Speaking at the YP Gathering
I gave a little talk at the YP Gathering today.
After indulging in some good food by the pool-side at Winston's apartment, we took a little time to get settled before I commenced.
I am not the loudest speaker (I'm still wishing for vocal lessons) - and combined with the slight draft through the outdoor venue, it was a difficult "talk". However, I used several smaller group discussions, which helped save my voice and allowed people to interact with the ideas and concepts.
Originally I was going to talk about "Emerging Church", but I bet I would be staring at blank faces for quite a while. Instead, I went with "Christ vs. Churchianity" as my main theme. This was probably one of the less-prepared talks I've given (well, facilitated), since my birthday dinner (and ensuing karaoke fun) the night before meant I had little time to finish of my preparations (poor excuse: I had a pretty busy week). So I mind-mapped several things on paper during lunch and used that as an outline on which to speak.
One of the purposes was to encourage everyone to seek Christ more deeply - and away from churchianity. I made no distinction whether people self-labelled as "Christian" or not - they were there because they were seekers; some more conscious of it than others. One of the first themes was religion. Because of time limitations, I touched briefly on "true religion" as proclaimed by the prophets and in James. Quite clearly, it's about obedience to God in upholding justice and peace (taking care of widows, the poor, etc.)
A group exercise asking what is the meaning of "Shalom" yielded an almost unanimous answer: "peace". I was pleasantly surprised that Lynn (who doesn't call herself Christian) hinted at peace "both inner and outer, ie collective". I explaned about the Jewish worldview behind this greeting, which is so much deeper than our "absence of conflict" idea of peace. Restoration, redemption, and reconciliation is the wish and desire behind the utterance of "shalom", and on several different levels: between us and God, between each other, between us and God's created order (environment, ecology... the world). Most Christians have forgotten about the first part of John 3:16, "For God so loved the world..."; God loves his created order, which includes nature, the animal kingdom. Our original call was to be good stewards of it, however, our lack of care and stewardship has made quite a mess of things. (There is hope - as always - notably as people realize some deeper roots of this mess and then push towards fair trade, sustainable development, and corporate governance, among other things.)
One important concept I wished to impress was that Christianity is not about religion (Jesus never came to start a religion - a fellowship of believers perhaps). We may express our faith through worship in church, but it needs to be greater, encompassing more than two hours on a Sunday (or even for a cell group or weekday service). Apprentice-disciples of Christ is the ideal. That implies a journey of lifelong struggle, seeking, and worship for God. "Being saved" - having that initial conversion experience isn't the be all and end all. It's just the beginning.
I took some reading material from my Walk the Talk course I co-taught at my church. I also used a quote from one of Peterson's articles at theOoze about living into God's story as a challenge to rethink their Christianity (included in my course handout here).
I wish I had opened up the time with a reading from Brian McLaren's book (snippet found in this handout).
The talk went ok, although I wish I was a little more prepared, however.