These are some of the things that really stuck out at me from the convention this year in Sacramento:
Marko‘s closing general session talk on “communional living” and its emphasis on slow, small, intimate journeying with our students and volunteers is a very challenging idea. On its face it sounds like a ‘well, duh’ concept, but youth workers aren’t really well suited for it, because of our typical nomadic, hub-and-spoke way of doing things. It’s easier to put on a big program than it is to identify three students to pour deeply into. It’s hard to have that kind of impact when we’re not guaranteed the longevity, for one reason and another, to take the time it requires. It points back to volunteers and parents, toward working ourselves out of a job and out of a professional field, if we’re going to engage with this communional thing on its deepest level.
Shane Claiborne and Tony Campolo both pictured a Christianity without too much stuff, free to rely in practice on God’s providing and God’s power. But I work in a wealthy suburban congregation where the sheer amount of stuff and human power present on a Sunday morning limits our ability to dream God-sized dreams. What will it take to find the direction God has for us?
I’m a little afraid of what a deeper level of faith would look like in my own life, what God might do in and around me if I truly surrendered to Him the way I talk about doing. But I think that being afraid of it means I’m beginning to be ready for it.
