This is a ramble, be warned!  In fact it arose last night as I was pounding out my daily pre-long-distance-footpath training miles so maybe its a rambling ramble.  Certainly it plays word games.

I was contemplating the paper I'm trying to write on history and theology (and rapidly running out of time for - has to be done by Saturday or I won't have the opportunity to do it), a significant aspect of which relates to accessibility.  Essentially, what I am wanting to say is that history as a resource for theological reflection is largely inaccessible (in my view, of course) but what do I mean by this? There are questions about the purpose for which published stuff is written, the use of high-level diachronic/chronological cause-and-effect trajectory-based accounts rather than small scale, possibly synchronic, narrative accounts. There are questions about the fact that stuff that is more interesting/useful is locked away in libraries and archives. There is also stuff about language (How many people stumbling across this have a clue what I mean by a diachronic cause-and-effect trajectory based account?), presentation, style and delivery.  One of the things that I think needs to be challenged is the rather dry, pseudo-academic style but without dumbing down the content.  And here is a BIG challenge - for I am trying to work in the constraints of academia which expects complex language and a specific writing style (pace, kind supervisors).  Now and then I read bits of feminist or liberation theology which talks about challenging this kind of expectation, but never actually does it: beyond a few neologisms it is pretty standard academic prose.

So, my brain wandered off, via thoughts on engineering and risk assessment (!) to think about this challenge.  There is a connection, you just have to wait for it!  Firstly risk assessment, the means by which I earned a living for many years.  The techniques involved are really simple.  A bit of arithmetic and boolean algebra are all that is needed to set up and analyse numerical risk models.  Even qualitative risk assessment is mostly just common sense.  As a result people are derisive about it as a field of expertise. But the fact is that whilst the techniques are straight forward, good risk assessment is highly skilled: there are some *&%$^^* awful examples out there, especially done by people who don't know what they're trying to do and maybe did a half day course.  Just because it is simple does not make it easy, they are not the same thing!  Simple, properly used means uncomplicated not unsophisticated.  There's a difference! 

Then engineering - and maths, which was always really the bit I was good at. Odd though it may be, I have a deep love of Victorian industrial architecture.  I love the elegance of the designs, the attention to detail (especially those wonderful brass oilers) the smooth lines, the hiss of steam, the greens, reds nad golds of the paint... ok you get my drift!  But the secret here, again, is simplicity that results in elegance.The same is true at the level of the physics/maths: good science, expressed mathematically is both simple and beautiful - it has symmetry, there are no odd balancing constants, rarely are the functions 'odd.'  This doesn't make the subject facile (I never did get my head around two-phase heat transfer!) but it means that the sophistication, even the complexity, is masked by its accessibility.

So, because if you've read this you are intelligent and interested, you'll have already worked out where it's headed: how does that relate to my work as a practical theologian? Practical theology, like risk assessment, employs simple methods, you don't need a PhD to understand or undertake theological reflection.  And like risk assessment, the simplicity of the method belies the sophistication of good practical theology.  There is plenty of the awful stuff around which can result in people considering the approach is trivial, shallow and not 'real' theology.  Practical theology is probably the 'engineering' of the 'theology' world (I guess that would make 'systematics' the 'physics') - it is done with aim of producing something that can be used by real people who don't know all the theory or the maths.  What comes out of it is probably no more (and no less) remarkable than a beam engine or electricity at the flick of a switch but it will have the same quiet beauty - an elegance, symmetry, balance that belie the depth of thought behind it.

How does all this relate to what I am trying to research and write?  I think there is something about language and style here.  Whilst technical terminology is needed, the language should retain an 'ease' not always evident in learned papers: sophistication is not measured in fog-factors!  But it goes beyond that - I was struck at the conference I recently attended that mine was the only paper that was not read verbatim, rather I presented a summary of it.  This is undoubtedly a throw-back to my engineering days, when people read the paper after they'd heard the presentation.  Ordinary folk in churches- even highly intelligent and educated folk - do not live in a world where people read papers to each other.  Such an approach is just not accessible for them.  I feel that in my work I have to move past those theologians who say accessibility is an issue and actually model it - and if that is unacceptable to the academy, well hey better fail with integrity than pass without it!  That doesn't mean wilful refusal to comply with regulations, but it does mean pushing the boundaries a bit.

I'm not sure that this helps me much with writing my paper, though it helps me a little with why I'm finding it difficult.  The whole question of accessibility is complex and multiplex and there's a long way to go with it.  Some people see practical theology as pretty trivial, and maybe, sometimes, they have a point. Good practical theology, like good engineering, needs to be elegantly simple.  My challenge is to work out and deliver that which is elegantly simple rather than something that is, ultimately, pretty trivial.