Furtherness: Holiness Reoriented in a Changing World Conference - Day 1

Keegan and I flew from LAX this morning to attend the Holiness as Furtherness conference at our alma mater NNU in Nampa, ID.  In many ways the conference is centered around the relationship between the Holiness movement and some of the themes rising out of the emerging church movement.

There were three primary speakers today.  The picture is of me and Dr. Tom Oord - professor of theology here at NNU (click on the picture to see what a nice looking guy Tom is and how crooked my nose is).  Tom and I graduated from Nampa together in 88 and have become good friends over the last few years.  He has done some great work - I especially appreciate his book Relational Holiness written with PLNU professor Michael Lodahl.  Tom spoke first today on various forms of postmodernism and how (although there are plenty of aspects of postmodernism to be wary of) there are many aspects of postmodernity that are beneficial to theology.

Brian McLaren is the special guest of the weekend and it is a real privilege to get to spend time with him.  I will confess that I am a huge fan of his books - especially The Secret Message of Jesus but I think they are all great.  Brian did a magnificent job of talking about the kinship between John Wesley and several emerging themes.

I spoke tonight on how some of the emerging sensibilities  are compatible with the Holiness movement in particular and how those themes fit closely with some of our founding values and are becoming relevant to current ministry.  I'm not sure I did that well.  Honestly, I was pretty intimidated, but at least now I can relax and serve on a few discussion panels for a couple of days.

On a side note, there is snow everywhere here.

Comments

[Laura Rector]

Hey, brother, I think you are the greatest!! Thanks specifically for what you said about being footlong Christians and 6-inch Americans at church today. I was so happy I wanted to hug you!! (I restrained myself though). Anyway, that got me excited!! If you get fired, I want to go to the church w/ you and the guy from the balcony;) (David Corbin said last week that if I leave any more comments that are longer than your posts, I will be banned to the balcony, so I'll stop now;) I don't TRY to do these things... )Anyway, thank you for the awesome sermon...