Experience and theological investigation in an adult Bible class: Perceptions and practices

This project sought to understand inconsistent reports of conflictual student interactions coming from an adult Bible class (Sunday School class) in a mid-sized Church of Christ in New York State. Two issues were of concern to the church's eldership (inclusive of the author): (1) disunity within the class, and (2) the possibility that events in the class reflected a rejection of a warrant for continual investigation in search for religious truth. The latter issue is identified in the project as a core value of the church's Stone-Campbell Movement heritage.;The author conducted and analyzed interviews with class members using methodologies adapted from ethnography and neoinstitutional analysis of organizations. Findings are presented as substantive grounded theory that reveals a complex picture (a "thick description") of the ways in which class events had been perceived and in which investigation had been practiced.;Perceptions of events occurring in the class are shown to have been filtered through three sets of subjective sensitivities. These are identified as inward-looking, having to do with personal needs; outward-looking, having to do with institutionalized models of community life; and backward-looking, having to do with personal and shared histories. Oppositions within the first two sets, along with beliefs and attitudes rooted in the third, placed class members in occasional conflict with one another and seem to have produced mistrust, elitism, and lack of empathy in the class. These relational issues, accompanied by structural and paradigmatic obstacles, are likely to have made constructive investigation of controversial topics and biblical passages impossible for the group, even though there was broad agreement among interviewees that investigation was a task of the class. How they defined this task is discussed in depth and compared with the model of investigation and discernment operative in Acts 15. Consideration is given to implications of these findings both for the local congregation and for pastoral (shepherding) ministry, more generally.