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photo: morning at my campsite in The Appalachians.
On May 21st after a 3-day approach camping and fly fishing through the Appalachians, I arrived at Whiteboard Sessions in Virginia Beach, VA. It was a great conference to be apart of, as 4 of the 7 speakers delivered on the promise of the conference, which was centered on “ideas in ministry – ideas that will stretch our thinking and shape the church’s future.”
I think the biggest take-away, for me, was the way in which the speakers presented their “ideas.” Like I said before, 4 of the 7 speakers nailed it. And the others, well… fell far short.
To be clear, their failure at this conference is not a criticism of their message, as in all of the presentations – the content was solid and delivered well – as my notes can attest. Rather, their failure had to do with the context of the conference and the inadequacy of their message to fulfill on the promised deliverable — ideas that will stretch our thinking and shape the church’s future.
And I wonder in this Digital Age, how many of us are doing the same thing… Coming to the party completely unaware of the theme, wearing Black Tie, when the theme is clearly 80′s Dance Party. No doubt we look good, but in looking good we miss the whole point of the festivities — in which looking out-of-place is the whole point. Ideas, when they are prophetic, are most times outlandish and extreme, and I’m afraid 3 of the speakers missed the chance to ideate all over the stage, instead they settled for safe presentations and genteel encouragements.
I don’t like that. I don’t like that we settle for safe and sterile, especially when the environment is so muddled and confused. Ideas and innovation is what presses our faith forward through times of emergence, even if those ideas are controversial, or even heretical, because heresy is just contrary opinion to orthodox belief, and sometimes we must be a little heretical to move the lumbering giant of organized religion one step in the right direction… to be sure, it ain’t easy, just ask Galileo and Luther.
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