{"id":1243,"date":"2010-11-17T14:29:46","date_gmt":"2010-11-17T18:29:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thedockchurch.org\/blog\/?p=1243"},"modified":"2010-11-23T14:16:01","modified_gmt":"2010-11-23T18:16:01","slug":"humble-pie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.the-dock.org\/blog\/2010\/humble-pie\/","title":{"rendered":"Humble pie"},"content":{"rendered":"

Conferences are like busses – they all come along at once. November is turning out to be Conference Central for me – last weekend I was at one called \u2018Changing Church in a Fragile World\u2019 in Lurgan – you can find out what I learnt here<\/a> (and check out the Diocese of Down and Dromore website while you\u2019re at it – these are the crazy people who took a chance and launched The Dock!)<\/p>\n

Next week I\u2019m away at an Arrow retreat – a chance to get some good teaching and leadership about my own walk with God.\u00a0 (So apologies if this blog goes quiet for a couple of days!)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>This week (in fact as I type – I\u2019m \u201cmulti-tasking\u201d\/rudely ignoring the current speaker – delete as appropriate) I\u2019m in St Anne\u2019s Cathedral at Redeem Cities<\/em>, a conference organised by the gang at the new Redeemer Central church plant in Belfast (you can check them out here<\/a>).\u00a0 Fascinating to be in an old, deeply-rooted traditional building to listen to some cutting-edge speakers at the leading edge of new forms of church.<\/p>\n

For me the unquestionable highlight of this conference pile-up (so far) was yesterday\u2019s session here at Redeem Cities<\/em>.\u00a0 Now I have to confess that I arrived here with some prejudice – the keynote speaker yesterday was Mark Driscoll, whose megachurch in Seattle, Mars Hill (check out their website here<\/a>), has become famous and enormously successful, but also a bit controversial in terms of some of their very \u2018reformed\u2019 theology (for example in relation to women in leadership).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The morning session yesterday (in common with the Mars Hill podcasts I\u2019ve listened to) was a frustrating, unsettling mixture of loads of fantastic input, and some controversial, confrontational stuff which quickly became the only thing that everyone could talk about during the coffee break!\u00a0 And so it felt like my prejudices about Mark Driscoll – that he was aggressive, arrogant, exclusive – were maybe deepening, no matter how much I was enjoying the vast majority of his teaching.<\/p>\n

Then – wow! – the afternoon happened… talk about having your prejudices turned upside-down.\u00a0 Turns out Mark Driscoll comes from a good Irish Catholic family, and he spent the afternoon dealing honestly, humbly and humorously about his Catholic heritage, his faith journey, and his heart for engagement with Catholic brothers and sisters.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Because yes…\u00a0 Mark Driscoll, the bastion of Reformed, Evangelical, Conservative theology (or so I\u2019d pegged him), gave the most heartfelt, profound case for Shared Medley that I\u2019ve yet heard.\u00a0 He argued passionately that Protestants and Catholics are co-heirs of the Christian tradition – part of the same family.\u00a0 As with any family, he suggested, there are rows, differences and conflicts – but we are family, and what we share in Jesus is infinitely more important than what divides us – to use his great phrase, we should work \u201cfrom common ground to complicated ground\u201d.\u00a0 He emphasized time and again that his vision for church growth is not about institutions or denominations, but relationships – which can cross denominations and transcend institutions.\u00a0 Without compromising his deeply-felt core convictions, he came across as a guy who would happily sit down for a coffee and a conversation with anybody – someone who is willing to agree to disagree.<\/p>\n

It was another one of those times (they\u2019re happening a lot recently!) when I wanted to cheer, or cry, or both, at the thrill of being part of the church at a time when the momentum of reconciliation seems to be growing so powerfully. \u00a0 How fantastic it is when someone you\u2019d written off – for being too tight or too loose, too dogmatic or too flexible – surprises you and changes your world just a little bit.\u00a0 God works in the mix.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Conferences are like busses – they all come along at once.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chris-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nHumble pie - The DOCK - Life in the Titanic Quarter<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.the-dock.org\/blog\/2010\/humble-pie\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Humble pie - 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