Inside the Missional Matrix
Meg writes about her experience at Off the Map’s Inside the Missional MatrixÂ
Soft threads of thought linger in my waking mind, some silver, some blue, some reminiscent of last night’s party, others beckoning me towards the mysteries which shall be unveiled today at this thing I know nothing about, save that its title includes the name of my favourite movie.
The first hour or so is kind of foggy, getting used to being alive again after a night’s sleep. Somebody is saying deep and beautiful things over a microphone, and interesting looking people surround me. Some stand out in my memory.
Jim-behind-me’s wife Erika loves sunshine and is an exile in gray Seattle, like me!
Eliza eloquently expresses her experience as an atheist in a class about Christianity. The more the pastor responded to her questions with answers, the fewer questions she asked.
Parker’s eyes seem to sing as he tells his last-night-story of people meeting in a pub to talk about time, endings, death, “living the questionâ€, in Rilke’s words.
Rose tells about standing with a poor person and realising the person before her is herself, just minus the money. It touches me to be in a place where the contrast between our privilege and others’ suffering is acknowledged. And where there’s a wild goose who can mend broken eikons!
Scot talks for a bit about the bible - that book which irritates me so much I rarely read it -and I find myself getting excited. He says the different biblical authors felt neither compelled nor obliged to interpret life, the universe and everything in the language Jesus did. They had their own authentic ways of seeing and understanding God’s being with us, AND SO CAN WE! This learned theologian was saying it’s GOOD for me to understand God in my own unique, creative, Meganish way!
Makes me wonder why I need somebody else’s permission to think and feel authentically – yet the message I’ve grown up hearing Christians say is ‘Squash your self into my way of seeing, and then you’ll be following Jesus’.
Amy and I both cry as she tells me a story. A student she was teaching in a detention centre said he didn’t have any happy childhood memories to write about. Every soccer game, his alcoholic parents said they’d come and watch, and every soccer game, he believed they would, and was devastated. “If I was your Mum,†Amy said, “I would have come to the soccer game, because you are lovable, and that’s why you kept hoping…†The biggest, toughest, scariest guy in the place shook and cried at these words.
How hopeful Amy’s story is for me. I’ve despaired as homeless youth in Seattle tell me their stories, because I’ve stopped trusting there is, in Todd’s words, ‘Competent Love’ at the heart of the universe.
Jim gives me a red copy of ‘Jim and Casper go to church’, personally inscribed to Bens and me, and I feel thrilled to have a tangible piece of this day’s patchwork of wonder.
My beautiful three-year-old Cosette Josephine jumps into my arms and squeezes my neck with one of her welcome home hugs. Today’s new threads and ideas and images and emotions tangle into my tapestry creating something I’m not very used to, something named hope.
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You can listen to podcasts of the sessions here
Comment by: benjamin ady
1 03/24/07 6:25 PM | Comment Link |Megs, I really enjoyed the conference too, but I did have a couple smallish difficulties as well.
Todd Hunter made me think a bit. He said
this gave me pause. It seems to me that believing that present reality has in back of it totally competent love is … next to impossible. How could competent love allow for all the horror that goes on? Todd didn’t really have an answer for this, which was a lot more refreshing, in one sense, than if he *did* have some pat answer.
On the other hand, his comments in this vein that christian leaders who are operating from a relaxed, “I don’t have to control outcomes” paradigm are a lot … safer and less toxic strikes me as totally right on. In my experience such christian leaders are rare.
I too *loved* Scot McKnight’s barely orthodox take on “what is christianity anyway”? He seemed to be giving permission to all the christian leaders in the room to be themselves, and to interpret christianity/the kingdom of god/ulitmate reality in the way that best fits them and their interaction/relationships with those they love and those they lead. Monga kewl. I wish more people were going around giving such permissions.
I was stoked to meet Parker, who is instigating what sounds like a very very kewl twice monthly pub based question based story based brilliance he calls Knucklehead in Edmonds. His description of the Holy Spirit as a wild goose who circles overhead was very … evocative.
It sounds like Rich and Rose Swetman and Community Vineyard are being amazingly counterchurchculture in the most refreshing ways.
At the end of the conference, there was a panel with Todd Hunter, Rose Swetman, and Scot McKnight. It seemed to me that the conversation drifted in the direction of questions along the lines of “How can we as Christian leaderish types … move/influence/inspire/imagine our … flocks/congregations/groups toward being missional?” I liked the idea of being missional, of daring to gently challenge each other to move out of our funny, cultural, traditional, unbearable sunday morning church christianity and into a place where relationship and community and service and conversation are more important than programs and the three B’s–buildings/budgets/butts in seats. But I also felt somehow unable to say, unoffensively (that is, in such a way as to posit some hope of the words being received by the listeners) “Hey, what if ‘being a christian leader’ isn’t about ‘insipiring/motivating/moving etc. our flocks/congregations/groups’. What if being a leader is about …. just being in relationships? what if it could be about … just being the one who helps create space where transformatve conversation can happen, between all of us, with an end result that was unforseeable in any of our minds before the conversation began?
Comment by: Helen
2 03/24/07 7:47 PM | Comment Link |Thanks Megan - I enjoyed reading your reflections on the conference!
Scot is great; I’m glad his words about the Bible were encouraging to you.
I went to hear NT Wright yesterday and I couldn’t help but be entranced by what he shared. He used beautiful words and said beautiful things. I think you would have enjoyed it. I wrote up my lecture notes on CatE but they aren’t as good as the lecture he gave.
Comment by: Helen
3 03/24/07 7:56 PM | Comment Link |Benjamin wrote:
Benjamin, I’m glad you wrote it here even though you didn’t feel able to say it at the conference - I like this idea. I don’t see what’s wrong with it. Maybe the leaders at this conference do help create that space; I need to be careful not to assume things about Christian leaders when I’ve never been to their churches or seen what ‘leading’ means to them. Maybe it does mean creating that space.
Comment by: Jim Henderson
4 03/25/07 9:03 AM | Comment Link |Meg
You are a wonderful writer/thinker/observer and poet. I’m sorry I’ve never taken the time to discover those parts of your life. Very Anne Lammontish (hey did you know she will be here in Seattle next week- my daughter Sarah is going to hear her at First Baptist church) - Anyway please keep writing for us and helping us notice the beauty right in front of us. And thanks for trusting us enough to make time for this little event.
Benjamin you said
Sounds like you made a connection with Parker- who I think is really onto somethign which resonates with you.
The way I make sense out of your question about how leaders make sense out of their jobs is to keep in mind that most leaders see themselves as part of a “family” (aka church) consequently they want to help protect and move them forward “together”. That paradigm dominates and insinuates itself into how even the most advanced thinkers see the church. I admire and love them but it is also one of the reasons I find it difficult to be part of a church. I like what Parker does but it is currently not understood as “church” which of course it is. Thinkers like Todd “get” that which is why I partner with him.
But I do think you ask the question in the kindest of tone so you should not hesitate to continue to raise it or offer alternatives
Comment by: Rachel
5 03/25/07 9:10 AM | Comment Link |That was beautiful, sister Megan! Thank you for being so authentic and hopeful.
Comment by: Ann
6 03/25/07 2:18 PM | Comment Link |Meg — wow! Love the sensitive way you write…you sound like a beautiful, tender soul. Thanks for sharing this with us
Comment by: DoableEvangelism » Blog Archive » Missional Matrix podcasts available
7 03/25/07 2:42 PM | Comment Link |[...] check out Megan Ady’s thoughtful reflections on the conference on Church [...]
Comment by: Helen
8 03/25/07 5:47 PM | Comment Link |Rose Swetman has posted about the conference here on her blog:
Inside the Missional Matrix