Well, I decided not to blog live but to link to the actual talks that were given at the conference. It was a great time of inspirational learning about being missional. So take a listen. I’m not sure how long these feeds will be here.

Click on the Right Arrow to stream. Click on the link to open in a player.

Enjoy and make any comments you would like to make.

Friday Evening
The Meaning of Missional: Scot McKnight

The Meaning of Missional - Part 1: Todd Hunter

The Meaning of Missional - Part 2: Todd Hunter

Saturday
Reflection: Todd Hunter

Morphing the Missional: Rose Swetman

What Shall I Call This Presentation?: Scot McKnight

Interview with a Missional Minded Atheist: Jim Henderson

Going Missional without Getting Mean: Todd Hunter

This weekend (March 23-24) I am attending the Missional Matrix mini conference in Shorline, WA at Vineyard Community Church. The two main presenters are Scot McKnight and Todd Hunter. Scot is a well published author whose blog The Jesus Creed is well read by many in the emerging church community and Todd is the national director of AlphaUSA.

My intention is to blog the conference as close to live as possible. Of course, that depends on the WIFI connection and the ability of my computer not to give me any trouble in the process. So tune in if you choose, and make comments if you like.

I have often suggested to folks that “bad theology is a cruel taskmaster.” I still believe that to be true. Last evening my wife and I went to a parents meeting for the care providers that our daughter, who is differently abled” has for her supportive employment. The business that provides her employment support is going through a business change from one form to another. What I noticed as the evening went on was that the “fear” of some of the parents was there, but they read it as something different. For a moment, I thought I was in a church meeting where the pastor and board were talking about their new vision of direction for the church and the pew sitters were filled with fear because of the security of the present in their mind would surely be replaced with the unknown of the future. The “fear” was a bit overwhelming, at least for one parent, who kept suggesting that she was representative of many in the audience. Yep! fear is a curel taskmaster. What fears do you have?

Recently, I was listening to Len Sweet talk about addressing the NRB and talking about “futuring.” He shared that he talked about five substantial areas. The one that caught my attention was “The Well Curve not the Bell Curve.”

You remember getting grades in school based on the “Bell Curve.” A few got an “A,” a few got and “F,” but most grades were in the center. This idea was based on normal statistical distribution. About a 150 years ago those working with math noticed that when different things were measured in a large sample, the results was clustered around an average. Plotted on a chart, it looked like a bell. The “Bell Curve” became normal in statistical distribution. It became a fundamental law of natural science, a foundation of statistics.

However, in the culture shift that is in process the “Bell Curve” has completely changed and is being replaced by a concept called the “Well Curve,” which suggests that the things at the edges, which were small in the “Bell Curve” are now large, while what was large in the “Bell Curve” is not smaller. Opposites are happing at the same time, but are not contradictory as may have been perceived in the “Bell Curve.”

As one example, in the consumer culture screens are getting smaller and larger at the same time, i.e., cell phones, PDAs, wrist PDAs / large screen TVs. It seems that the mid-sized is going out of style.

This reminded me of part of a course that I teach from time to time in which I deal with worldview and a concept I call: Thinking Like A Hebrew. The Hebrews of the Old and New Testament seems to have had the knack of taking things that were opposite and holding them together in tension. What was opposite was held in tension without trying to solve the tension.

Our Western worldview, however, wants to solve the tension. It is driven to get an answer, to come down on one side or another. In theology this can be seen in the arguments between the sovereignty of God and the free will of humankind. John Calvin came down on one side and Jacobus Arminius came down on the other. The debate still rages in some circles to this day. It is strange to say but both Calvin and Arminius were wrong when standing alone in their beliefs but in a Hebraic way of thinking, their seemingly opposites are correct when held together in the tension they produce.

In a world traveling at the speed of sound, where signs of change are all around us we need to hold the opposites in tension and build bridges from the sides to the middle, other wise we will have a bridge to nowhere, and that would just be useless.