I recently received a copy of Fearless: Imagine Your Life Without Fear, by Max Lucado for review. As the title suggests, Lucado employs his warm narrative approach to encourage readers to break free from their fears and live faith-filled lives in Christ.
In order to do this, though, we must first recognize and identify how great a hold fear has on many of our lives. As Lucado writes in the first chapter:
The Next Evangelicalism: Freeing the Church from Western Cultural Captivity by Soong-Chan Rah, opens the door to hard conversations that we, as followers of Jesus, must no longer avoid. Talking about race, reconciliation and idolatrous captivity of the church is uncomfortable but, if we are serious about redemption (both within and through the church) we must engage these sensitive issues.
I am increasingly exasperated by those who write off Soong-Chan as an “angry Asian man,” and nothing more. In the introduction, Soong-Chan explains:
There are portions of the book that are intended to provoke. There may be times when the reader may react with anger, derision, defensiveness and so forth. But as you read through the major arguments of this book, I hope you will find my deepest concern for the church, the body of Christ… The true intention of the book is to bring reconciliation and renewal to the church in America.
Part three of an ongoing series of reflections about my Idea Camp experience (feel free to check out part one and part two)…
After I came home from The Idea Camp, my wife commented on how completely my inner geek had been unleashed. “I had no idea,” she said to me, shaking her head. It’s true — I spent a good deal of the weekend bathed in the warm glow of a small army of MacBooks running TweetDeck.
I definitely experienced firsthand what Charles Lee wrote, “Social networking is more than a nice tool, it’s cultural architecture.” For me, tech facilitated friendship. In some cases, I was able to connect with friends who I had only known through the blogosphere; in others, I met people face to face and have since been connected online. In both cases, the transition from online to offline friendship was pretty seamless. Gives me some hope for facilitating online/offline friendship and community in our church.
In terms of participation, tech opened doors for people to be involved in many different ways. As DJ Chuang observes, The Idea Camp was a great venue for connecting the online and offline worlds, “We had as many people online as in-person at the event, Q&A was interaction with both onliners and offliners, relationships initiated online came together in person, etc.”
On a personal level, it was so encouraging to gather with like-minded friends who are asking similar questions and seeking to build God’s kingdom in their local communities. Working in church ministry has an isolating effect, and sometimes it’s good to get together with people who are thinking in the same direction just to know that you’re not crazy. I heard that same refrain recently from Mike Bishop, author of What is Church?, in describing the close friendship he has built with a group of people around the country that started with the question, We’re not crazy, are we?
Like Rob Bell musing in this Nooma video, I used to wonder where God was. But after many years of walking with Jesus, now I wonder where God isn’t.
That being said, I’m not fully convinced Jesus is in that bucket of spumoni, piece of burnt toast, cheese puff, moth, rock, tree trunk, nasty scar, or the imprint left by a drippy cinnamon bun.
But I’ll let you decide for yourself [h/t: Serious Eats]. Let’s do this thing:
Much to the credit of The Idea Camp, last night’s main session was filled with so many great ideas that it was hard for slow-blogging me to keep up… So, this is my almost-live blog from the session! The live Twitter feed is definitely worth following — instant feedback on what’s resonating with people, shared insights and interesting responses.
A huge part of my experience so far has been listening to people’s stories. There really is a collective wisdom happening here, and it was great to share a nice dinner at In-N-Out with friends, among them LT, Eugene Cho, Paul from Vox, and Todd Hiestand. Got to hear a little more about the International Justice Mission story from Daniel Li. The need for justice for the oppressed in the world is overwhelming; may God continue to guide the faithful work of IJM to serve those in greatest need for justice.
First, we heard from the people behind Deidox — “short films telling true stories of an active God.” The Dei refers to God, the dox to documentaries. Interesting approach, especially the Radiohead-esque pay what you want strategy.
Next, Dave Gibbons spent some time talking about innovation, and brought John Park (from Google) and Maxim Carp to the stage to interview. Dave talked about the disequilibrium, and its associated fear and stress, cause a person to go laser in focusing on a perceived threat. It helps a person deal with the immediate problem, but limits one’s macro-perspective.
headsparks* 