[Ian Cameron McLaren]

Today was a good day.

Lauren and I went to the Evolving Church Conference at Tyndale, and it was incredible. Honestly, I was so impressed with the whole show, and the guys did an amazing job putting this together. I had been looking forward to this conference for a while, and it did not disappoint. I don’t even know where to start putting together all the stuff that was laid out by the likes of Brian McLaren, Donald Miller and Chris Seay, so what I might do is just roll through the highlights of the big sessions. I will do this not only to share this good stuff but also for my onw benefit, just to get my thoughts straight.

First up, the morning session with Chris Seay.

Basically, Chris Seay really focused on the importance of ’story’. As Christians, we must be engaged in THE story of Christ and his kingdom; we must look to the past to see why we are the way we are and then try to begin to understand who it is that God has created us to be. We need to present the story as REAL [we are all real people with real problems] so as to fully reveal the beauty and truth of who God is and what he has done for us through Christ. He showed a clip from Walk The Line, the part where Johnny Cash is in the studio playing some tired old gospel song and the producer puts the kaibosh on that and basically tells him he needs to be real and tell his own story rather than regurgitating the same old stuff. Once Johnny Cash began to sing from the heart, that is when an impact was made. We need to be real, open and vulnerable with the people around us. The realness of our personal stories juxtaposed with the love of God is a powerful and beautiful thing. In modern times, we have broken the Gospel down into a set of propositions, but without the power of story to back it up none of it makes sense and therefore there is no lasting impact. There must be that connecting point, and it can only happen when we open ourselves up and just be real, allowing others to see who we really are and the impact of the love of Christ in our lives. And we must be willing to take the time to listen to other people’s stories as well, inviting them to be a part of THE story.

Couple more little nuggets from Chris Seay:
He talked a bit about how consumerism is the greatest threat to Christianity today, and that sadly the church has really been feeding into and not fighting that problem. We are not to be consumers, but collaborators in God’s work, seeking to meet the real needs of people and not their felt needs. And everytime we speak, we must seize the opportunity to bless and not curse.

[sorry if this summary is a little choppy or incomplete, I’m just working from the notes I wrote down on the fly.]

That’s all for now, I think. The highlight of the day for me was for sure Brian McLaren and I will get to that tomorrow maybe. My head is kind of spinning with information overload, and I was hit with a lot of thought provoking stuff. It will take me a few days to digest it all, but I just have to say again that it was a wonderful day and I am thankful to have been able to attend.