Immerse | A Journal of Faith, Life, and Youth Ministry

Still Going Deeper With Sarah Arthur’s: Daring to Improvise

by Kate Obermueller on October 10th, 2011 -- filed under Story

Until about three weeks ago, I was a stranger to comedy radio. Now I drive down the road in hysterics as I listen to 30–60-second bits of a given comedian’s best improv. People probably think something is wrong with me because I’m often still laughing when I get out of the car. So when I saw the title of Sarah Arthur’s latest article, “Daring to Improvise,” I was expecting something funny; a lighthearted and entertaining article about having to create things on the spot during chaotic youth group meetings or fumbling for words while discussing the awkwardness of teenage life. Instead I was met with a much deeper argument for a solid theological concept that gave me joy and made my insides shout, Yes! This is how the body of Christ is supposed to act! Arthur’s examples of communities that dared to improvise gave me hope that there are places in this world where perhaps even God thinks, This is how it’s supposed to be. 

The beauty of Arthur’s article is that the art of improvisation as a theological idea is not new. What she’s getting at, I think, is a solid practice of Christian faith that is evidenced in her stories of congregational life, with examples of both success and failure in the process. With a spin that is both fresh and refreshing, what Arthur describes as the art of improv is actually the work of relying on the energetic movement of the Holy Spirit to create new paths through…

Going Deeper With Sarah Arthur’s: “The Art of Improvisation”

by Jake Bouma on September 12th, 2011 -- filed under Story

If you’ve been in youth ministry for longer than a week, you’ve almost certainly been in a situation where something you planned didn’t go quite right. Suddenly, you find yourself with an extra half hour of time to fill, and  you improvise an activity or lesson on the spot. I have been in these situations numerous times, and sometimes they have totally flopped, and other times they’ve been tremendously successful. This type of “oh no” improvisation is decidedly what Sarah Arthur is not talking about. For her, improvisation is a theological concept, and it takes practice to become proficient. “We need to school ourselves in the art of improvisation,” she says.

About two paragraphs into the article, I stopped midsentence, put in my headphones and scrolled through iTunes until I landed on jazz pianist Keith Jarrett’s 2006 album The Carnegie Hall Concert. Jarrett is a living jazz legend who is widely known for playing sold-out concerts consisting entirely of improvised piano compositions. On The Carnegie Hall Concert, for example, the first 10 tracks are titled “Part I,” “Part II,” and so on, because the music itself didn’t exist until Jarrett’s fingers coaxed it out of the piano right then and there, on the fly. I thought it would be particularly fitting to finish out Arthur’s article while Jarrett’s virtuosic display of improvisation graced my ears.

In addition to the music itself, which is almost hypnotic, there is another aspect to the The Carnegie Hall Concert that makes it compelling: the…