Sunday, August 14, 2005

District of Columbia

I'm posting from D.C. this week. Vacation. Unfortunately it's very much on the cheap. I like the city so far, but I'm finding the mass transit a little overcomplex. Anyway, the Leadership Summit was awesome, but I had like no time to decompress, since I had to get on the road right away. I'd not seen Bill Hybels speak before, and to be honest, I had a little bit of a pre-conception in the back of my mind, but he ended up being really cool. And several of the speakers said really powerful things about the AIDS crisis and other things going on the world that evangelicals are by and large ignoring. So although I'm drawn toward (and being enriched by) Brian McLaren and the so-called "emergent" movement (for lack of a better word) rather than the Hybels/Warren megachurch set, I'm realizing that the Kingdom needs all kinds. Some people need the Willow Creek type experience. I feel led toward something that, as McLaren writes, "maximizes discontinuity". In other words, I don't think it's enough (for me) to just bring in drums and punch up the usual church service a bit. I want an overhaul. I want a new thing entirely, or maybe something ancient rather than modern. But Paul talks about members of the body and if I'm the appendix or whatever, I should criticize noone else.

Peace.

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