‘Havering’: a Creative Bible Study Exercise

— taylor driggers

If you’re anything like me, you probably find it difficult to be particularly surprised by anything in the Bible. You may have heard the stories repeated over and over in Sunday school growing up, or you may be a part of a tradition that follows the lectionary, where different readings of scripture are chosen for particular times of the year. The diverse and multifaceted narratives contained within scripture can become so much a part of us that we don’t think twice about them; we may have even been taught to interpret them a specific way. When this happens, we can often lose sight not only of the message of radical love, inclusion, and liberation found in biblical texts, but of the rich and complex lives these texts present to us. We often find ourselves needing a new way of reading scripture and unsettling our preconceived notions about the text.

One exercise I like to use to read the Bible differently is ‘havering’, a way of creatively imagining ourselves into biblical texts as a community and letting conversations arise out of surprising encounters with each other as biblical characters. I first encountered this role-playing exercise when I was at a workshop led by the Iona Community’s Wild Goose Resource Group and have since adapted it for use at scm events in Britain. The name of the exercise conveys two things. In Scotland, where I live, to ‘haver’ is to have casual conversation or make idle chit-chat. But the word is also phonetically similar to the Aramaic word havruta ( ) which refers to a style of Jewish Talmudic study in which people analyse, question, and debate a sacred text together. step 1: plan and prepare

In this article, I’ll outline how to facilitate a havering exercise in your own scm group. I’ll also discuss the ways in which reading the Bible through havering can help uncover unexplored corners of biblical texts, bring to light voices in scripture that we might not otherwise pay attention to, and teach us more about scripture, ourselves, and each other.

I should probably start by saying that havering is not a short exercise. You should probably allow for at least an hour’s time, but ideally the more time you set aside the better. Havering works best when everyone in the group is given plenty of time to reflect on each step of the process. It also tends to work best in groups of about nine or more people, though you can probably find ways to adapt it to smaller groups as well! It’s best, if possible, to have a good idea in advance of how many people are going to participate in the exercise.

Next, you’re going to want to select some scripture passages. This tends to be one of the trickier bits. I usually try to go with about five or six brief snippets from the Bible that share a common setting and theme. For instance, at an scm gathering where the theme was ‘Justice’, I selected passages from the Gospels in which people’s lives are disrupted by Jesus’s demonstrations of justice: healing people in the temple on the Sabbath, overturning traders’ stalls, etc. At another, where the theme was ‘Difference and Inclusion’, I chose passages from the book of Esther because of that story’s parallels to current politics.

Make a list of all the different characters in the passages you’ve chosen, making sure that the number matches the number of people who plan to take part. Some questions you might consider when selecting passages and characters are: what might these characters have to say to each other? Are there any unnamed characters it might be interesting to hear from? If there are any outside observers, what might they think about what’s going on? What power dynamics might be interesting to explore in a group?

step 2: prepare the group

For the actual workshop, you’ll ideally want a venue with a lot of space to wander around and chairs that can be rearranged. On the day, post the various scripture passages you’ve chosen around the room (make sure for accessibility purposes that they’re written out in a large, easily legible font). You will also need a basket with slips of paper with characters’ names or titles on them, and enough copies of a full list of characters for everyone in the group.

Begin the exercise with everyone sitting in a circle, briefly introduce the exercise, and then encourage people to wander around the room and reflect on the passages you’ve chosen, allowing everyone time to read and mull over all of them (I’d suggest about 15 minutes). Then return to the circle, pass around the basket of names, and have everyone draw one (be sure to draw one yourself as well!). The name they draw is the character they will role-play as for the duration of the exercise.

Pass around the lists of character names and allow some time for everyone to think about or write down one question they would ask every other character from the texts. Encourage people to additionally think about their character’s personality if details in the text are sparse: what’s their background? What motivates them? What’s their outlook on life, and what are their opinions, passions, priorities? Then, split everyone up into small groups of about three or four (how you do this is up to you, but more often than not any group of three creates an interesting dynamic) and join a group yourself to begin the conversations.

step 3: let the havering commence!

Small-group discussions are a part of the exercise that can more or less run themselves: but here are a few things you will want to consider and/or alert the group to in order to ensure that a healthy environment is maintained: step 4: reconvene and reflect

Firstly, roleplaying will come more naturally to some people than others, and there will inevitably some moments of awkwardness. Don’t be afraid of that! Try to inhabit your characters as vividly and boldly as you can.

Secondly, don’t just stick to your preconceived notions about either the text as a whole or your character’s role in it. You’re there to give your character a voice! Think about their perspective, how they would be feeling, and the limits of what they know and don’t know at this point in the story. These all add colour and interest to the conversations that will take place.

Finally, any good story has conflict, and it will probably be inevitable as the small groups will probably have any number of differences in power, outlook, age, culture, etc. relevant to the characters. Don’t be afraid of conflict! Lean into the conflict, explore it, see what emerges from it. But also: keep it nonviolent and confined to the roles you’re inhabiting, and try to remain mindful and considerate of others in the group.

Allow for around ten minutes for the conversation, though if the conversation is lively or if there’s a lull you may wish to adjust the time limit. If time permits, you may also wish to shuffle around the groups a couple times to see what different combinations of characters can reveal.

Once you’re done with the small group conversations, call the group back to the circle to return to themselves and reflect on what just happened. This part is essential to un- packing and processing the encounters that have just taken place, and it’s also an opportunity for participants to give feedback. Some questions you might ask to facilitate discussion are: what struck you about other people’s behaviour? What struck you about the role you found yourself playing? Did anything make you uncomfortable? What did you find helpful about the exercise? What did you find unhelpful or difficult? What do you think you’ll take away from this exercise? People’s reflections can be many and varied, and often depend on the role they play! What’s important is that you create an opportunity to come back together as a community. After you’ve allowed time for reflection as a group, you can have someone close in prayer.

In addition to enriching our understanding of the Bible, havering can open up new connections between biblical texts and our lived experiences. It asks us to draw parallels between the lives of biblical characters and the way we interact with others in the world, and it allows us to use scriptural narratives as a framework for exploring how to have difficult or confrontational conversations. Most importantly, it’s a way of making scripture come alive in surprising ways and establishing scriptural interpretation as an active, communal engagement with the text.

— taylor driggers

Taylor Driggers is a PhD student at the University of Glasgow and co-convener of the scm Glasgow Network. He has served on General Council for scm Britain as International Student Representative.