My battery went dead Tuesday afternoon and I had left my power cord back in the hotel. So here’ a brief summary of Envision 08 events of the afternoon:
There was an emergent village gathering at lunch out on the lawn. I had the opportunity to meet a group of people from The Barn, a church in PA. We already had head of each other so it was cool to meet in person. Our faith communities have many parallel success and challenges.
The afternoon began with a set of quick presentations on emerging churches. It was done in the rapid-fire image-rich Japanese style of pecha kucha (20 slides - 20 seconds each). It was like drinking from a fire hose, so I will not attempt to summarize it here. It would have been helpful to have some digestion and discussion time after each presenter.
The racial, ethnic and gender diversity as well as the diversity of ministry contexts and theologies demonstrated just how varied the emerging church truly is. We are talking about something much larger than the stereotype of a group of 40-ish white men talking about postmodernism.
This was followed by some brief presentations by Ray Aldred on the need for the US to come to terms with its treatment of Native peoples (as Canada did the following day). Both he and Richard Twiss really opened my eyes to how Americans used Christianity to destroy Native culture. In our lunch gathering of emergent village he said (loosely paraphrasing), “The emergent church complains because you are now getting criticized and taking crap from conservative evangelicals. Well Christianity has shit all over my people for centuries. Welcome to my world.”
Now there’s an insight you wouldn’t get sitting in a typical church pew on Sunday.
Ruth Padilla DeBorst of the Latin American Theological Fraternity also spoke about the West’s need to confess. She began by noting how confession in Roman Catholic churches only takes place in a very private booth setting. It is heard by only one person. This drew a few “Amens” from the crowd. However, the audience was more silent as she went on to say, that lest we think she was Catholic bashing, Protestant can be even worse. We confess silently to God, alone in a our morning prayers where no human hears it. Confessions, she contended, must be herd by the community (particularly the offended community) to have any real impact.
Brian McLaren concluded by telling the story of his grandfather’s, father’s and uncle’s experience of growing up as a missionary family in Angola. While admitting he is often associated with writing and speaking about postmodernism, he explained that it is only one side of the coin. The other is post-colonialism. Just non-white westerners are coming into modernism, he said, western whites are excluding them by moving on to post modernism – i.e. we’re trying to control the conversation again. He concluded by speaking about orthodoxy. Perhaps, he said, it is not something we had in he past that we lost, but something that is to be in the future.
I skipped the Tuesday night worship and Perkins award ceremony as I had made some new friends and we need to get together and discuss some future projects together. Overall, it was great experience and the conveners are planning another one in 2010. The evangelical/emergent controversy is not carved in stone. Envision 08 was proof that we have much in common and just need to hear one another first hand.
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