Ali, I really appreciate the way you bring Freire and Yaconelli into this. It helped me see how easily ministry slips into patterns of anxiety rather than love. What struck me most is how those pressures often come not just from individuals but from wider systems such as safeguarding demands, expectations and the culture of results.
I also found myself reflecting on your telling and teaching contrast. While telling can become anxious control, there are times when it is needed and can even be loving, especially where children need safety and clarity. Holding that tension feels important.
Your phrase “love seeking questions” has stayed with me, and it makes me think of Huizinga’s Homo Ludens. He reminds us that play is a way of knowing in its own right. Perhaps the deepest shift is not only from telling to teaching, but from control to play, creating space where adults and children become co-players discovering faith together.
Glad it connects, Ali. Reading your piece I kept wondering how often church culture turns “learning” into a middle-class performance of education, authority and pseudo-scholastic proof. It promises control and results, yet it hides the deeper reality of discipleship as shared discovery, which is what co-players could make possible.
Ali, I really appreciate the way you bring Freire and Yaconelli into this. It helped me see how easily ministry slips into patterns of anxiety rather than love. What struck me most is how those pressures often come not just from individuals but from wider systems such as safeguarding demands, expectations and the culture of results.
I also found myself reflecting on your telling and teaching contrast. While telling can become anxious control, there are times when it is needed and can even be loving, especially where children need safety and clarity. Holding that tension feels important.
Your phrase “love seeking questions” has stayed with me, and it makes me think of Huizinga’s Homo Ludens. He reminds us that play is a way of knowing in its own right. Perhaps the deepest shift is not only from telling to teaching, but from control to play, creating space where adults and children become co-players discovering faith together.
Love that idea, from control to play, and being co-players!
Glad it connects, Ali. Reading your piece I kept wondering how often church culture turns “learning” into a middle-class performance of education, authority and pseudo-scholastic proof. It promises control and results, yet it hides the deeper reality of discipleship as shared discovery, which is what co-players could make possible.