James Fawcett thinks that the course Being With could become the go-to teaching method to introduce people to Christianity around the world. This approach not only changes individuals; it can change the church, he said.
Yet the 10-week course has no teachers and no strict curriculum. It doesn’t make an argument for God and doesn’t involve Bible study (at least in the beginning.) Instead, it’s a series of structured conversations in the company of others in which participants come to recognize God’s presence in their lives.
“We’re trying to be present to one another. We’re trying to be attentive to one another,” said Fawcett, who is head of Being With at St. Martin-in-the-Fields in London. “We’re trying to not view people as problems to be solved but mysteries to be entered into, to delight in, to partner with, to participate.”
Being With is the creation of the Rev. Dr. Sam Wells, vicar of St. Martin’s, and the associate vicar for ministry, the Rev. Sally Hitchiner. It is a distillation of Wells’ theology of “being with” combined with elements of Godly Play.
For each of the 90-minute sessions, two trained hosts and a group of participants gather in person or online and follow the same process. They start with a welcome, asking, “I wonder what the heart of your week is?” Then participants share four other “wonderings” based on a theme, such as Jesus, church, mission, the cross, suffering and prayer.
The first wondering of the first session, for example, is, “I wonder what it feels like to be set free.”
Next, one of the hosts reads a story about the Christian faith and weaves into it the wonderings they’ve heard the participants share. At the end the group reflects on the experience.
“We partner with those people who have come, and their stories become part of the bigger story. There’s a sense of delight and enjoyment in a Being With course that God is not using us for some other end and we’re not using other people for some other end, but there’s an enjoyment there, and that is wrapped and suffused in glory,” Fawcett said.
He estimates that at least 3,000 people have gone through the course, and St. Martin’s has trained about 1,300 volunteer hosts in the past 2 ½ years. It’s currently more common in churches in the Anglican/Episcopal tradition and the English-speaking world but is designed for use by any church. He hopes to have the materials translated in the future.
He spoke with Faith & Leadership’s Sally Hicks about Being With and why he thinks it can bring people back into the church. The following is an edited transcript.
Faith & Leadership: Is this designed primarily for evangelization or as formation for folks that are already in the church?
James Fawcett: It can be used for both and is used for both. It does a very good job of bringing people who are on the periphery of church into the center of church. It does a very good job of connecting those people that have an experience of church, whether they’ve come away from that feeling hurt or just disenchanted, and bringing those people back into the center of church.
But equally I hear it being used as ongoing discipleship in spiritual formation or as classes on a Sunday morning — in lots of different ways. It can be a tool that a priest might use to bring a sense of parity across the parish. “This is what we believe here, and here’s a 10-week course saying this is what we believe.”
F&L: What is Sam Wells’ “being with” theology that the course is based on?
JF: “A Nazareth Manifesto” is the book where this was crystallized — the idea that there are four ways of operating in the world: being for, being with, working for and working with.
As he looked at the life of Christ, [Wells noted that] for a majority of the time of Christ on Earth, 95% of it is being with. There’s something that we could learn about that being with that was essential to Christian thinking and Christian living. We’re trying to be with people as Christ is with people but also as God is with us, and God’s desire is to be with us, and [God] was with us in Christ.
Sam specifically talks about the work of the cross. Jesus’ desire was so great to be with us that he chose to be with us. And the Father chose to allow Jesus to be with us even to the point of death.
We talk about being with others, being with ourselves and being with God. Being with is the active part of that phrase. Sam then divvies up that being with into eight dimensions of being with: presence, attention, mystery, delight, participation, partnership, enjoyment, glory.
Those eight dimensions make up what it means to be with, whether you are with yourself or you are with another person or you’re with God. That’s the heart of what we’re trying to communicate.
F&L: What are the sessions like?
There’s quite a lot of silence in the group. We ask others not to comment on each other’s wonderings but simply to enjoy — again, to delight — in one another’s wonder and to be attentive to be present to other people’s sharing. It is a beautiful, almost contemplative, type of space that is created.
Then there’s a story, which is written by Sam. That’s the most explicitly theological or religious part of the session. Host 2 reads the story, and they have been listening intently throughout the session. Their role is to weave the wonderings that they’ve heard through the story so people’s small stories are taken into the bigger story.
Then it’s a time for reflection for the last 20 minutes or so. I often would start a time of reflection with, “I wonder what is going through your heart or your head?” At that point people are often reflecting on what has just happened for the previous 60, 70 minutes as they’ve shared vulnerably, as they’ve connected with one another, as they’ve heard stories of great suffering and pain, but also of joy, and how those stories have been woven through and held in this larger story. It often is a profound time for people.
F&L: What kind of impact does it have on people?
JF: My experience was obviously localized in London, but now we have over 1,300 people registered all over the world who are delivering Being With. There are some consistent stories which keep coming back.
One of them is that people on the periphery of church in some way, whether they’re weekly attenders or they occasionally pop into church, are brought into the center of church. One of the quotes from one of our hosts here in the U.K. was, “We weren’t trying to get people to be part of the Parochial Church Council, but they are as a result of doing Being With.”
Another one from the States, in Austin, Texas, was, “We’ve seen exponential growth — not necessarily what we were expecting. We thought we needed to do something to help our parishioners understand what we think about church and what theology is important, but they keep bringing their friends.”
It brings individuals into church and makes them central to church because they find a sense of belonging. I also think that there’s something about it which opens an unclosable door for individuals that they’re then continually seeking. They find something, they taste something of God in that space, or of togetherness, that they then are continually seeking. That is the part that is very exciting for individuals.
F&L: One thing that might surprise people is that you don’t read the Bible in these groups.
JF: That is true. We do have a course coming in the future called Being With the Bible, but at this stage we don’t. The Bible is referenced, Paul’s writings are referenced, the Gospels are referenced, the Old Testament is referenced, but it is to make sure that we don’t make assumptions that people understand what the Bible is and how it is read or how it’s viewed or even what the context is.
Here in the U.K. there are plenty of children who have no real understanding about what Easter is about or Christmas is about and why they happen. So we don’t make any assumptions that people know anything.
F&L: It sounds like you are focusing on the community aspect of church as the entry point as opposed to the Bible being the entry point. Is that accurate?
JF: The primary aim is that the method is the message. Our message is about God is with you and has been with you since day one, as you are right now, through all the ups and downs. We want to be with you as we think God is with you.
That’s the entry point because we think that’s the most important message. We can work on all the other things that come along later, the language and understanding.
I don’t have the stats for this, but I would hazard a firm guess that 99% of people would say that they felt a sense of belonging in a Being With group and a sense of togetherness. Most people have an experience of God together, but all of them would say that they have the experience of belonging to each other together.
F&L: What is your grandest hope for this work?
JF: I think Being With could be the go-to course that people are running in their churches. There are churches around the world where it has just become part of the DNA of the church and that DNA has permeated other aspects of church life.
In business meetings they start with the heart of the week. In business meetings there are wonderings, which help change the dynamic of what is happening.
There’s a church in Austin, and the vicar there describes it as the yeast in the dough. I think that’s probably the best description — that it has really affected both at an individual level, which is really important, but also at a corporate level.
The Episcopal bishop of [Washington] D.C., Bishop Mariann Budde, has just used it with federal workers who have lost their jobs. She’s just done a Being With-style session with them where they did welcome, they did wonderings, she read a story and they had a time of reflection for a hundred-odd federal workers. That feels like where it could go. It just becomes part of the lexicon of the church and how to be in the world.
