception is not directed towards a horizon—the field of my freedom, power, and property—in order to grasp the individual upon a familiar foundation.3
And while this sameness is clearly articulated in the peculiar American encounter of God, where God meets our desires, our needs, and becomes a being who is quickly anthropomorphized, for Levinas, religion is simply the encounter of the Other, whether sacred or human. It is in the encounter of the human who is not like you, when we experience the “epiphany of the Other . . . independent of this meaning received from the world. The Other comes to us not only out of the context but also without mediation; he signifies by himself.”4 It is the ethical commitment to being in relationship with other humans which Levinas argues is where justice and community is found, in “the otherness of the Other, (which) is concretized in the face of another human.”5
The implications of Levinas’ critique on the Western project of “totalitarian ontology” for the church could not be clearer. For a great deal of time now, the church has focused on getting people to assimilate, to believe to know what people need, and to speak authoritatively for God, conceptualizing the Other into domesticity and exclusion. This has been true as liberal Protestants and Catholics have removed any need to encounter a God who is different, unique, and revealed through Jesus in their mission and evangelism; and as conservative Protestants and Catholics have removed any need to encounter the human who disagrees with you, challenges your foundational beliefs, or has a criminal record. We have focused on knowledge and interior experience, largely to exclusion of encounter and invocation.
Forty years before Levinas, Dietrich Bonhoeffer made a similar, and more explicit, critique of the church. For Bonhoeffer, the church had failed by asking the wrong question in relation to others, particularly in encounter with Jesus, asking “How? Tell me how you are, tell me how you think, and I will tell you who you are.”6 For Bonhoeffer, and sounding much like Levinas, the question of “how?” is a question of control and power. “Fettered in it’s own authority (the heart) still goes on asking the question, ‘How?’ The human heart is cor curvum in se, as Luther says. . . the language of the fallen Adam, which is, ‘How are you?’”7 On the other hand, “The question, ‘Who?’ is simply the religious question. It is the question about the other person and his claim, about the other being, on the other authority. . . . This means that man cannot himself answer the question, ‘Who?’ Existence cannot emerge out of itself, it remains related to itself and only mirrors itself in itself.”8 For Bonhoeffer, in my encounter with my brother or my sister, the question is not, “How can I help you?,” “How can I make it better?,” “How can I fix this?,” but “Who are you?” “Who is your brother?” “Who is your God?”
Bonhoeffer’s theological ideas are centered on the encounter with the Other, in the revelation and encounter of God through Jesus. This should be no surprise, since Bonhoeffer is inheriting a Lutheran tradition in which Martin Luther’s transformation is in the encounter with God in the alterity of a lightning bolt. Most crucially, it is Jesus who becomes the point of encounter for God and humankind, and between neighbors, because Jesus is the new “Person,” the new Other, who comes not as a non-personal power, but as encounter for me.9 For Bonhoeffer, it is the church where these encounters take place, and it is the leaders who partner with God in creating these spaces.
If Bonhoeffer and Levinas are both pointing in the right direction, that there is a fundamental necessity to move some of our religious energy away from individual knowledge and inner experience and towards places of encounters with the Other, then where might we look for examples of this kind of leadership? If Bonhoeffer is right, that “only in fellowship with God in which Christ through the Holy Spirit enters human life does the church become involved with humanity,” and that “[o]nly then does the new human fellowship take concrete shape in analogy to man’s likeness in God,” then we must begin to craft and curate ourselves in this way.10 As Bonhoeffer and Levinas show, it is a mistake for the church to buy into the Western project of sameness. Instead, it must seek to orient itself to encounter and creating spaces for those encounters.
Curation of Encounter and Space
It was three years ago when I realized that pastors had been looking in the wrong places. My wife, Emma, and I were on our honeymoon in Spain, and had recently traveled north from Malaga to stay in Madrid for a week. One of the first places we visited, the Reina Sofia, easily among the world’s greatest modern art museum, houses galleries of sculpture, video, photography, and paintings. As well, it is known for its curation of exhibitions that are incredibly provocative and visually stunning. Having walked through the main galleries, Emma and I were on our way out, when we noticed that an enclosed space on the bottom floor had been turned into a massive, curated exhibit called de Principio Potosí. Seeing religious artwork teamed with what appeared to be industrial artifacts and a walking path through the exhibit piqued my interest. Later in the week, we returned to experience the exhibit in full. In the words of the curators:
The implications of Levinas’ critique on the Western project of “totalitarian ontology” for the church could not be clearer. For a great deal of time now, the church has focused on getting people to assimilate, to believe to know what people need, and to speak authoritatively for God, conceptualizing the Other into domesticity and exclusion. This has been true as liberal Protestants and Catholics have removed any need to encounter a God who is different, unique, and revealed through Jesus in their mission and evangelism; and as conservative Protestants and Catholics have removed any need to encounter the human who disagrees with you, challenges your foundational beliefs, or has a criminal record. We have focused on knowledge and interior experience, largely to exclusion of encounter and invocation.
Forty years before Levinas, Dietrich Bonhoeffer made a similar, and more explicit, critique of the church. For Bonhoeffer, the church had failed by asking the wrong question in relation to others, particularly in encounter with Jesus, asking “How? Tell me how you are, tell me how you think, and I will tell you who you are.”6 For Bonhoeffer, and sounding much like Levinas, the question of “how?” is a question of control and power. “Fettered in it’s own authority (the heart) still goes on asking the question, ‘How?’ The human heart is cor curvum in se, as Luther says. . . the language of the fallen Adam, which is, ‘How are you?’”7 On the other hand, “The question, ‘Who?’ is simply the religious question. It is the question about the other person and his claim, about the other being, on the other authority. . . . This means that man cannot himself answer the question, ‘Who?’ Existence cannot emerge out of itself, it remains related to itself and only mirrors itself in itself.”8 For Bonhoeffer, in my encounter with my brother or my sister, the question is not, “How can I help you?,” “How can I make it better?,” “How can I fix this?,” but “Who are you?” “Who is your brother?” “Who is your God?”
Bonhoeffer’s theological ideas are centered on the encounter with the Other, in the revelation and encounter of God through Jesus. This should be no surprise, since Bonhoeffer is inheriting a Lutheran tradition in which Martin Luther’s transformation is in the encounter with God in the alterity of a lightning bolt. Most crucially, it is Jesus who becomes the point of encounter for God and humankind, and between neighbors, because Jesus is the new “Person,” the new Other, who comes not as a non-personal power, but as encounter for me.9 For Bonhoeffer, it is the church where these encounters take place, and it is the leaders who partner with God in creating these spaces.
If Bonhoeffer and Levinas are both pointing in the right direction, that there is a fundamental necessity to move some of our religious energy away from individual knowledge and inner experience and towards places of encounters with the Other, then where might we look for examples of this kind of leadership? If Bonhoeffer is right, that “only in fellowship with God in which Christ through the Holy Spirit enters human life does the church become involved with humanity,” and that “[o]nly then does the new human fellowship take concrete shape in analogy to man’s likeness in God,” then we must begin to craft and curate ourselves in this way.10 As Bonhoeffer and Levinas show, it is a mistake for the church to buy into the Western project of sameness. Instead, it must seek to orient itself to encounter and creating spaces for those encounters.
Curation of Encounter and Space
It was three years ago when I realized that pastors had been looking in the wrong places. My wife, Emma, and I were on our honeymoon in Spain, and had recently traveled north from Malaga to stay in Madrid for a week. One of the first places we visited, the Reina Sofia, easily among the world’s greatest modern art museum, houses galleries of sculpture, video, photography, and paintings. As well, it is known for its curation of exhibitions that are incredibly provocative and visually stunning. Having walked through the main galleries, Emma and I were on our way out, when we noticed that an enclosed space on the bottom floor had been turned into a massive, curated exhibit called de Principio Potosí. Seeing religious artwork teamed with what appeared to be industrial artifacts and a walking path through the exhibit piqued my interest. Later in the week, we returned to experience the exhibit in full. In the words of the curators:
The ‘Andean Baroque’ works presented in The Potosí-Principle prove that cultural hegemony is a reflection not of cultural greatness, but of violence. The exhibition uses this form of painting to investigate structural similarities between the colonialism that brought forth Modernism and the current global regime of Neoliberalism. Contemporary artists respond to the baroque images with their own works. In this way, they create a link to issues still current today, such as the role of women in colonial society or the effects of the transnational soybean monoculture on modern-day South America.11
What became interesting to me about seeing the exhibit was that, in the aftermath of the experience, I felt like I had encountered the oppressed workers portrayed in the exhibit, the oppressor within myself, and God. This was done without coercion, but with only a vague sense of direction (a map mainly), and an ability to experience the exhibit with others. In some real way, my experience with the exhibit was curated in such a way that I was able to experience and process an encounter with the Other. To me, it became clear that the call of the pastor, in having to respond to the necessity of encounter, is called not to new models, or new influence, but to the kind of curation that contemporary art curators are engaging in today. As Andy Root writes:
Ministry is the curating of these places, these in-between spaces, through facilitation of locales that allow people to share in each other’s needs, to see each other as persons. No pastor has the power to create these places. They are spiritual; they are outgrowths of the work of the Holy Spirit manifest in the mystery of persons seeing each other face to face, of wiring their brains together by encountering each other. We cannot force these places, but we can curate them.12
The problem then is that this requires a new understanding of pastoral leadership, one that is focused on weakness and facilitation as opposed to executive style leadership or a even the current team-leader model. Churches need to move away from looking at places like business (or massive museums), and instead towards contemporary curatorial theory as practiced at places of innovation like The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Cleveland.
We can already see the importance of this new understanding when considering the significance that encounter and space have taken in other art disciplines, disciplines that have a spiritual and transcendent dimension to them. One of the first places that we can see this new rule emerging is in orchestral music. In orchestral music, we have multiple dimensions of encounter and space. First, a composer produces a work of music, which is then given to an orchestra and its conductor to perform. Second, the orchestral conductor, in encounter with the music, begins to discern how the piece will sound and work with the actual orchestra, while the musicians begin to learn their parts in isolation from other instruments. The orchestra then encounters both the conductor and the other families of musicians (first and second violins, cellos, oboes, percussion, etc.), and only in encounter with the conductor, the music, and each other, in the space of an orchestra hall or rehearsal space, does the music begin to come to life.
This same idea of encounter and space has come to life in the world of literature, in the field of reader-response criticism. In reader-response criticism, the text is not a stable thing to be “comprehended,” but it is a “magical object that allows the interiority of the mind to play host to the interiority of an(other).”13 In reader-response, the reader and the text then come into encounter, which leads to a deeply spiritual encounter of the author and of the meaning of the text. Stanley Fish, one of the foremost proponents of reader-response criticism (and communities of response), writes about the encounter with text: “It is no longer an object, a thing-in-itself, but an event, something that happens to, and with, the participation of the reader. And in this event, this happening . . . that is, I would argue, the meaning of the sentence.”14
Finally, we begin to see this in contemporary art curation, where the curator functions almost in a pastoral role, facilitating encounter with works of art and with fellow spectators, while including their own insights as they create the space of encounter. Terry Smith, a modern curator, writes:
We can already see the importance of this new understanding when considering the significance that encounter and space have taken in other art disciplines, disciplines that have a spiritual and transcendent dimension to them. One of the first places that we can see this new rule emerging is in orchestral music. In orchestral music, we have multiple dimensions of encounter and space. First, a composer produces a work of music, which is then given to an orchestra and its conductor to perform. Second, the orchestral conductor, in encounter with the music, begins to discern how the piece will sound and work with the actual orchestra, while the musicians begin to learn their parts in isolation from other instruments. The orchestra then encounters both the conductor and the other families of musicians (first and second violins, cellos, oboes, percussion, etc.), and only in encounter with the conductor, the music, and each other, in the space of an orchestra hall or rehearsal space, does the music begin to come to life.
This same idea of encounter and space has come to life in the world of literature, in the field of reader-response criticism. In reader-response criticism, the text is not a stable thing to be “comprehended,” but it is a “magical object that allows the interiority of the mind to play host to the interiority of an(other).”13 In reader-response, the reader and the text then come into encounter, which leads to a deeply spiritual encounter of the author and of the meaning of the text. Stanley Fish, one of the foremost proponents of reader-response criticism (and communities of response), writes about the encounter with text: “It is no longer an object, a thing-in-itself, but an event, something that happens to, and with, the participation of the reader. And in this event, this happening . . . that is, I would argue, the meaning of the sentence.”14
Finally, we begin to see this in contemporary art curation, where the curator functions almost in a pastoral role, facilitating encounter with works of art and with fellow spectators, while including their own insights as they create the space of encounter. Terry Smith, a modern curator, writes:
The exhibition—in this expanded, extended sense—works, above all, to shape its spectator’s experience and take its visitor through a journey of understanding that unfolds as a guided, yet open-weave pattern of affective insights, each triggered by looking, that accumulates until the viewer has understood the curator’s insight and, hopefully, arrived at insights previously unthought by both.15
In turning to curation, now deceased curator Nick Waterlow, whose final wishes were embodied in the short film, A curator’s last will and testament, provides a helpful way forward.16 In the film, Waterlow provides seven practical rules (think more like the monastic rule) that should govern curatorship, which provide a wonderful trajectory for understanding the curation of encounter in pastoral ministry:
Passion
First, being a pastor in a curatorial role will mean developing a passion for the role of serving less as an executive, and more as a facilitator. It will also require that we have conviction that encounter with the other is at the center of our work as pastors. Having encountered our neighbors, and having encountered God’s revelation, we are empowered by the Spirit to create spaces of encounter. This follows Bonhoeffer’s idea of vicarious personhood, in that we function as the one who brings the passion for this kind of living, and this kind of understanding of how encounter happens, to the world. In this way, we live as Jesus’ followers lived, believing that the zeal (or pathos) of God is central to the complete transformation of the world, and that only through the encounter with the Other will light be able to come to those who walk in darkness, including us (Isaiah 9:1-9).
An eye of discernment
Second, discernment has and does mean many different things to many different people but, in curatorial thought, it means being able to see what is needed, what questions need to be asked, and what stories need to be told. This means that our central spiritual practice, as those who facilitate spaces of encounter, is that of prayer. By this, I am not meaing individual prayers in our office, but I am referring to what Andy Root calls the “essential practice of relational ministry.”18 This is essential to our own encounters with our brothers and sisters, and with God, because “prayer itself is a relationship; it is an action and language that articulates that we are persons who are our relationships.”19It is through prayer that we are able to discern the stories and arts that need to be seen, told, and heard, and it is how we are able to discern how best to create encounters in our communities.
An empty vessel
Third, we must, in this new era, be willing to be created and recreated constantly in our encounters. This means that we establish God’s revelation through Jesus as the centrality of ministry, and allow the rest to be flexible and responsive to the questions and ideas that need provoking in order best to facilitate relationship and encounter. Too often, churches have made a set order and structure the central part of our life together, when modern art museums for years have created spaces that are empty, yet filled, while being flexible and responsive to change. It means thinking of our spaces and our communities, and maybe most importantly our liturgies, as being far more like a modern art exhibition than like a historical museum.
An ability to be uncertain
Fourth, we must foster an ability to be uncertain. This may be the hardest part of all of this, for pastoral ministry has been built in our modern era as the dispensary of answers and spiritual goods. Instead, we must move towards an understanding of ourselves that is more vulnerable and honest. This looks much more like the art curator, who brings a particular work to exhibit, uncertain of how people may react, or what they may take from it, yet having a vague sense of its necessity. This means that pastoral ministry moves from a culture of certainty to one of risk, with permission to fail and not to pretend to have all the answers. This means that the pastors are not to be seen as dispensaries of theological truth. Rather, they are the ones who facilitate the discovery of truth and depth by creating opportunities for genuine encounters in our communities.
Belief in the necessity of art and artists
Fifth, one of the beautiful parts of modern curatorial thought has been the return to believing in the cultural necessity of the arts and those who produce them. In the same way, during an era of waning church relevance, and the concomitant bemoaning amongst church professionals against such charges of irrelevance, is a recommitment to the necessity of the church as a place of encounter with the other, and to the necessity of the people in these communities to encounter one another. It also means of being convicted once more that God’s revelation in Christ is unique and significant to our communities and to our world, not just one amongst many. This God became human to encounter and to transform. Like the curator, we must reaffirm that the encounter of God and neighbor is at the center of our communities.
A medium
Sixth, this also means that we must affirm that the church, that is, the gathered people of God, what Bonhoeffer calls the “newly recreated humanity,” is our medium.20 It is the place where encounters with God and with neighbor are facilitated by praying, preaching, receiving the Eucharist, confessing, serving, sharing fellowship, and performing discipleship. It also means that now is the time when pastoral ministry must usher in a wave of change and innovation that is built around relationship and encounter in the same way that modern curators have brought change to the art museum. It is through these changes in perceiving God’s work in the church that communities will be inspired, stimulated, and questioned.
Making possible the altering of perception
Though it is the last rule, it seems to me that the seventh is the most important rule. Modern curators seek spaces to alter perceptions, perceptions that are often silently manipulated and modeled by many powerful forces around us. Bringing forth an alternative perception, a way of viewing the world, is only possible through encounter with something Other than us. As we encounter God and neighbor, our perception of ourselves, of the world, and of God is changed.
This too is our work as pastors and religious leaders for our people, and for the sake of a world desperately in need of transformation. Just as we all come to the conversation with prejudices, angers, and assumptions, we come too from a world that is actively seeking to modify our behaviors and attitudes in a certain way (often to consume a new product, or to be afraid of a certain type of people). The pastor then serves to help facilitate people in their encounters with their neighbors and with God, and in so doing, helps to alter their perceptions in a way that breaks them open to God’s transformative presence.
In this time of crisis and change, it is clear that the trajectory of modern curation offers direction and spiritual depth for pastoral ministry. It appears that curatorial thought, especially in its work of curating encounter, provides an apt alternative for the church to its usual reliance on sociology, business, and psychology. Insights provided from the field of curation are hugely relevant to pastoral ministry. They have been transformative in my own ministry, as they have been transformational for many people throughout history—people who, even unknowingly, have encountered curated spaces in museums, orchestra halls, soup kitchens, and church narthexes.
- Passion
- An eye of discernment
- An empty vessel
- An ability to be uncertain
- Belief in the necessity of art and artists
- A medium – bringing a passionate and informed understanding of works of art to an audience that will stimulate, inspire, and question
- Making possible the altering of perception17
Passion
First, being a pastor in a curatorial role will mean developing a passion for the role of serving less as an executive, and more as a facilitator. It will also require that we have conviction that encounter with the other is at the center of our work as pastors. Having encountered our neighbors, and having encountered God’s revelation, we are empowered by the Spirit to create spaces of encounter. This follows Bonhoeffer’s idea of vicarious personhood, in that we function as the one who brings the passion for this kind of living, and this kind of understanding of how encounter happens, to the world. In this way, we live as Jesus’ followers lived, believing that the zeal (or pathos) of God is central to the complete transformation of the world, and that only through the encounter with the Other will light be able to come to those who walk in darkness, including us (Isaiah 9:1-9).
An eye of discernment
Second, discernment has and does mean many different things to many different people but, in curatorial thought, it means being able to see what is needed, what questions need to be asked, and what stories need to be told. This means that our central spiritual practice, as those who facilitate spaces of encounter, is that of prayer. By this, I am not meaing individual prayers in our office, but I am referring to what Andy Root calls the “essential practice of relational ministry.”18 This is essential to our own encounters with our brothers and sisters, and with God, because “prayer itself is a relationship; it is an action and language that articulates that we are persons who are our relationships.”19It is through prayer that we are able to discern the stories and arts that need to be seen, told, and heard, and it is how we are able to discern how best to create encounters in our communities.
An empty vessel
Third, we must, in this new era, be willing to be created and recreated constantly in our encounters. This means that we establish God’s revelation through Jesus as the centrality of ministry, and allow the rest to be flexible and responsive to the questions and ideas that need provoking in order best to facilitate relationship and encounter. Too often, churches have made a set order and structure the central part of our life together, when modern art museums for years have created spaces that are empty, yet filled, while being flexible and responsive to change. It means thinking of our spaces and our communities, and maybe most importantly our liturgies, as being far more like a modern art exhibition than like a historical museum.
An ability to be uncertain
Fourth, we must foster an ability to be uncertain. This may be the hardest part of all of this, for pastoral ministry has been built in our modern era as the dispensary of answers and spiritual goods. Instead, we must move towards an understanding of ourselves that is more vulnerable and honest. This looks much more like the art curator, who brings a particular work to exhibit, uncertain of how people may react, or what they may take from it, yet having a vague sense of its necessity. This means that pastoral ministry moves from a culture of certainty to one of risk, with permission to fail and not to pretend to have all the answers. This means that the pastors are not to be seen as dispensaries of theological truth. Rather, they are the ones who facilitate the discovery of truth and depth by creating opportunities for genuine encounters in our communities.
Belief in the necessity of art and artists
Fifth, one of the beautiful parts of modern curatorial thought has been the return to believing in the cultural necessity of the arts and those who produce them. In the same way, during an era of waning church relevance, and the concomitant bemoaning amongst church professionals against such charges of irrelevance, is a recommitment to the necessity of the church as a place of encounter with the other, and to the necessity of the people in these communities to encounter one another. It also means of being convicted once more that God’s revelation in Christ is unique and significant to our communities and to our world, not just one amongst many. This God became human to encounter and to transform. Like the curator, we must reaffirm that the encounter of God and neighbor is at the center of our communities.
A medium
Sixth, this also means that we must affirm that the church, that is, the gathered people of God, what Bonhoeffer calls the “newly recreated humanity,” is our medium.20 It is the place where encounters with God and with neighbor are facilitated by praying, preaching, receiving the Eucharist, confessing, serving, sharing fellowship, and performing discipleship. It also means that now is the time when pastoral ministry must usher in a wave of change and innovation that is built around relationship and encounter in the same way that modern curators have brought change to the art museum. It is through these changes in perceiving God’s work in the church that communities will be inspired, stimulated, and questioned.
Making possible the altering of perception
Though it is the last rule, it seems to me that the seventh is the most important rule. Modern curators seek spaces to alter perceptions, perceptions that are often silently manipulated and modeled by many powerful forces around us. Bringing forth an alternative perception, a way of viewing the world, is only possible through encounter with something Other than us. As we encounter God and neighbor, our perception of ourselves, of the world, and of God is changed.
This too is our work as pastors and religious leaders for our people, and for the sake of a world desperately in need of transformation. Just as we all come to the conversation with prejudices, angers, and assumptions, we come too from a world that is actively seeking to modify our behaviors and attitudes in a certain way (often to consume a new product, or to be afraid of a certain type of people). The pastor then serves to help facilitate people in their encounters with their neighbors and with God, and in so doing, helps to alter their perceptions in a way that breaks them open to God’s transformative presence.
In this time of crisis and change, it is clear that the trajectory of modern curation offers direction and spiritual depth for pastoral ministry. It appears that curatorial thought, especially in its work of curating encounter, provides an apt alternative for the church to its usual reliance on sociology, business, and psychology. Insights provided from the field of curation are hugely relevant to pastoral ministry. They have been transformative in my own ministry, as they have been transformational for many people throughout history—people who, even unknowingly, have encountered curated spaces in museums, orchestra halls, soup kitchens, and church narthexes.
NOTES
- Andrew Root, The Relational Pastor: Sharing in Christ by Sharing Ourselves(Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2013), 46.
- Emmanuel Levinas, Otherwise Than Being, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1998), 43-44.
- Emmanuel Levinas, “Is Ontology Fundamental?” in Basic Philosophical Writing, eds. Adrian T. Peperzak, Simon Critchley, and Robert Bernasconi (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), 7.
- Emmanuel Levinas, “Meaning and Sense” in Basic Philosophical Writing, 53.
- Adrian Peperzak, To The Other: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas (West Lafeyette: Purdue University Press, 1993), 19.
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Christ the Center, trans. Edwin H. Robertson (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1978), 31.
- Ibid., 31.
- Ibid., 31.
- Ibid., 43.
- Jürgen Moltmann and Jürgen Wiessbach, Two Studies in the Theology of Bonhoeffer, trans. Reginald and Ilse Fuller (New York: Scribners, 1967), 53.
- Andreas Siekmann and Max Jorge Hinderer, “About the Potosi Priniciple exhibition” (http://www.iniva.org/events/2012/the_potosi_principle).
- Root, 163.
- Jane P. Tompkins, “An Introduction to Reader Response Criticism,” in Reader-Response Criticism: From Formalism to Post-Structuralism, ed. Jane P. Tompkins (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1982), xiv.
- Stanley Fish, “Literature in the Reader” in Reader-Response Criticism, 72.
- Terry Smith, Thinking Contemporary Curating (New York: Independent Curators International, 2012), 35.
- Juliet Darling, in collaboration with Father Steve Sinn, S.J., A curator’s last will and testament, DVD or Blu-ray, directed by Juliet Darling, 2012.
- Darling, A curator’s last will and testament.
- Root, 169.
- Ibid., 173.
- Bonhoeffer, Act and Being, trans. Bernard Noble (New York: Harper & Row, 1961), 121.
