Spring Retreat
I'm back! I was absent from the bloggosphere (and cellular service) for about three days at the Vineyard Montana/Wyoming Spring Retreat. The Great Falls Vineyard which runs the Spring and Fall retreats doesn't include the word 'leadership' in the title, but church leaders are really whom it's geared for.
It was amazing. I got to see people from other Vineyards whom I hadn't seen in a long time. And meet new people. Build relationships with people in my own local church body whom I normally don't get to spend more than five minutes with one-on-one. Worship was awesome. Food was super tasty (if higher in sodium and fat than I'd like to admit).
The best thing though was the teaching. And, for all that I am an education junkie, 'teaching' really sells short what went on. 'Ultra-encouraging mind-bending/paradigm-shifting' would be more accurate. Winn Griffin (Vineyard Theologian and NW's Regional Overseer) and Todd Hunter (whose list of activities/accomplishments are too long to be interesting in my blog read largely by extra-churchly people) 'taught.' I'm now reading Todd's book Christianity Beyond Belief: Following Jesus for the Sake of Others. He taught a lot out of the book, and some (it seems after having highlighted on more than half the pages of the first chapter [something I rarely do in a 'for pleasure' book]) from life/research as a sociologist of religion. It was a crazy experience: at least every third sentence was something which was, for me, simultaneously new and established. He didn't mess with any of my doctrine, or attempt to alter any of the tenants of my faith as I knew them; what he did was to re-wire the way I apply and think about my deeply-held beliefs and convictions. I'll review the book when I'm done, and then I'll be able to talk more specifically about the concepts. For now, my two favorite quotes from chapter 1:
Rather than being spatial or chronological, eternal life is qualitative.
I don't read the Bible to gather facts, though they are there. I read it to shape my imagination about what it means to be a follower of Jesus.
In other news I finished my take-home exam on Virgil, washed and put away a sink-full of dishes, and am waiting for the others in my apartment complex to finish with the washer and dryer.
It was amazing. I got to see people from other Vineyards whom I hadn't seen in a long time. And meet new people. Build relationships with people in my own local church body whom I normally don't get to spend more than five minutes with one-on-one. Worship was awesome. Food was super tasty (if higher in sodium and fat than I'd like to admit).
The best thing though was the teaching. And, for all that I am an education junkie, 'teaching' really sells short what went on. 'Ultra-encouraging mind-bending/paradigm-shifting' would be more accurate. Winn Griffin (Vineyard Theologian and NW's Regional Overseer) and Todd Hunter (whose list of activities/accomplishments are too long to be interesting in my blog read largely by extra-churchly people) 'taught.' I'm now reading Todd's book Christianity Beyond Belief: Following Jesus for the Sake of Others. He taught a lot out of the book, and some (it seems after having highlighted on more than half the pages of the first chapter [something I rarely do in a 'for pleasure' book]) from life/research as a sociologist of religion. It was a crazy experience: at least every third sentence was something which was, for me, simultaneously new and established. He didn't mess with any of my doctrine, or attempt to alter any of the tenants of my faith as I knew them; what he did was to re-wire the way I apply and think about my deeply-held beliefs and convictions. I'll review the book when I'm done, and then I'll be able to talk more specifically about the concepts. For now, my two favorite quotes from chapter 1:
Rather than being spatial or chronological, eternal life is qualitative.
I don't read the Bible to gather facts, though they are there. I read it to shape my imagination about what it means to be a follower of Jesus.
In other news I finished my take-home exam on Virgil, washed and put away a sink-full of dishes, and am waiting for the others in my apartment complex to finish with the washer and dryer.