Went to Boise last Thursday for the Missional Church Forum. The value of these gatherings are mostly connectivity with others on a journey, some ahead, some behind in the journey. Of course, like any other gathering one finds a plethora of personalities.
In attendance there were three of the authors of Missional Church: George Hunsberger, Inagrace Dietterich, and Alan Roxburgh. Gary Waller was the facilitator of the overall time. As I thought back over the time together it seemed sorta disjointed. We spent the better part of Friday morning and early afternoon at tables talking about a poll that Allelon had taken online. The information from each table was collected in a general session and plotted on a whiteboard. Then after lunch the first speaker, Alan Roxburgh gave a presentation about leadership (he wrote Chapter 7 in Missional Church) and we had TableTalk about his presentation. Then George Hunsberger gave a talk about Evangelism and we had TableTalk about his presentation. Both Alan an George are interesting and have an abundance of things to share. What I found strange was that there was no apparent connection between what we did all morning and early afternoon and what we did the rest of the afternoon. It seemed somewhat disjointed. Maybe that was intentional. I would liked to have heard more of what Alan and George had to say on the subject of leadership and evangelism.
Saturday morning we had a short liturgy service and then we had more TableTalk but this time with a Table Facilitator who also served as a panel member for the overall Q&A at the conclusion of the morning. Then we closed with communion.
Some takeaways
Alan
Leadership is not a person with a plan or vision for the future, a leader is one who forms environments in which the people of God, among whom the Spirit resides, can get in dialogue with others and narratives of Scripture. Alan suggested that theology happen in liminality and in the liminility there is an interface of structure and anti-structure and that both are needed for the other to exist.
It is sometimes apparent that the emergent climate is somewhat anti-structural: undifferentiated with a lack of form or order and position. However, any group that comes together forms structure. [My comment: It may be a panacea to think that there should be a formless church.]
In the panel time Alan suggested that the emerging church was in a somewhat adolescent period and should find a way to grow up.
George
He began by quoting from Resident Aliens. “We have given people less and less in which to disbelieve.”
He suggested that in the twenty-first-century that:
Inagrace was not a presenter. Todd Hunter was the TableTalk moderator at the group that I chose to be in. Todd presented a fascinating bell curve moving from left to right that had folks that would fit into four categories: traditionalist, conservatives, progressives, radicals with a discussion of how they interface in the makeup of a congregation.
So overall it was a good time. Personally, I would have been more pleased with more input from George, Alan, and Inagrace.