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Post date: Oct 03, 2018 12:3:41 PM
9/25/18 email to Josh Howell and Ryan Pfieffer
...By itself, I don't think that a Native-specific proxe is probably what is needed for a national playbook. However, maybe my method for making contextualized proxes would help others.
Basically, BlueEyes and I spent an hour brainstorming this proxe. I've spent the day today trying to make it visually attractive (someone from 2100 who is really good at this could do it faster, I'm sure). They come together pretty quickly with this method. I've developed it over the years with my Lawrence students (and we call it "Gospel Improv"). It is a little hard to explain briefly, but here is an outline;
I asked BlueEyes to come prepared with a Bible passage that was meaningful for him (he chose a section of Ecclesiastes -- not my first thought for a viable proxe, but it was his call)
We analyze the key passage/s inductively, looking for a fundamental tension expressed in opposing desires. The resulting dynamic is the "driver" or "motivator" for the proxe (all of our best proxes can be analyzed this way -- the tension the proxe sets up is ultimately resolved by Jesus in panel 4).
The result of the discussion gets us panel 3 (in this method we construct the proxe "backwards," working to panel 1 last), which is a key passage that captures the tension or longing.
We work back to panel 2, which is about how we personally grapple with the tension.
Panel 1 is a "hook" that introduces people to the key tension in an open-ended and "fun" way.
Part of what makes Gospel Improv hard to explain is that it is not an attempt at a better Gospel outline presentation. Rather, it is a framework for thinking about the underlying dynamics of the gospel so it can be contextualized easily into any number of gospel presentations with whatever drivers are relevant to the students we are trying to reach at the moment. I think it is more flexible than what we typically get with a gospel outline.
So again, it is this method for contextualizing that is my basic idea. It would not be a way to get 2100-quality proxes around the country (though some of the better ones could be further spiffed up). Rather, it would be an Ambition-Conference-style thing to get creative students and staff to drill into particular contexts, or even just a way to help them engage better with proxes and maybe have deeper ownership and appreciation of them. Proxes are a brilliant idea, and staff should not think of them as just clever artsy marketing.
I like it because it reinforces all the right stuff. I think it also works pretty well as a Bible study method to train for evangelism, a framework for helping students think through personal testimonies, and even a formation exercise (if students can't identify these drivers in their own spiritual lives, then they aren't going to be very effective at the proxe). I've spent a little time trying gospel improv on the thresholds, and I think it is a fruitful way to understand them as well (I recall early versions of it expressed it as tensions like "trust" vs. "distrust"). I had started working on proxes for each threshold -- though I'm not sure where those notes ended up.
Ok, on to the next thing. I needed to get this draft to BlueEyes by the end of the week anyway, and it occurred to me that it might fit the eChamps rubric.
Tim
p.s. it doesn't fit as an attachment, so I'll try sharing from the Team drive:
Megan, I set this up as a project channel in NM Projects. All the files are available there.
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