I don't want to sound snarky, really. I have enormous respect for Bishop Lee, Diana Butler Bass, and Brian McLaren. But I'm at the point in my life and ministry where I would like to see conversations about the future of the church, the future of Christianity, the future of communities of faith, to involve people who are actually involved in the day-to-day struggle of creating community in this post-Christian culture. I would like to see a conference where the pundits and analysts had to engage those of us who are trying to deal with the realities of elderly, homebound people who expect regular pastoral care, homeless people who spend the night in our shelter, the ongoing life of our parish, and young adults who are so stretched they lack the energy to attend Sunday morning services.

The Great Awakening? Please, spare me.

Jonathan are you under the impression that Bishop Lee was never a rector, or that Brian McLaren didn't build a church before he became a pundit?

Do first then brag about it. To call something a Great Awakening is far ahead of what SWTSNext has managed to accomplish. They continue to waste what endowment is left. As a graduate it pains me to say this, but still it must be said.....they could not morph the hottest DMin program into general vitality for the Seminary, and such grandiosity is not warranted by a shrinking institution.

Mike, how do you know what was or was not accomplished at this event? On what basis can you judge its success? A number of good people sank a lot of time and energy into this weekend. More than 300 people showed up. I think they heard some pretty good presentations, and left feeling energized. As one of the people who worked hard on this, I am offended by the way in which you have used our efforts as a pretext to grind your axe against your alma mater.

Jim, thanks for sharing the post.

I still remain hopeful. I said it in the post and I'm sincere. It's going to be challenging, however, almost impossible to keep it from falling apart unless we're all willing to get together on the realities that face the Church. It seems to me that everyone here is on that same page. What other ideas might be worth exploring?

Jonathan, I find many of these gatherings very helpful in understanding and navigating the day-to-day life of the parish. I brought my lay leadership to a couple of Seabury events and they still refer to the conversations as ways of understanding their own congregation's struggles.

Michael, I'm saddened by your frustration, but I understand it. We're all flying blind. Have you had a chance to read Diana's new book? It describes this present darkness rather beautifully.

Peace to all...

This sounds as if it was a very important conference which grappled with serious questions. Taking leave of what no longer works sounds like a good start.

Gary Paul Gilbert

This morning when I checked Facebook, one of the first posts I saw was a snarky comment from an Episcopal Church leader about yesterday's hopeful story on the work of young people in the Episcopal Service Corps. Not newsworthy enough, she said. Then I read these comments, condemning this event that sold out its 300 tickets to people from Episcopal, Lutheran, Baptist and other congregations who wanted to spend the weekend celebrating Epiphany together and thinking and talking about the future of faith.

The church is in a period of reinvention--at least we'd better be--and it's good to ask questions and test assumptions. But if no effort to create something new is good enough, big enough, authentic enough or cynical enough, we'll drive away the people whose creativity and enthusiasm we most need. Then the church will die, and we'll deserve it.

Here's a compelling quote from an article on the value of coaching to create change and improve performance by Awul Gawande in the 10/3/11 edition of The New Yorker.

"California researchers in the early nineteen-eighties conducted a five-year study of teacher-skill development in eighty schools, and noticed something interesting. Workshops led teachers to use new skills in the classroom only ten per cent of the time. Even when a practice session with demonstrations and personal feedback was added, fewer than twenty per cent made the change. But when coaching was introduced—when a colleague watched them try the new skills in their own classroom and provided suggestions—adoption rates passed ninety per cent. A spate of small randomized trials confirmed the effect. Coached teachers were more effective, and their students did better on tests."

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/10/03/111003fa_fact_gawande#ixzz1j4Q750Xe

While the quote deals with coaching for school teachers, the article also covers the value of sustained, life-long coaching for musicians, surgeons, and athletes. In the Diocese of Maine we're wondering if we should we think about a model of leadership development that includes coaching for clergy and lay leaders?"

I worry that we can hold all the conferences we want - big group meetings, online workshops, other means at our disposal - but the truth is that it is hard to take new ideas back home. It is hard to maintain the enthusiasm when only one person or even a small group gets all fired up. At home people will still be all, "yeah, but..."

Supportive, sustained, highly organized coaching of leaders and congregations might just be a model that effects the kind of change we need to be the church in a new day.

Wouldn't that be something?

I'd love to hear about anybody already working on this.

Heidi Shott

@Rebecca: I was feeling snarky last night, but it was about how dated the information was. I'm a huge fan of the Episcopal Urban Intern Program and the YASC. My point was about church communications: that calling something "digital" doesn't automatically make it hip and happening.

Sorry for the misunderstanding.

Sarah Dylan Breuer (feeling much less snarky today)

I'm still struck by the name; it's already taken - by the 1st and 2nd Great Awakenings! http://www.great-awakening.com/ Naming an Episcopal meeting after 18th and 19th century mass revivalist movements suggests either hubris or a bad grasp of history. What next, a weekend conference named the Reformation or the Liturgical Movement?

And no, it's not the most important thing in the world, but I truly found it confusing to see things show up on my Twitter feed tagged #GreatAwakening, with no explanation as to the context. My first thought was not of seminary education but of Jonathan Edwards' "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God."

Bill Dilworth

@Jim Naughton, I have great respect for Bishop Lee, Diana Butler Bass Brian McClaren and I am sure for others not named in your reportage. I am sure many wonderful presentations were made. I am appreciative that you have revealed that your company is in the employ of Seabury.

That said my "axe" so to speak is about the disposal of what is left of Seabury-Western's heritage. I disagree with using it in this fashion after nearly a decade and a half of poor management that lead to the Seminary's death. I realize that the folks who remained on the staff are looking to make lemonade, but in my estimation the remaining endowed funds would be better spent in grant to seminarians or grants to emergent ministries that have shown some promise.

As Bill Dilworth points out it is pretentious hyperbole to call the event "The Great Awakening" especially in the absence of any track record for awakening. I am sure many of the attendees are doing great work and creating models for ministry int he present times, but all together they have not yet amassed the momentum to be anything like the Great Awakening.

If all those wonderful folks have not done what they have because of Seabury-Western's programs, then bragging rights attend. If not apart from being a convener of some actual talent is wonderful, but some greater modesty about it's own actual accomplishments as a nouveaux program might be apropos.

I'll make you a deal though, I'll stop carping about the wasting of what little is left of the endowment if you as their publicist will refrain from presenting material as impartial reportage.

Mike, I did not reveal that Seabury was a client of my firm's in my response to you, I revealed it in the item, which, it seems, you commented on without reading.

I wrote:

"The article relies heavily on the stream of live tweets I composed while the event was in progress. (Seabury and the diocese are clients of my communications firm.) So some of the reporting is mine, but the insights and enthusiasm belong entirely to Tripp."

And I did not, in fact, present my own reportage, I presented that of someone who was enthusiastic about the event. Without Tripp's blog entry, there would have been no item.

So you have charged me, recklessly, with doing something that I did not do.

The title of the event referred to the content of the presentations--which dealt with the need for an awakening in the Episcopal Church, and the sponsors' and presenters hopes for the event. Titles frequently refer to content. They are seldom the presenters evaluations of an event that has yet to transpire. People who are not attacking other's reputations in the service of advancing their own grievances tend to recognize that.

I will make you a deal. I won't come on your blog and insult your integrity, and you can return the favor.

By the way, Bill Dillworth said none of the things you attributed to him. He had a problem with the name, but he did not have your problem with the name.

Thanks, Dylan. I'm glad to know we're both fans of Episcopal Service Corps--and of good church communications.

Bill and Michael, Diana Butler Bass and other scholars of religion have posited that we are now in the midst of the Fourth Great Awakening. The title of the event was drawn from that scholarly idea, and was intended to explore its implications for the church. It wasn't intended to refer to Seabury's institutional identity or to the work of anyone in the room. I'm sorry that you were unfamiliar with this scholarship and misunderstood it for hubris.

Michael, since Jim, who is my business partner, disclosed his role in the story in his initial post, I think your attack on him was unfounded and unfair.

I am a Seabury-Western grad. I am proud of my seminary for having the courage to try to find a way through this very trying, changing time in the life of the world. Anyone who is discerning where the Spirit would have us go is a hero to me. I wanted very much to go to this conference and what I read confirms me in the belief I missed something very important. I do not find what S-WTS is doing to be a waste of money. Some of us have to be out there on the cutting edge, where the Spirit is trying to push us, and therefore the money is well spent, even if, in the end, it runs out.

I don't know much, but this old, grey head does know that church as we knew it is not what is needed now, whilst still being needed for those who, like me, grew up in a church that promised it would always take care of us, visit us, heal us. What is needed now, and into the future, we have only glimpses of but it no longer is the "build it and they will come" church for which some of us still yearn. We need to take care of the old-time church-goers while at the same time strike out into the future. It is hard to believe that that which nourished us just may not do so for future followers of Jesus. And that is the key - we must now go out there and make of people followers of Jesus where and as we find them. That takes experimentation and there will be failures. But of course, the Church does not like failure. Well, get used to it, because God does not drop tablets down from heaven saying, "This way, now, and this, and this" but expects us to work together, using whatever resources we have been given, to go out and love people, and through that find the way we are to go.
Well, that's enough from me, since I was not able to attend. But I am a parish priest and from that perspective, I do know what I am talking about, regarding serving who is left, and finding ways to seek those who do not even yet know that they are the next generation of followers of Jesus.

Rebecca -

A. You're making an awfully big assumption about what I do and do not know about the scholarship involved. There doesn't seem to be much of a consensus about when this supposed Fourth GA arose, if it did in fact arise (the 1950's? The 60's? The 70's?). And the jury is certainly still out as to whether the phenomenon described by that label really rises to the level of the Great Awakenings.

B. The tweets I saw made no mention of the conference, just short quotes from Bishop Lee along with the hashtag #GreatAwakening. I looked on line - including the Seabury website - for some sort of clarification and came up empty-handed. What I was unfamiliar with was the existence of the conference itself.

C. Just as I did not claim that the name was "pretentious hyperbole," neither did I say that it was hubris, pure and simple.

D. Presenting a dig in the guise of commiseration is really just not on; it amounts, in this case, to "I'm sorry you were so ignorant of our pure intentions." It's the sort of stuff that comes from (bad) corporate customer service departments.

Bill Dilworth

Bill, there were about eight tweets in that stream of live tweets from which I think one could have gleaned that the Great Awakening was an event.

It is possible that you did not see those tweets. Unfortunately, after that, the stream became reportage, and at 140 characters, it really wasn't possible to do more than describe what was happening.

You have raised an interesting issue, though. In the future, I may try to take what amounts to a station break in the midst of live tweeting to explain the hashtag I am using a time or two. This hasn't come up in previous live streams, but I guess it makes good sense.

I don't think a scholarly consensus is necessary to use a phrase to name a conference. The speakers at the conference were comfortable with it. So we used it.

Finally, in your original post, you said that naming an event the Great Awakening "suggests either hubris or a bad grasp of history." Given that you questioned both our character and our intelligence, I think Rebecca's response was mild.

Bill--

Your first post said that the name of the event "suggests either hubris or a bad grasp of history." So I explained the name and its origin so that it would be clear that the organizers of the event intended neither. You don't have to agree with the scholarship, of course, but that's what the name was drawn from.

There was lots of information about the event on the Seabury website, among other places--like Tripp's blog post. But you could have posted a comment asking questions if you wanted to know more. What's not on, as you say, is ridiculing people's work out of ignorance and then attacking when they respond.

Jim,

I did not realize that you came up with the name for the conference until later in this thread. Your original post simply says that the diocese and Seabury are clients of yours, not that this conference or its name were your creation. I perhaps would not have been so blunt in my comment had I known that what I still hold to be its unfortunate name was your doing. But I don't think that its my fault your ties with the planning of the conference were less than obvious.

I did not question anyone's intelligence, unless you think that having a grasp of history is the same as being intelligent. I know lots of intelligent people who probably have no idea what any of the historic Great Awakenings were. When I want to say someone is stupid, I say they're stupid.

@ lots of unhappy posters

I think that maybe it would be a good idea to throw some water on the growing "flame war" here. I know that disagreement is going to be with us as long as we are this side of the kingdom, but we need to keep disagreement from becoming "disagreeable."

On the "first topic," I am still a little unclear as to the content of the conference. I watched the video link and read the twitter summaries in the blog posts. It seems that what McLaren said is what I've heard from him before (remembering a presentation he gave not too long ago at Washington Cathedral on TECs strengths/potential strengths and weaknesses). I have some reservations about his ideas on "young leadership." I think we need to try to understand the needs and thoughts of "young people" but making them "the leaders" is a little like asking the med student who has only done one H&P (history and physical) to "teach the class" as it were. Not the best idea, IMHO
I did follow the link to Diana Butler Bass' new book, but it seems not to have been published yet, but some people seem to have read it.
As a former anglocatholic, I will reserve observations on the procession and "bottle popping" in the video, as it was out of context. Not my "cup of tea" perhaps, but I suspect that most people would find a non-theist, high-church Episcopalian to be a hard pill to swallow. : )
I guess what would be nice would be a little more summary and discussion as to what the "idea" is behind the new "great awakening" theme? I know, also, the bare bones of the Seabury-Western story of "closing" and "leave taking" as a traditional seminary. It would be interesting to hear more about how we think that its "new" modus operandi will help the church.

Rebecca, searching on the Seabury website for "Great Awakening" gave me the link http://www.seabury.edu/events/the-great-awakening.html . Following that link resulted in a 404 error message.

And I'm sorry that you think criticism of the conference name is the same as ridicule. If I could, I would revise my post to read, "Naming an Episcopal meeting after 18th and 19th century mass revivalist movements was a really bad idea."

Bill, I didn't come up with the name personally, but I didn't have a problem with it.

Jeff, Thanks for your comment. I would be happy to talk about this offline.

Bill, after the fact searching in an attempt to buttress your point is not persuasive. Can we let this drop now?

I'll be happy to drop it, but I first searched for the information on the 7th. And if you didn't come up with the name, how in the world does criticizing it do anything to you, much less question your character and intelligence?

I was at the table when a person --who happens to specialize and publish widely in church history--came up with the name. I was happy to run with it. It is possible that with the event sold out we moved it off of the Seabury homepage where it had lived for several weeks by Saturday. It is still on the Diocese of Chicago's homepage because we haven't had a chance to freshen that one since the weekend.

It did, in fact, move off the Seabury site yesterday. It's been republished now:

http://www.seaburynext.org/events/the-great-awakening.html

An interesting conversation, everyone. I'm sorry it got personal...But moving on...If we're ready...

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove is launching a new blog. He's the "prior" of the Rutba House, a new monastic community in North Carolina. He's a Benedictine Baptist (I love this time in the Church!). Anyway, take a look at his language in The Everyday Awakening.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jonathanwilsonhartgrove/2012/01/hello-world/

What's in a name? Wow. And nice find, Tripp!

It seems that a lot of snark we hear in the church comes from our own fear of loss and rejection; that we like the way things are more than we like listening for the Spirit to move us. We saw this on another Lead story about change in the church. As much defensiveness about the sort of change and the particulars of minute changes a whole lot more than it was about systemic re-calibration. The best part of these conferences is not anything practical or even the short-term excitement that leadership teams get from attending them. They are to get more and more of us together to wrestle with the really big stuff. And the more we get together openly and honestly the more our existing congregations will thrive on its results.

But then again, I'm one to say that we don't need more "vitality" and practice tweaks, but a whole lot of congregational rebirth and resurrection.

Drew Downs

Thanks for the comment and I'm glad you liked the link, Drew.