A Little Improv: An Introduction

Imagine the Christian narrative as a five act play. Act I is Creation, Act II is Israel, Act III is Jesus, Act IV is the church, and Act V is the eschaton. In his book, Improvisation, Samuel Wells uses this model to engage a different approach to Christian ethics. For Wells, Christian ethics is church ethics, it is more than just how a Christian should live but how the church should function. Wells uses the five act play model to help us engage the dynamic Christian narrative and address church ethics.

The five act play is a modification of the idea of narrative or theology as narrative. The narrative that Wells is modifying succumbs to the following temptations:

1) To see the principal location of theology as the world or society—the political whole.

2) Assume that because the sacred community is the key location of theology because God’s principal way of working in the world is through the church…putting the holiness of the community over the holiness of God.

3) Perceive that in the knowledge of certain key pieces of information, not universally available, the church has a unique power. (Improvisation, pg. 39-40).

Wells introduces a redesigned model of the Christian narrative that avoids the temptations stated above. This five act play model creates a theology of participation in God’s story.

Over the years, the Christian community has regarded its story, its narrative drama as a three act play. The first act would be the fall, the second act would be Jesus’ death and resurrection, and the third act would be the eschaton or the rapture and sequential return of Christ. Since we’ve focused on a three act narrative drama model, the Christian community fell into the temptations Wells listed. The temptations have formed the theology of the church to operate only within the three act narrative drama without much room to improvise. The theology of the three act narrative drama creates a church designed to accentuate three components: separation, infallible truths, and political power. The traditional church model builds on each one of those components with age appropriate Sunday school classes, nurseries, children church, and specific targeted adult worship services.

The theology of the five act narrative drama expounds the three act drama. Wells believes there are two mistakes that can be made about the five act drama. The first mistake is to think one is in a one act play rather than a five act play (p.55). I agree with Wells that this is a mistake but I believe the Christian community has functioned in a three act drama with a focus on the third act. This slight change may not seem like a change on the surface but underneath, we can see that we’ve functioned in a three act drama because our narrative tells of one. The church’s narrative purpose, specifically in America, has been a narrative that functions within the three acts and the narrative spun is one that falls prey to the temptations Wells listed.

The second mistake is to get the wrong act. This mistake overemphasizes one’s own role in the narrative. Wells writes, “If one assumes one is in Act One, one places oneself, rather than God, in the role of creator. There have been no significant events before one’s appearance in the drama. There’s no experience to learn from, no story to join, no drama to enter” (p.55). Wells is weary of these mistakes taking place within the five-act narrative drama, but these mistakes, particularly the second mistake, is one the church has functioned a part of. The church’s theology in the three act model has been to focus on one particular act, act three, and highlight the individual’s role in that final act.

The five-act narrative drama expounds the three-act narrative we have grown accustomed to. The five-act narrative replaces the first act of the fall with creation, focusing on creation and God’s active role in creating the universe. The second act is new; it precedes the third act of Jesus without taking away from the third act. The second act is the covenant blessing of Israel. The scriptures tell the beginning of the covenant with Abraham and God’s faithfulness to the covenant throughout the narratives of the Old Testament. This covenant is brought to life through the Israelites exodus from Egypt and the drama is found in the role God plays in the narrative because it is God who is faithful in writing the story. The third act connects us to the covenant God made with God’s people but it ushers in a turn in the drama. Jesus is introduced in the third act and it is the definitive act. Jesus becomes the center of the drama, in which God reveals God’s character (p.54). God, the author of the narrative, enters the story through Jesus. Act four is the Christians, the church. Like the present church, Israel saw itself in a three act narrative (Creation (fall), Israel, Messiah (p.54)) but Jesus shocks the story when he neither restores political authority nor brings the story to an end (p.54). The church becomes act four in which it continues the story of God’s active participation in the narrative. We are given the Holy Spirit, the Scriptures, baptism, the Eucharist (Communion), we are given a host of material to form and sustain our community. This is the act we are living in at this moment. This is the part of the narrative that we are to be active in with God. The final act or the act still to come is act five, the eschaton or the end. Wells states that this act is how God transforms “the poverty of nature by the riches of grace, of how God turns fallenness and striving and pain into communion and gladness and joy by no other power but of the power of the cross” (p.55).

Our five act play gives the church an opportunity to tune our theology. Instead of theology based in a three act narrative in which the focal act is act three, we are given the freedom to be creative with God as God writes the story. We become participants in the narrative, actors in the drama and we are given freedom to have a little improvisation. The beauty of the fourth act is that we have been given a direction, a glimpse of where God is taking this narrative and the church’s theology is given freedom for improvisation through God’s faithfulness.

The five-act narrative drama changes our act four gatherings. We no longer focus on one act or put one act above the other. Our gatherings become an inter-generational gathering that is telling a story, a story that God is writing, a drama that God is directing and acting in. Over the next few weeks I will be exploring what it means for the church to function within this five-act narrative and how that will affect our gatherings. The goal will be to open up conversation regarding the church as an inter-generational gathering narrative through our theology, worship, church polity, and our lives.