It was quite a fun 2 days here so far, although quite sleepy. Yesterday started with Donald Miller speaking about "Free Market Jesus" and talked about the three most dominant influences on the church (in order):
1) free market economy - commercialization 2) the enlightenment/age of reason/Darwinism 3) the bible
it was quite fascinating and I resonated with what he was saying as he developed each of those and why he felt they are the dominant influencer and how they influence the church.
I spoke after him with a message based on the book "They Like Jesus but not the Church" and focused on the Christians sub-culture and bubble that church leaders often fall into without knowing it and then create little sub-cultures and worlds within our churches and remove ourselves from the world. The culture then primarily bases its opinions on the church and Christians on media, extreme evangelists etc. - and tried to gently be asking who are those in church leadership building relationships with outside of the church.
Today, I spoke twice - once was on homosexuality and the church. I will need to write further on this, but as the 50 minute time slot ended, the majority of those there stayed for another hour having open discussion. It was a very wonderful discussion and three people ended up openly shared about their homosexual attractions and struggles and how the church has either helped them or how they are not able to talk about it in their church. Because it went so long afterward, several of the other speakers at the event ended up all having a good discussion on the reality of what all this means in our churches and leaders responses which is much needed.
I also spoke a second time on the bible and theology in the emerging church.
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then headed over to the Relevant offices and did a podcast with them and hung out with Cara and Adam and had some very fun discussion. Relevant seems like a very fun place to work at and it is very cool seeing what they are doing and Cara and Adam are great observers of church and culture. They recently launched Radiant Magazine for females and it looks like a great magazine in addition to Relevant.
Then back to the event to watch the David Crowder Band and got to catch up a bit with them. I shall always remember Dave and myself having a late night conversation a few years ago about hair products, the process he goes through preparing his hair and I shared some personal hair secrets with him. Don spoke tonight about "story" and about how we are drawn into the story of God vs. bullet points of a sermon. We drove back to the hotel after that and now I sit, tired but also wide awake. I speak two more times in the morning and then head back to the airport to head home.
Fusion and LeadNow is a really, really great event for young adult leaders and they are holding this conference with the same format and speakers two more times, once in Washington DC area in May and then in Dallas in September. I highly recommend this event for anyone in the area, as it is so well done and Mark and Brian and the others putting this on are the sweetest people you could ever imagine and do such a great job with the whole thing. I think there were 550 leaders for the pre-event LeadNow time and over 2,000 coming today and tomorrow for the Fusion part of it.
I want to write a little more about the time today in regards to the talk on homosexuality and the church and the discussion afterward, as I believe it is something that church leaders need to really think about and process in ways that we perhaps haven't done too good a job doing.
Sleepy now. 7-11 coffee in the morning.
