Abstract:
South African people love sport. In a context where sport events like the Soccer World Cup or a Super 15 rugby match can draw crowds of up to 95 000 people, we cannot ignore the importance of sport. In contrast to the popularity of sport events and the huge crowds they manage to attract, most churches struggle to get 500 people to church on a Sunday morning.This situation raises two questions, namely: “What draw people to sport?” and “Can theology and Liturgical Studies in particular, learn something from sport?”<p< In order to pursue these and similar questions I used a practical theological model to guide me in my observation of the South African context. I’ve chosen the practical theologian RR Osmer’s model to work with. He works with the four tasks of Practical Theology and suggests four questions to guide a researcher or minister in their interpretation and response to situations. Answering each of these questions is the focus of the four core tasks of practical theological interpretation. The first question is: “What is going on?” Gathering information that helps us discern patterns and dynamics in particular episodes, situations, or contexts is the descriptive-empirical task of practical theological interpretation. I gathered information since the Soccer World Cup in South Africa in 2010. I identified ten moments in our sport contexts that will be looked at more closely within the framework of Osmer’s model. The ten moments are: <ul> <li>the need to predict the future</li><li> rituals</li> <li>physical contact</li> <li>tribal and together</li> <li>symbols</li> <li>tole models</li> <li>performance</li> <li>the meeting space</li> <li>Godly role</li> <li>defying death</li> </ul> The second question is: “Why is this going on?” Here we try to make sense of what we’ve found. What theories might help us to better understand and explain the patterns and dynamics we’ve begun to discover? These are the key questions of the interpretive task of practical theological interpretation. Here I’ve used theories from the arts and sciences to better understand and explain why the ten moments I identified in sport are occurring. The third question is: “What ought to be going on?” This is the normative task of practical theological interpretation. Here theological concepts are used to interpret particular episodes, situations, contexts or in this study, the ten moments. The aim of this task is to construct ethical norms to guide our responses, and to learn from “good practice”. The fourth question is: “How might we respond?” This is the pragmatic task of practical theological interpretation. The aim is to determine strategies of action that will influence situations in ways that are desirable. Here I looked into the possibility of the liturgical inculturation of the ten moments. In conclusion suggestions for the liturgical praxis were made./ Copyright
