Tripp Hudgins, who blogs and tweets as AngloBaptist, has written an article called @SeaburyNext and the #Great Awakening of seminary education about an event sponsored this weekend by Seabury Western Seminary and the Diocese of Chicago that featured presentations by Bishop Jeff Lee, Diana Butler Bass and Brian McLaren.
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.
Seabury is on the move. The Diocese of Chicago is on the move. We have a choice…we can pretend that everything is the same, that nothing has changed in the culture, that we are just the same country as we were in 1950 and find ourselves underwater and surprised, or we can practice rigorous honesty. We can seek the seekers and join the journey with all the gifts at our disposal. Arise and shine…We have God’s love and light. We all do.
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Thanks for the comment and I'm glad you liked the link, Drew.
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
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/
It did, in fact, move off the Seabury site yesterday. It's been republished now:
http://www.seaburynext.org/events/the-great-awakening.html
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.