Emerging Church Conference – Day 1

The Emerging Church Conference hosted by the Center for Action and Contemplation here in Albuquerque, NM (http://www.cacradicalgrace.org/) kicked off today.  There was a lot on the plate as we heard from Phyllis Tickle, Brian McLaren, and Richard Rohr so I think there is significantly too much for me to process now on this blog before I head to bed (and tomorrow promises to be not only a long day, but an early one as well).  But here are a few thoughts.

Phyllis Tickle – while I thought what she had to say was good, I also found it to be her latest book, The Great Emergence, condensed down into a 50 minute thing.  If you want to know what she said, then read the book (it’s a quick read) and I think does give some framework for our conversation now.

Brian McLaren – Much of what he said I had heard before, partially because I’ve read his books and talked with him, but also because I was at the Everything Must Change tour last year (and he even used the same slides which I thought was great).  He began with an exercise – he showed us a video and asked us to count the number of times people passed a basketball.  If you want to view the video, then click here and do this yourself: http://viscog.beckman.illinois.edu/flashmovie/15.php

 

So how many times did people pass the ball?

 

 

Did you notice the gorilla?

If you didn’t, go back and watch the video again.

Brian’s point was that when we’re looking for something in particular (i.e. the number passes) then we miss something else.  So when we’re trained to think about Jesus in a particular way, then what are we missing?

Richard Rohr – I thought he was great tonight!  He talked about being a non-dual thinker (which we in the western world have perfected, being dual thinkers that is).  Oddly he told us not to think and yet I think he gave us a lot to think about… hmmm… 

A couple of things Rohr said: “Jesus did not come to change God’s mind about humanity, but to change humanities mind about God.”

“Great love and great suffering introduce all people to non-dual thinking.”

“Once you need to prove one party right and another wrong, you are not a non-dual thinker.”

Anyway, there is much more to contemplate (a la contemplative, non-dual thinking) but I am too tired to put it down here now.

Salvation

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about salvation.  Well, I think a lot about salvation anyway, but lately I’ve been thinking more about salvation with relation to the view held by many that one must “accept Christ” before death in order to be saved.  This is the common view that drives some church evangelism and often, I find, is what pushes some people to attempt to convince loved ones to believe.  I’ve done a few baptisms in the hospital that have also be driven by this belief.

But I’ve been asking myself, is this really what it’s all about?  Is this what God really wants from us – to grudginly admit that there might be a god who will save us and that god might have appeared in the form of Jesus and if I say that I believe (which I may or may not really) before I die in a sort of self-centered way then I will be saved?  Is this really what it’s about?

I think it’s not.

I think God wants to be in a relationship with us.  I think true salvation is found in loving God, following God, following Jesus, and the freedom that is found in that.  I think we don’t have a real relationship when we grudgingly admit that there may be a god who… because that’s only self-serving.  I think of it like a person who gets into a marriage not because they love the person they’re married to but because they don’t want to be alone.  It will be a disaster because the person who loves the other will resent the other’s lack of love while the one who doesn’t love will resent the love of the other (somewhat convoluted I know, but hopefully that makes sense).

Now, the funny thing about love – pure, unadulterated love –  is that it tends to transform people.  So perhaps in all my cynicism about how it isn’t about accepting Christ before death, I can still hope that if somebody does grudgingly accept Christ for their own sake, the love that God shows will transform them just as it transforms all of us.

So that’s where my mind has been lately….