Are You a Bean-to? – Joshua Graves: Exploring the Collision of Culture & Faith

Are You a Bean-to?

April 7, 2009

Eugene Peterson believes that the task of being a Christian in our world today is intricately connected to the words that fall from our lips. Whether we preach in front of a community of faith, or offer a word of hope to a co-worker caught in the trappings of addiction and denial, the words we speak are the embodied means by which usher God’s grace to this fragmented world.

Peterson thinks that story-telling is one of the most effective ways to do this.

In Tell it Slant, he tells the story of teaching in a graduate program on Jesus’ parables. One of the students in the class, Father Tony, talked about the lessons he’d learned about story-telling in raising up leaders in Africa.

“When he [Tony] first began the work, whenever he would find men who were especially bright he would pull them out of their village and send them to Rome or Dublin or Boston or New York for training. After a couple of years they would return and take up their tasks. But the villagers hated them and would have nothing to do with them. They called the returnee a been-to (pronounced bean-to): “He’s bean-to Boston.” They hated the bean-to because he no longer told stories. He gave explanations. he taught them doctrines. He gave them directions. He drew diagrams on a chalk board. The bean-to left all his stories in the wastebasket of the libraries and lecture halls of Europe and America. The intimate and dignifying process of telling a parable had been sold for a mess of academic pottage. So, Father Brynne [Tony] told us, he quit the practice of sending the men off to those storyless schools,” (Tell it Slant, 60-61).

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I’m grateful that most of my education (history, english, and theology) was provided to me by men and women (starting first with my parents) who believed in the power of story.

Labels: Parables, Preaching, Stories

5 Comments

I am also greatful for the wonderful professors as well as the different clergy in my life who helped shapped me into I am today. Praise God for Godly men and women who are willing to make a difference. Josh, I hope you and your family have a fantastic Easter.

by preacherman (Apr 7 2009, 9:59 am)

he quit the practice of sending the men off to those storyless schools… Great line. Thanks for posting this Josh, that’s a powerful paragraph!

by Jonathan Storment (Apr 7 2009, 3:42 pm)

A good friend of mine e-mailed me about this post. In part of his note, he wrote:

“Your recent post on Peterson’s book reminded me of something I recently read somewhere, in a Charles Campbell book, I think. He noted how some point to the teaching method of Jesus as illustrated in the Gospels, as though the point of the parables was to show how Jesus taught. Thus, they lose focus on the suject-matter himself, Jesus. I think there is something to this. The parables aren’t intended to teach us how to teach but to reveal to us something about Jesus and the Kingdom of God.

Story is certainly a valuable and biblical means of transmitting truth. But Jesus himself also taught in propositions (”blessed are…” “woe to….”). I’m sure Peterson recognizes this as well. Of course, songs and poems are also plentiful in the Bible. His illustration of the “bean-to’s” suggest to me more about how truth is transmitted in certain cultures and a need of awareness of that than a normative form of teaching. I agree that our preaching and teaching must be contextualized within the biblical narrative, but the “how” depends both on how the biblical text communicates it and how a given culture best receives the message.”

by Josh Graves (Apr 7 2009, 4:41 pm)

Per my friend’s e-mail. Yes, that is correct. Peterson’s (nor I for that matter) not trying to dismiss non-narrative forms of communication. Rather, he’s showing the arrogance and intellectual imperialism that is employed by Westerners in other cultural settings.

btw…I am guilty of this. I taught Luke-Acts this past summer and used a lot of diagrams and charts!

Oral culture demands a different form of communication. Maybe I’ll get Spencer and Mark, two of my friends living in Uganda right now, to write a post about this later.

Great stuff.

by Josh Graves (Apr 7 2009, 4:43 pm)

Preacherman: Vous aussi.

JStorm (your new nickname): you do what Peterson talks about really well bro.

by Josh Graves (Apr 7 2009, 4:45 pm)