…reportedly to figure out a plan for “raising up leaders” in the postmodern/emergent church.

Friday
1:40 I’m already doing a small internal cringe. An all male, all white organizing team has pulled this together (with the pre-requisite girl-Friday doing all the administration, though she is probably brilliant and underutilized.) Not a good sign. The room is entirely white.

1:45 Correction, Karen Ward just walked in. One ethnic minority. The room is filled with brilliant minds, hilarious wits, and fabulous accents. There’s a lot of clout here, as far as pomo church goes. Yet there is a sense of holding back in the room – a bit of institutional distrust maybe? Curious.

2:00 Ah, a sigh of relief. Kiwi Steve Taylor has brought a thoughtful, artful piece for “worship” on arriving and departing. He gave us a postcard of an art center in NZ. In front of it are large sculptures – abstract canoes that rotate with the moon cycles. They are there in honor of all who traveled there, many of whom were guided by the moon. Steve used this to help us think about physical voyages and spiritual voyages. We used this prayer as our refrain:

“Wind of God
Unpredictable
Blow on us.”

3:00 Here we are with the discussion questions. (Inevitable) In good postmodern fashion our table of five has blown off the carefully constructed instructions and did it our way. (This will end up being a repeated pattern over the three days…and this will come to drive me crazy as we get absolutely NO WHERE in most of the sessions.) My main table consists of Bob Roxbury, “semi-retired” and running bazillion ministries that support and train leaders. Sir Roxbury has one of the best quotes of the day, “I keep thinking, these people are growing, but they are growing past me!” Next in the circle is the infamous Andrew Jones, wearing a memory stick around his neck “as a symbol of giving and receiving.” Mark Priddy rounds the table, millionaire philanthropist running a church out of the generosity of his foundation. Finally I reunite with the darling of the UK pomo world, Si Johnston of London by way of Belfast. When asked to come up with some metaphors to describe the ministries/communities we are involved in Si’s most captured my imagination. He referred to his tribe as a “fuel stop” along the road and a place to “baptize people’s imagination.” It’s my hope that Monkfish Abbey serves these purposes as well.

4:10 I just ate a cookie WITHOUT EVEN THINKING ABOUT IT! (And this just after swearing off sugar for six weeks – except of one day a weekend.)

4:20 Our group is beginning to realize that we should have followed the instructions as we are now out of our allotted time and we’ve only gotten through the shortest of the three questions we’ve been asked to comment on.

5:00 Okay, now we are letting the whole group in on what we’ve come up with on a table by table basis. Poor Andrew, slightly jet lagged and clearly not into being the spokesperson, is heading up front to tell the folks what little we know. Yawn! We are all saying the same, expected things.

Community, family, midwifery, loving Jesus/not loving the institutions, contextual, not having the answers, organic, story, authenticity, being truly human, leadership as a jazz band, as fellow travelers….on and on an on.

Here’s a few that were pleasently surprising:

- Whoa! Some one actually mentioned that he had privileged as a white man.
- the strawberry patch as a metaphor for leadership training – sending out runners, everything interconnected. Also the idea of an aspen tree because they have a common underground root system.
-Karen Ward: not just extending the hand of Jesus to the world, but living out a Trinitarian reality in an urban village
-contemplation elevated over activity (as a pastor)
-lots of word/breath imagery…blowing, breathing (ahh…people twigging in to our girl the Muse)
-a desire to have more sense of commissioning from local churches (rather than being ordained by a big, distant organization)
-being allowed to be family as opposed to being required to join a program (my thoughts: is being a FAMILY actually easier than being in a program?!?!?)
- our purpose as ministers: what is your dna? How can we help show that off? (i want to be all about this one)
-the metaphor: moving from gas lamp to light bulb – we knew how to make a filament burn, but not how to create an atmosphere that would allow it to keep burning. (Dwight Friesen says that it’s modern to want to create an atmosphere that keeps something going. That what we are really supposed to do is to let thing have a natural life cycle. Barry Taylor’s praxis seems to echo this as he keeps birthing and ending and rebirthing thing.)

6:00 Terrific catered dinner of squash juice, beans, rice and pineapple tamales. Good gal dish with Karen, Holly and sweet baby Ellie.

Evening: Lots of beer with Brits at the Yardhouse. 100 beers on tap. There are about 20 us of driving the waitresses crazy and checking out blogs across the table. The UK contingent can’t understand why we need to wait while the hostesses set up tables. They keep running up to the bar for more beers instead of waiting for the waitress. We save one bloke from ordering a Michelob. (A close shave.) By the end the night we are plotting to annex the Netherlands as our own personal country. We figure if we get bored with playing dictator we’ll sell it on ebay.

Here’s a closing thought, everyone keeps talking about the pain of risk taking. But you know what, risk taking doesn’t always mean sacrifice and having a desert experience, sometimes it can be life giving – a walking into wonder.