(c) 1986 Christian Century Foundation, Reprinted by permission.
A summer reading group!-what a great idea! I thought as I took out a legal pad.
Reasons for introducing such a group fairly gushed from my ballpoint: parish-sponsored growth opportunities for adults had been scarce during the past year; some church school teachers might want to participate; I would enjoy the stimulation of give-and-take discussion without the burden of being leader; reading groups had worked well in other parishes; it would be a chance to do some church-sanctioned light reading without feeling guilty for avoiding theological tomes.
I recalled that John Stott had told a seminary community some years earlier how useful he’d found a reading group. He said he had made it a point to have several recent university graduates present. They kept him up to date on what was in vogue on campus-books, he said, he otherwise would not have known about, much less read.
Surely, I reasoned, the fact that I remember Stott’s recommendation is the Spirit’s attestation to inaugurate a reading group.
Through the monthly newsletter and the weekly bulletin, I spread the word: “Anyone who can read is welcome.”
The new group would meet in the church parlor (a comfy room designed to assist young brides and their attendants in getting as ready as one can for what is to follow).
We decided to meet every other week for a total of six sessions. No one would be taxed, and there would be fallow time to assimilate the material. In summer who wants to get in a hurry about anything?
Silly me, I fancifully imagined the group would delight in one of the armload of “lites” I lugged to the first meeting. Looking back, I think there were just too many well-educated people there: a college professor; several public school teachers; an astute senior Christian whose sister, a librarian, had supplied him with titles for nearly fifty years; and a hodgepodge of free thinkers and mavericks.
I had my first bout with doubt. Lord, can this collection become a group? I contributed to my problems by foolishly announcing that the group would democratically choose the book we would read. Why I gave up the clergy power of prerogative, I’ll never know, for none of my lightweight suggestions would do. It was as though the others were in collusion, each knowing, but not saying, what W. H. Auden wrote: “A real book is not one that’s read, but one that reads us.”
Some wise guy, alleging an interest in “something with meat,” suggested The Road Less Traveled by Scott Peck. Suddenly unanimity reigned. My dream of spending a summer reading some light fiction flew out the window as I grudgingly concurred (laity 1, clergy 0).
Oh, one other thing. We gave ourselves an esoteric name, one that gave us an identity in the parish when newcomers asked what we were about: “The Reading Group.” The group chose it (laity 2, clergy 0).
We read The Road Less Traveled-all summer l-o-n-g. Actually it wasn’t that bad. Although I had initial doubts, this book turned out to be excellent for that particular cluster of persons.
After only two or three gatherings, we began to gently open ourselves to one another, even to risk slight emotional exposure. We were becoming more than just a collection of readers sharing our respective views on pages perused. Transparency, albeit timid at first, was molding us into a group.
We also gained some comrades in the faith-fellow searchers with whom we could articulate our struggles or hitherto unasked questions. Acceptance flowed among us. However, we were unlike any support group I’d ever known. All we had in common, apparently, was a love of reading. We were a cross-section of the parish-leaders and wallflowers, singles and married, highly learned and barely educated.
I was also impressed by this unchurchy fact: we never sent out reminder postcards, yet never did anyone say, “Oh, I meant to be there, but I forgot.” Never. Instead, two or three days in advance of our gatherings, I received an occasional phone call: “Father John, I’m so sorry to have to miss The Reading Group, but my sister in Oklahoma is very ill, and I have to go up there for a few days. Please give my love to everyone. I’ll be back in town in time for the next meeting.” Such commitment was refreshing.
Other tidbits filtered back to me. “I don’t know what you are doing in that reading group, but my husband wouldn’t think of missing even one,” stated one surprised wife. A quiet widow said, “I get so much from the group. Almost every time someone asks a question, it’s like they’re reading my mind. They ask the very question I wanted to ask.”
A former World War II bomber pilot, not given to showing enthusiasm, grinned at me after one Sunday service, pumped my hand, and exclaimed to everyone within earshot, “That reading group is great, I tell you, great! I haven’t had so much fun over a book in years. Keep it up, Parson!”
Autumn brought, as usual, the rigors that accompany the season: reopening of schools, return to church school classes, and multitudinous activities. Busy, busy. Would they let me drop The Reading Group from the parish calendar? Not by the hair of my Episcopal chinny-chin-chin!
We had to decide on another book. Consensus decreed that we read Madeline L’Engle’s Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art and that we would enjoy it. We did, and we did.
Advent saw us still reading, still discussing, and still supporting one another. We knocked off for December but cranked up again in January. A minister friend in a nearby city had recently studied in England with theologian Alister McGrath. When I mentioned this to the group, McGrath’s book, Understanding Jesus, was unanimously selected as our spring reading. I was amazed. Without any gerrymandering on my part, we were reading current Christology as we closed in on Lent, Good Friday, Easter’s Resurrection, and all that puts the zing in us Christians. Awesome!
Later the group would read A Room Called Remember by Frederick Buechner and Four Loves by C. S. Lewis, and even ask for a mini-Bible study on 1 and 2 Thessalonians.
In the years since, we’ve seen a core of avid readers, usually a faithful baker’s dozen, come together four times a year to democratically choose a book they will chew their way through. Despite my initial misgivings, I’ve learned the Holy Spirit really does guide, given the opportunity. I learned that in The Reading Group.
McSermon
I read somewhere that Ernest Hemingway wrote many of his best pieces while sitting in the sidewalk cafes of Paris, watching and listening to everyday people. Even though they spoke French, this routine helped give him an ear for the language and rhythm of dialogue so unique to his style.
On those rare occasions when my sermon is completed before Saturday evening, I like to take the finished product to lunch at McDonald’s or another fast-food stop. It’s hardly Paris but when I read my sermon to myself amidst everyday people chattering over Big Macs and fries, I tend to better judge its relevance.
Even better is to try to write the homily in this bustling, grease-filled atmosphere. As I pause between exegetical expositions and connective prose, a dining room packed with human needs and yearnings sometimes reminds me better than my study what communicating the mysteries of faith is about.
Over here two young mothers attempt to eat and carry on a conversation while preventing three youngsters from tearing down a life-sized Ronald McDonald poster.
Over there two teenage boys demonstrate that life’s greatest mystery at the moment is how to successfully win a catsup-squirting contest; they are targeting two nearby teenage girls.
An older gentleman sits alone with steaming coffee and a neatly folded Wall Street Journal.
Behind me an argument rages over Bobby Knight’s unorthodox coaching antics, while only a few feet away a man and woman, obviously in distress, talk quietly and seriously.
These are the people I sometimes forget when I’m cloistered in my paneled study. They are somehow different than those who normally storm my office for counseling or administrative advice.
These “McDonald’s people” are the anonymous ones who stumble unannounced into worship seeking help, inspiration, guidance-a moment of transcendence. After my sermon and I have lunch with them, I find myself less eager to use polysyllabic literary locutions and more desperate to find simple words of hope and healing and grace.
-John Wimmer
First United Methodist Church
West Lafayette, Indiana
Copyright © 1991 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
