Isn't She Beautiful #2

MAIN SESSION #2
Rob Bell and Don Golden
Various questions regarding Church

During this session, Rob and Don didn’t necessarily answer questions specifically, but rather they group a majority of the questions into one area:
What or how do you organize the Church?

They said that when organizing and seeking to allow the Spirit to give life to the Church, one should ask three questions:

Who is Jesus among you?
Why did he come to town?
How are you/we going to organize ourselves around that?

One underlying them that under-girded this discussion was this realization:
You can’t take people where they don’t want to go

So, the only way to answer the third question is to first explore the first 2. In other words, Christology and Missiology precede Ecclesiology.


They then talked about the specific things one needs to take into account when organizing the Church:

Cause
Congregation
Corporation

A Balanced focused Church deals with all three spheres equally.
A Church that is unbalanced towards Corporation and Congregation tends towards the mega-Church model and can lack a depth of cause (i.e. Christology and Mission)

A Church that is unbalanced towards Cause and Corporation, tends towards the Para church and lacks the support of a congregation (the Body of Christ).

In their terminology:
Corporation: Is the administrative and community outreach endeavors, administrative obviously being organizing the leadership of the Church in such a way that the programmatic portion of the Church can serve the Congregation and call them to the Cause. Community being organizing and working with outside community to serve those who live there.
Cause: The answers to the questions: Who is Jesus, and why did He come to town?
Congregation: Simply the Body that gathers around the cause.

Breakout session with Matt Krick
Narrative Theology

LET IT BE KNOWN: I was really looking forward to this session, and was horribly disappointed. This guy was just not prepared or well organized at all and it just seemed to jump all over the place. So if my notes are incoherent and make no sense…it’s not my fault.

The premise of Narrative Theology is pretty simple: We understand our story better when we understand the story of God.

The goal of narrative theology is pretty simple: Look at the narrative of Scripture, study the Jewish roots and the cultural settings in which scripture took place, and then develop the themes in light of those findings.

Matt used N.T. Wright’s “How Can the Bible Be Authoritative” as the backdrop for talking about the themes. He said that looking at is as a play with 4 complete acts and 1 incomplete act where our story resides illuminates scripture for us. The acts are:
Creation…
The Fall…
Israel’s history…
Jesus…
The Church, which includes two things itself:
The mission of the Church explained, which is complete
The life of the Church completely fulfilled with a New Creation, which is not complete yet. This is where our story is found.
He made a pretty cool point, one that I have often thought of:

Most of our theology starts with The Fall, with Sin…but Scripture, the Bible begins with Creation…It begins with “The Good”

He talked about how the New Creation part of act 5 is really the restoration of Act 1. He talked about how the totality of Scripture is really about the restoration of relationships, relationships with…
God…
Others…
Ourselves as God-image bearers…
The earth, all of Creation…

He pointed to Genesis 1 and 2 as some background, explaining that from the beginning we had an identity, a mission, and a command that illuminates the relationships listed above:
Identity: Made in the image of God for Fellowship with God.
Mission: Cultivate the earth and be fruitful so that fellowship with others can be cultivated
Commands: Be Fruitful and multiply…Fill the earth…Rest, Sabbath…do not eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and evil.

He made the strong point, that Following Jesus does not change these things. Jesus still calls us to this kind of life.

He pointed to “Be Fruitful and multiply…fill the earth” and “Go and make Disciples of all nations” as parallel commands.

He talked about the fall, and how the patter of sin is that it moves from:
Individuals---to others---to the systems of government---to the earth.

This is called “Anti-Kingdom”…

There was lots of other stuff here, but he was all over the place and I couldn’t follow him that good.

He did say this though: Identity and mission are combined, who you are and what you are called to do cannot be separated.

He took the mission of Abraham (blessed to be a blessing), Sinai (Kingdom of priests, a holy nation), and the mission of Jesus (heal the sick, restore sight to the blind, preach the good news of God) as a sign that God was seeking “Shalom” for the world.

Some good books referenced:

The Drama of Scripture, by Bartholomew and Goheen
Engaging God’s World, by Cornelius Plantanga
Simply Christian, by N.T. Wright
Heaven is a Place on Earth, by Michael Whitmer
For the Beauty of the Earth, by Steven Bouma Prediger
Slaves, Women, and Homosexuals, by Herman Webb
The Truth Stranger Than it Used to be, by unknown
Colossians Remixed, by unknown

He ended the session with a really cool question and answer:

How do we live the first 4 acts as the 5th act comes to fruition?
Depend on the Spirit…
In community with others who do the same…


MAIN SESSION #3
Rob Bell
Creativity

Note: This session was probably my favorite of the conference. I am very much into whatever causes one to think creatively. The stuff that Rob talked about was geared towards those that teach, but almost everything he said could just as easily apply to someone (or a team) working towards planting a Church.

Ok, there are two types of people who consider themselves creative:
The person who says “I think outside of the box”.
And the person who asks the question “what, there is a box?”

I, like Rob, am the second person.

Rob posed a really good question: Where do ideas come from?

He then talked at length about 3 areas where ideas, and creativity grow

Sacramental Imagination:

Genesis 28:10-16
“Surely the Lord was in this place, and I was not aware of it”
Jacob wakes up to his destiny. Before this he lived a lie, even faking as if he was Esau. When asked by the angel what his name was, he finally answers “I am Jacob”

The point is that we fake through things sometimes, never coming to grips with who we really are. And when we fake our way through in this way, we cannot recognize where God is and what He is doing in our midst.

When we wake up to this that is “sacramental imagination”
Psalm 24 says that the earth is literally drenched in God. That the glory, “Kavod” of God is in all of creation: His weight, significance, and presence is in everything. Because of that we have unending access to creativity.

Art
The art of tension

Pointing to Luke 15, Jesus leaves the story of the prodigal son unresolved. Life is sometimes unresolved.
Sometimes we have to leave things as they are, leaving the tension so that the power of the story invites people to find themselves in it. The art of leaving tension fosters discussion, which is a way of handing the creative process off to others.
The art of Elimination

Q How much can you say, how much can you do, with the fewest words or actions?

To answer this question Rob suggests asking a series of questions to guide you through thinking. (By the way, I think these would be great questions for us to work through as we move on with the plant)

What is the Big, Controlling idea?
If I only had a few words to capture this idea, what words/phrases/actions would get thrown out?
What’s good, but not necessary?
What is this, in its most raw, pure, and unadulterated form?
What about this idea most compels me to act?

The art of Turning the edit button off

If you ever have a thought beginning with:
What if…
What about…
I wonder if we could…
Have you ever thought about…etc…

Capture it, write it, record it, and revisit it.

ABANDONMENT IS CENTRAL TO CREATIVITY…THERE IS NO bOX!!!


Resist the urge to listen to people who say:
That’s crazy…
We could never do that…
That makes no sense…
Go forward with working through this anyway, you never know what God will do with it?

The art of Expulsion

Q: Why do you care about this?
Q: What is it about that thing that you care about, that people NEED to hear?
Q: What do you have to say, do…what do you have to get rid of or you’re going to explode?

The art of Creating Space

Sabbath is a creative practice. We explore our thinking when we rest, when we have time to stare out a window, when we have time to read a book, when we have time to go for a walk, when we have time to play with our kids etc…

Sabbath is a creative practice.

The art of Risk

Cool quote: “Preaching is like learning to play the violin in public, it’s hard on everyone’s ears”

Creativity involves risk, and risk involves the potential to stub your toe and look stupid in public.

But nothing, no idea is wasted in God’s economy…If the world and everything in it is God’s, then everything is an opportunity.

Best quote of the whole conference:

Churches ought to lead the world in innovation and creativity!
Why?
Because the tomb is empty!!!

With risk, not everybody will like, appreciate, understand, or get it…and some will criticize your risk…even if it works. Remember:
If you’re going to speak the life changing message of Jesus, you have to remember that even the Pharisees took seriously the command to be fruitful and multiply!

Buckets…Chunks…Marinade

Accumulate everything!!!

Like was said earlier, record everything in some way. Collect Newspaper, internet articles. Get TIVO. Buy a small voice recorder, save it all and revisit it. Accumulate Buckets of junk!!! Remember: The whole world is a commentary!

Work through those things when the time arises

Working through your Buckets help you to Chunk things together. Having large buckets help you create tastier chunks.

Have Sabbath with your Chunks

Marinade in what you have.

If you are teaching, ask yourself these key questions of the text:

Are there any key words to explore?
Are any of these words pictures to be painted?
What are the connections?
Who are the people, and what are the histories or customs that are coming into play?
Are there concepts here that are mentioned elsewhere in scripture?

Whether you are preaching, planting a Church, leading a small group…or whatever, you have to move from:

I have to say something…
To…
I have something to say