This past weekend I attended the Deep Shift conference in Dallas. I was a little apprehensive about attending, as I was worried that Brian McLaren had "gone political", and I didn't want to attend (much less pay to attend) a political pep rally. (Especially considering his political thinking is quite different from mine.)
When it was over, I was glad to have attended. My "political speech sensors" were set to high, and they did go off a few times, but it did not become a political pep rally.
Location: Cliff Temple Baptist Church. I had thought this was an unusual choice of locations to host this. I have lived in Dallas my entire life, and drove past this church many times. The architecture was always striking, but this was the first time to actually go inside it. It's quite pretty inside. Very traditional, stained glass, pews, an organ in the back. The Deep Shift website stated they were looking for locations convenient to mass transit stops. This was not on the DART rail line. It turns out that someone on the staff at Cliff Temple "begged and pleaded" to host the event.
Cliff Temple is in the heart of the Oak Cliff section of Dallas. Oak Cliff has gone through a lot transformation since the building was erected in 1938. White flight in the post-Brown v Topeka Board era and a more recent Hispanic immigration have seen this area change several times. It's hard to tell during a conference, but there are certainly some tell-tale signs that this church has both retained its spiritual identity and still adapted well to ministering to the changing needs of its neighborhood.
Friday Night: There was a strong environmental theme to this night. The evening began with a prayer that went something like, "Father, we are gathered here along the West Fork in the lower basin of the Trinity River that flows into the Gulf of Mexico and into the Atlantic Ocean..."
Okay...
That's certainly a little different from my prayer over breakfast this morning. Later in the conference BMcL came back to this prayer and talked about how we should know not just our postal address, but our environmental address as well. Next there was a video produced by The Sierra Club about mining for coal by mountaintop removal in West Virginia. My political sensors were going off at this point, but it's certainly true that this practice is horribly destructive this is to an otherwise beautiful place. There are some deeper questions at work here, mainly "where should our energy come from?" "what sources are affordable, and what is environmentally sound?" For the record, I'm a proponent of nuclear energy.
Brian then gave what was essentially an overview of "Everything Must Change." Very good talk, but still all covered in the book.
Saturday morning there was an informal time where Brian did some Q&A with Cohorts and Church planters. One of the things he talked about was how Christianity started out localized and then as it became more connected to the Roman Empire became more globalized until the reformation began to break it apart more so that today it is more localized. I'd like to see that developed more in his writing.
The Saturday morning session Brian spoke on Matt 16 where Jesus and the Disciples visit Caesarea Philippi. (Rob Bell makes some similar points in "Velvet Elvis.") In short, he showed a contrast between "Lord Caesar" and "Lord Jesus" that you would never see without the geographical/historical context. It was great stuff and has a lot of implications for much of the rest of the New Testament. This session alone may have been worth the price of admission, and made me wish I had dragged more folks along.
There was a session that I missed that was led by Linnea ("lih-NAY-ah") Nilsen-Capshaw. Parker was playing a soccer game and my attendance was required. (They tied 3-3 after going down 2-0. Parker did well, playing half in the field, and half as keeper making several good stops).
The final session was about application, getting us to think about what was talked about. How should it affect us personally, locally and globally? There was emphasis that action shouldn't be taken out of guilt trip, but out of a genuine concern about the world around us, and there should be understanding that everyone is on a journey and at different points. Changing mindset is the starting point. (Political sensor went off once, but I dismissed the alarm, as it was somewha ambiguous and only one sentence in an otherwise enjoyable talk.)
