Relevance X 2012 and Relevance LEAD 2012

I'm posting to invite you to two events...IN VEGAS! Both events take place at the same time, so you choose the event that fits your needs.


Relevance LEAD 2012: Create. Innovate. Transform
Thursday, February 16 - Sunday, February 19, 2012
University United Methodist Church, Las Vegas, NV

LEAD is a gathering of one hundred participants that includes young clergy, young lay leaders, and others who are working with young adults in the United Methodist Church. LEAD will bring together the collective wisdom of those that want to transform and grow young adult ministry in the church for the ultimate transformation of the world with the love of Jesus Christ. 

• As of December 6, 2011, there were about 30 spaces left.
• Registration to Relevance LEAD includes access to Relevance X. 
• Press Release about Relevance LEAD 2012 available here. (PDF)

or....

Relevance X 2012: Immerse yourselves. Love hard. Care for those who persecute you.
Friday, February 17 - Sunday, February 19, 2012
University United Methodist Church, Las Vegas, NV

More than an event you attend, this conference is a movement that focuses on empowering young adults (18-35) through worship, service, uniting our voices, and actively creating change in our communities. While no shortage of commentary continues to address the exodus of the under 35 crowd in today's mainline denominations, those who plan and gather at Relevance will be creating and telling a different story.

• 20% off discount code available here.
• Article about Relevance X 2011 event available here. 
• Press Release about Relevance X 2012 available here. (PDF)

Relevance Ministries is the official young adult ministry of the Desert Southwest Conference of The United Methodist Church.

Full disclosure: I will be speaking at Relevance Lead with @pastordj about a new project scheduled to be made public by February 1, 2012. I will be sure to post about the project here on the blog once final details are in place. Full speaker list posted here.

I'm excited about these conferences. It will be a breakneck weekend...because I will be flying back to Ohio on Sunday night in order to be back at MTSO in time to meet the MTSO Harding Scholarship participants on Monday afternoon. Good stuff - days full of leadership cultivation, conversation and recruitment. Pretty happy.

We Are Thanking the Lord

Matins

Now we are awake
and now we are come together
and now we are thanking the Lord.

This is easy,
for the Lord is everywhere.

God is in the water and the air,
God is in the very walls.

God is around us and in us.
God is the floor on which we kneel.

We make our songs for God
as sweet as we can

for God's goodness,
and, lo, God steps into the song

and out of it, having blessed it,
having recognized our intention,
having awakened us, who thought we were awake,
a second time,
having married us in the air and water,

having lifted us in intensity,
having lowered us in beautiful amiability,

having given us
each other,
and the weeds, dogs, cities, boats, dreams
that are the world. 

What Do We Know: Poems and Prose Poems by Mary Oliver

From A Place For Prayer, November 25, 2011

New Year

It's been quite the fall. This fall was full of travel, memories, work, conversations and fruitful service. The weeks leading up to Thanksgiving felt like a sprint towards the closing of the season and preparation for a new rhythm of work and service.

This Thanksgiving has been bittersweet in some way. One relative passed away on Thanksgiving morning after a long battle with cancer. I am watching another relative slide away from awareness of the present time, and that has been very difficult to watch. (For the record, I was the kid who cried when reading Flowers for Algernon in the sixth grade.) But every Thanksgiving season - for all of us - can hold in tension the joyful and the difficult.

I've preached before about how living one's faith takes practice - practicing being in community, practicing spiritual disciplines, practicing prayer. It is funny to think about our faith this way. I remind myself sometimes that while Sundays come up over and over again, each and every week (imagine that!), holidays such as Thanksgiving and Christmas arise just once a year. Therefore, even as we sink into familiar rituals and actions, we encounter layers of experiences from years past....and these experiences only come around once a year.

I received a Common English Bible in the mail this week; it was an unexpected surprise. I received it in return for filling out an online survey a couple of weeks ago. I flipped it open at random, and was confronted with Luke 8:40-56. This is the story of the bleeding woman who touched Jesus' cloak. In the middle of this story, we are interrupted by Jairus' daughter's miraculous healing. In both instances, there is an undercurrent of trust, and faith. A good theme to lean on.


This coming Sunday marks the start of a new year - the beginning of Year B in the Revised Common Lectionary, and the first Sunday of Advent. It is a season of renewal, and a fresh start, and I look forward to seeing what lies ahead. Advent is a time of waiting, of being present, of anticipating the familiar while also being ready for the fresh, new murmurings of the Spirit. O come, O come, Emmanuel.

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Thankful: This year, I am thankful for deep and abiding friendships with colleagues across the conference and across the connection. I did not expect to deepen so many friendships over the past few months, and I am thankful for the movement of The Divine within our lives, surprising us when we least expect it.

An excellent article about Claremont Lincoln University's interfaith work.

Two Schools, Three Religions (So Far)
Claremont Lincoln University is a collaboration between two established schools: the Claremont School of Theology and the Academy for Jewish Religion, California, which trains future rabbis, cantors and chaplains from all branches of Judaism, although Orthodox Jews do not accept the academy's ordination. A Muslim institution, Bayan College, is in the works: it will be part of Claremont Lincoln, established through a partnership between the Islamic Center of Southern California. Administrators say it will be one of the first schools to train Sunni and Shiite imams entirely within the United States.

It is helpful to read an article written from a secular perspective. Also, there is a helpful statement about diversity initatives in the school:

Claremont is trying to attract more conservative students, not just liberal believers who frequently sign up for interfaith efforts. In doing so, both students and faculty are confronting the fact that no religion has one set identity.

It also references the Association of Theological Schools how individual schools are responding to needs in the world:

...says (Dan) Aleshire (executive director of the Association of Theological Schools): “A lot of theological schools are perhaps ahead of some of the thinking in their respective denominations or ecclesiastical communities,” he says. “They are more ready for this kind of intellectual and pastoral engagement, where the people in the denominations are less sure about it.”

 I find it interesting that so many of our prospective students are asking questions about our Master of Divinity with a specialization in Interreligious Contexts. I appreciate students' understandings that we live in a diverse world...

Question and Answer

Today's email questions (and answers):

Yes, you can delay enrollment. Yes, you will need to update some documents next year. I am sorry that that makes you frustrated.

Yes, you can enroll in theological school. No, you cannot pursue a shorter degree because it is more convenient; if you want to follow career goal X, career goal X requires a different degree. Also, school will take time and energy. I understand you are busy. But school will take time, too. Degrees = working for something, and learning, and thinking, and all sorts of other neat stuff. If you want to enroll in theological school just to jump through a hoop, you are shortchanging yourself. Learning is fun. Hard, but fun.*

No, you cannot pursue an all-online program at our school. You cannot get a fully online theological degree that is also accredited. Thanks for asking, though. (Not being snarky...don't intend to come across that way...)

Sometimes, I think that my specialized ministry is email. That's legit.

*I didn't send the last couple of sentences. Obviously.

Theology After Google

So I've been talking with friends and colleagues about the future of the church (that sounds ominous and heavy and dark, but hey - asking tough questions makes life worth living!) and there is a theme that keeps coming up in about five different projects/ongoing conversations/jobs I am involved in. It is the theme that young adults are not interested in traditional pulpit ministry. That is NOT to say that young adults do not feel called to leadership roles and ordination within mainline denominations, nor is it to say that young adults are not interested in serving the church and/or serving within a church. But there little or no interest to simply slip into the role or job that existed before without making any changes.

I'm not talking about simple updates of how we lead within our local churches - I am talking about an awareness of what it means to be church - and what we need in our leaders who want to move the church forward.

Read this article. It is long, and substantial, and relevant, and worth reflecting upon: 
Theology and Church After Google | The Progressive Christian. 

And don't get hung up on the word "progressive." If you don't self-identify as liberal or progressive, don't simply dismiss this article as irrelevant to you and your ministry. This article is about the relevance of the church and how we are recruiting and developing leaders for work in the church and in the world. This article is about how we think about theology, discuss theology, and do theological reflection in the world.

A block quote...for illumination:

To pursue “theology after Google” does not mean to gleefully destroy all traditional Christian beliefs, to abandon the church, or to advocate a post-Christian worldview. On the contrary, it does, however, mean entering in good conscience into a new kind of open and exploratory discourse—a discourse in which one’s conversation partners are not committed in advance to landing where past theologians have landed. Many of them do end up with a vibrant Christian identity, but that’s no longer a pre-condition for theological dialogue. Theology after Google means navigating the treacherous waters of contemporary culture, religion, science, and philosophy—without knowing in advance that the harbor in which one finally drops anchor will be the same theological port from which the ships of old set sail. For those of us who live, work, and think in a Google-shaped world, such certainties about the outcome of the adventure are just not to be had in advance.

There. Thoughts?

On an unrelated note, this weekend includes presiding over a wedding (hooray! I love weddings!). Monday kicks off three solid weeks of major travel for several different projects and service for the school...and an admissions deadline. A bit apprehensive, but it should be a blast. An exhausting, whirlwind, life-affirming blast.

Update: another conversation about the same article, and what it means to think about vocation.

We long for peace, but....

Ferocious God, we fear your peace.

We say we want peace, but we confess that war and violence capture our imagination and our spirits.

Violate our violence with the transforming power of your love.

Wrench us from all hatreds and loves that are the breeding ground of our violence.

We cannot will that your peace come,
        but through the Spirit you make it possible for us to live in your peace.

So fire us with that Spirit
       that the world might be flooded with your reconciling kingdom.

Amen.





Hauerwas, Stanley. Prayers Plainly Spoken. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1999. 80.

Source: RevGalBlogPals