I am live blogging the Rob Bell, Shane Hipps and Pete Rollins, event in Grand Rapids for Zondervan. New posts are at the top with content and commentary (my commentary in italics). Feel free to jump in with your ideas, reactions, and opinions. Read Sunday’s reflection HERE. Read Monday’s HERE. Today’s lineup: 9am-Rob; 11am-Pete; 2pm-Shane; 4pm-Rob
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5:03—All done! Thanks for following along. Hope it was fun 🙂

4:30—taking communion…

4:25—With forgiving we name the wound, call it what it is, explain why its painful…and enter into the wound and pain like death. If we can enter into that ‘death’ and experience/endure the pain…there is life/resurrection on the other side.

Tim Keller: the Christ pattern “is a death that leads to resurrection instead of the life long living death of bitterness and cynicism.”

Parker Palmer: “The cross says…’the pain stops here.’ The way of the cross is a way of absorbing pain, not passing it on, a way that transforms pain from destructive impulse into creative power. When Jesus accepted the cross, his death opened up a channel for the redeeming power of love.”

When you enter into the pain and forgive…you are prepared to give the gift of what you’ve learned to your people. And there is joy and freedom for the moment, instead of depending on the praise or comments from the people…nor are you hurt and pained by others.

Perhaps you need to write a name down…a moment and give it to God in forgiveness.

4:15—When talking about forgiving what comes up is: you dont know some of the people at my church! SHEEP HAVE TEETH. AND THEY USE THEM!

Prob 26:11—some people are toxic. they return to their vomit again and again. and we dont have to be there when they do. its ok to have appropriate boundaries who are toxic, especially if you are a leader. Some people plug in and just extract energy…and you dont know why you’re tired!

Titus 3:10—some people are divisive. We think we need to love everyone…BUT we are not an ecclesiastical punching bag hired to take the blows of the masses. You are a precious resource and gift to your community. Some communities take their collective problems and place them on a pastor…they think they are paid to JUST TAKE IT. NO!!!

Luke 12:13—the divine embodiment of grace, love and kindness says…”THAT AINT MY JOB!” It is OK to guard that precious resource to effectively point people to the resurrection! And you should never apologize for that…

…love your neighbor as YOURSELF!

With forgiveness NOT talking about: no boundaries, ignoring toxic/divisive people, or taking on every responsibility.

I love this talk because its so frank and vulnerable…here’s a guy who’s had to deal with everything that he’s talking about, but at a bigger scale. This talk is so permissive: I think it gives permission to pastors to simply say no! To give pastors their dignity, which is trampled on and sucked on so often by communities. It empowers pastors to say YES to who they are and the things they have been called to…and NO to the things that they are not called to, as a pastor and a human.

4:00—Over the years you get beaten down…relationships break apart. Like a whole group of people tried to set out to have his ordination revoked because he wasnt fit to preach the gospel.

And over time…the little THINGS get stuck: death by paper cuts.

Easy to name burnout, pain, exhaustion from the BIG things. What this can do is that it begins to affect us because its over period of years and seem trivial and superficial…but it adds up over years.

THINGS HAPPEN:

1) We hold back. In the early days we went for it and didnt care if you failed. We took criticism and some shots for going after the impulse. And then you feel less inclined to do…if you received those things for putting yourself out there. You back off on the prophetic. the creative.

2) you label/list to keep people away. We develop these things to protect ourselves. Often its perception, not necessarily reality. Sometimes the real truth is back there we got a paper cut and didnt name it and deal with it.

3) And then revenge. PASSIVE: I dont want to give my best today…punish people because I was hurt and we dont put in the hours or the effort. We withdrawl and hold back. or ACTIVE: we want to hurt or slander or gossip.

To stay in this game and have more and more to say, to be more and more filled with wonder and awe of resurrection and the Kingdom and the Church….the one thing he wasnt told that we must become masters of is TO LEARN TO FORGIVE. The actual people in your actual church.

Have to get good at forgiving THAT person. For THAT person. For THAT event. Have to get good at naming the wound and call it was it is.

I remember this talk from the National Pastors Conference in February. This is SUCH a great, needed session so I’m glad I can share it online. Hope it encourages!

3:37—THE ONE THING ROB WISHES SOMEONE WOULD HAVE TOLD HIM LONG AGO

He got a letter from a young man thanking him for his work. Some people on Facebook slammed him as Fluff and Irrelevance. The only thing he could think of was: Fluff and Irrelevance.

He calls that: a chocolate covered turd: first glace appears attractive and chewy, but then you take a bite. The intent of the encounter was appreciation, love, and support…what he took away was a mixed blessing.

Then he was frustrated he couldn’t just brush it off. His experience has been that it is difficult to shake the sorts of things that come pastors way…even with good intensions but then you walk away limping.

The nine and the one: 10 bits of feedback on something. 9 are GREAT and LIFTOFF and BLEW THE ROOF. But ONE has negative feedback…which kills the 99 great things that happened. Its just that one that you cant shake…and frustration builds about the fact you cant shake it.

Or you hear a rumor about yourself. He has heard such unbelievable things about himself…wierd things.

Acts 21 brings comfort: Arent you the Egyption who started a revolt and led four thousand terrorists out into the wilderness sometime ago?”

Not just content of rumor, but idea that we should just be able to blow it off…and you can’t. Still lingers 2 days later.

Random comments cause discomfort, pain, irritation…

When you are in a leadership role in a community, you open yourself up to all sorts of things.

Or maybe you have one of these in the church: The official committee for doctrinal purity, orthodox rhetoric and general theological correctness. 🙂 Have ability to speak and give feedback at the right moment when you DONT need it.

3:34—Thanking his brother, Jon, for all the work he did. GREAT JOB JON!!!!

3:29—starting last session with Rob. with communion at the end.

Here was a twitter comment: DH Bromley—sorry, but Shane Hipps just lost me with his second talk. I’m pretty sure he’s wrong on the physical-energetic-essential distinction. I agree. Personally this was not my favorite session. I’m really curious how he knows any of what he said was true regarding our ‘bodies’ and the idea of Essence. Of all the things he could have talked about?! Odd.

3:11—PRACTICES OF ENERGY AND ESSENCE

1) Practices of Energy

First understand Physical is the conductor of Energetic body. Like copper conducts electricity. How posturing body kinks the hose…and hinders God’s divine energy from conducting.

Also realize that we are imitative creatures…so the energy you bring with you to the ‘pulpit’ will be sent to those in the community.

Can do exercises, yoga, ti-chi to retrain the body to unkink the energy.

2) Practice of Essence

Can develop techniques to uncover our essence. Most are silence and solitude.

Important to remember: the Essence is something you must eat and know…not read about and believe in. Big difference between believing and knowing.

Ways to taste our Essence: through breath. BREATH AND SPIRIT are one and the same…ancient language attests to this. We have separated two things never intended to be separate. Every time we see SPIRIT in the Scriptures we can replace with BREATH. If you want to know what God is really like, contemplate the nature of your breath…

In your Essence is a place of unending peace. You will always have it, no matter what happens, and you will always have it. It is the source of wisdom and compassion.

Our goal should be to cultivate our connection to our Essence in order to help people connect to God.

May we all continue to open ourselves, energy, and essence to experience God to better conduct God’s divine light into the world…

2:34—When you live in your essence is the gesture of the Spirit…waves on the same ocean. Wide open, free, unchanging, one with God.

Jesus developed mastery over the physical body through fasting, celibacy, carpentry; mastered energy by transmitting energy by healing, channeled anger to over turn tables, knew energy went from him when he was touched on cloak. Jesus also mastered ESSENCE. Had a commitment to develop access and aware of ESSENCE as us. His conviction Jesus essence and ours is not different…he just came to help us access it and be aware of it and develop it.

FATHER FORGIVE THEM FOR THEY DONT KNOW WHAT THEY ARE DOING. Deep mastery of his Essence. Why about Essence? Body is LAND…Energy is OCEAN…Essence is the SKY. Cannot pierce or stab the sky. Only dwelling from this ‘place’ can you dwell in infinite peace. When you dwell in forgiveness it is inevitable to be in the Essence.

2:28—THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE

Who we are…you and I are as a person is ultimately the message. Not just words. Who I am is the message. We’re gonna explore the medium of the Human being.

First we have a body…dont under estimate the power of a body. God himself EMBODIED. Our bodies are a powerful medium…and have three different aspects of the Human Being: Physical, Energetic, Essential.

Physical: everything that’s…physical about us! 🙂

Energetic: this is the part cant measure and interact with our 5 senses. The sensation going on…warm, radient, open, expansive, vast of ANGER, LOVE, SADNESS, CREATIVITY, SEXUAL (which is connected to life, creativity, connectedness), MENTAL PROCESSES, PRESENCE, etc…And these energies need to be cultivate, because they can atrophy. People have varying ‘footprint sizes’ of that energy. (ie Rob Bell vs. me! ) People experience those energies differently.

Essential: Deepest part of who we are. Very different than the two. This one is UNCHANGING. It is also UNLIMTED. Open, boundless, always free. Nothing you can do to develop and expand. The only thing that changes is access to it. What changes is peoples awareness of their essence.

(WHAT DOES THIS EVEN MEAN?)

Example: Mother Theresa. Had an ordinary body, charisma/energy. But LIVED in this place of fearlessly, endlessly giving her life away. Lived with the same thing God was made of. Same DNA of the Divine. When you know you are made of the same stuff of God you are free.

(ummm…these statements appear to be incredibly panentheistic. no ontological distinction?)

Romans 8:11—The very spirit who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you…that is my essence.

2:03— Shane Hipps on stage

1:51—10 min till Shane Hipps.

I was thinking more about the Pete Rollins talk and was struck by how powerful it was for people here. After he was done there was a standing ovation…long clap. Then Rob came out with Pete and said we need a moment of silence. Some people were heard crying. Many different people I talked with felt the Spirit moved. Others tweeted that that session was worth the price of admission alone. Something happened.

I loved the passion Pete brought. It was obvious that he is in love with God, love with the Church, and with the Christian movement. And while I get annoyed sometimes the irony and clever turns of phrases and have some push back to things he says (ie. his comments on revelation), I can still call him a brother in Christ. Some will say he is not orthodox. What I saw, however, was a man who is deeply connected to the Text, knowledgeable of it and wrestles with it and interacts with it honestly. A man who loves God and interacts with and wrestles with Him. He is not afraid to speak frankly and provoke, and I respect that.

Thanks for a provocative, rupturing session, Pete! We are revolutionists! We are insurrectionists! And I want to be among the counted to lead the revolution and insurrection of Jesus in a world controlled by the dark powers and patterns of this world. May I myself seek to provoke the mind and rupture the heart in the same way…in the same way the the God-with-us-God himself did.

PETE’S NEW BOOK: “ORTHODOX HERETIC“

12:13—DONE…clapping and standing ovation. Prayer and lunch. See you back at 2pm for the final few session. BTW…I really didn’t capture this session as well as I could have, nor did I give it the due diligence it deserved. Pete is one tough cookie to blog!

12:12—What is revelation then?

Our knowledge is not like that of a physicist or biologist. We just cant know truth and not do it. Our truth is the kind that brings life.

Not a revealing. Has 3 features:

incomprehension—you dont get more information…your information is obliterated.

bedazzlement—experience of not knowing how the experience.

transformation—no longer the same again.

Revelation is that which both reveals and conceals…brings us into light and ever more darkness….where we are changed and reconfigured and changed.

When you go to church you should be bedazzled…and your presuppositions should be reconfigured. We are the revolutionists and the insurrectionists. Thats what parables are for: perform something, not describe something…they rupture the people. The parable cannot be simply heard, but done and incarnated.

The point is to rupture people…in order to transform them. To use words to provoke and inspire and change peoples understanding of God and Life and Themselves. His point seems to be that too often we play into our prepackaged, shrink-wrapped understanding of God, rather than blowing those presuppositions out of the water. He says that when we grasp God he whistles through our fingers. Which is all good….but my questions is: is there nothing we can say about God? Has God Himself not said something about Himself? And can we Humans not understand what God has said about Himself? Sure we are called to wrestle over and ruminate over what God has said about Himself…but is there nothing we can say? Is there nothing we can say to the world about what God has said about Himself?

I definitely appreciate the general direction that Peter is trying to go…the idea that sometimes we are too certain about what we say about God, in unbridled arrogance and no humility…but it seems as though Pete says we can’t say anything about God. In fact in his book (HOW NOT TO SPEAK OF GOD) he says exactly that: “When it comes to God, we have nothing to say to others and we must not be ashamed of saying it.” So…its unclear how poets, preachers, and preachers should talk about God in light if this thickly veiled ignorance!

But like he said at the beginning…sometimes he doesn’t even believe some of what he says…maybe this is one of them?

11:51—We need substantial change in the individual, not just surface change…

The violence of christianity is fundamentally violent…against the principalities and powers. Mother Theresa and Martin Luther King ruptured the systems. System is not that which you see, but that which you see through…these people doing something powerful.

Revelation not about revealing. We think revealing…God whispering in the year. A theologian talks about God like a biologist talking about bio-life. The question is not is Christianity true, but what does it mean when it claims to be true…we then just assume its like the truth of biology. Revelation does not mean we have information about God, like a biologist has something on bio-life.

The desire to speak of God is ancient. If you can name God you can have power. But is this idea of NAMING something that God plays along with? God exists in the mind and in reality. For alot of people God exists in the mind, but not reality. Or when Jesus shows up he shows up in reality and the mind. Or first God is seen anonymously

But possible to exist in reality and so majestic that it cant exist in the mind. God not anonymous. He is hypernonymous…don’t know something because there isnt access. God is not unknown because he doesn’t exist; he cannot be known because he cannot be grasped because of the excess…like the sun.

The Bible is divine because of the tension and problems and difficulties. Of course you are going to have a breakdown of words when you have the infinite entering into the finite. Of course we are going to blow up and combust.

The unnamable is omninamable…when confronted with the trauma of God not reduced into silence, but into poetry, prophecy, and preaching. As soon as you name God you create him in your image. Theology is like us trying to draw God. Jesus tears up our images of God, not paint them. As soon as we start putting words to God peoples God’s look like them…God is not the patch of meaning on the wind of our unknowing…he is the patch of unknowing we put on our wind of meaning.

Moses…Jacob wanted to know God’s name. But he didnt give it. We dont name God, he names us.

The point of incarnation is not God being revealed and we now understand it…its now the mystery is here and brought among us and lives with it. The mystery is deepened. The mystery touches us.

11:25—Pete wheeling on stage on a SEGWAY! NICE!

11:00—Zach Lind with Jimmy Eat World inteview…sorry, not recording that one!

10:46—Buckets grow into Chunks

Have folders, paper bags, whatever to collect ideas, things, notes, quotations, pictures, stats, verses, etc…and later after being struck you hear something that grows the fragment. Something takes root in you and works in you…so by the time you give the teaching you have ideas and you have something to say.

What if once a week you collected and idea/fragment/insight/sentence…and took 10 min once a week to look through the buckets. Be intentional and give attention to it. No pressure, no time frame when it comes to a series or teaching. SAVE STORIES…ask people to write down the stories you hear from people at church, on the street and get their phone number!

Certain things need time to soak…a sermon needs time to soak. thoughts on the Text need time to soak. the fragments from life need time to soak. illustrations need time to soak.

10:19—If I couldn’t use any biblical or religious language, how would I describe this? to a child? to a Martian? without words? using only drawings and pictures? using only actors? Many things can become crystalized when you ask how would a 9 year old hear this…how should I say this to a 9 year old. How describe this to my friend who doesn’t want religious language?

Some more questions: what’s the the thing behind the thing? the truth behind the truth? the mystery behind the mystery?

Example: What are you about to say about marriage…what are the things behind the ‘thing’ (marriage)? What about getting at patience, holding the tongue, gentleness, kindness…the things behind marriage.

Is there anyway to: enact it, perform it, show it, do it, ignore it, circle around it, hand it out….The point is to use to use anything to make a point, to do something and use something that is memorable. There are people in our congregations who are MORE than willing to give of their knowledge, resources, talents to help make this happen, too.

Can you see what happens when a preacher reads the Text, some commentaries, and starts typing?

10:00—Rob is taking random verses from the audience and running through the elements of EXEGETING to describe and ask questions of the Text.

I’m struck by how this guy really knows the Text…and everything that surrounds the Text. This session has reminded me of the special role pastors have in bring God to people through Life and the Text. What a sacred, special role that needs to be handled well…and needs to be deliberate.

9:52—The task of the Sermon Artist is to be hyper-sensitive to the world around us…to make connections to what’s been there the whole time, to help people wake up. Because the earth is humming…life is preaching the whole time.

EXEGETING LIFE. EXEGETING THE TEXT

1) EXEGETING LIFE

Something happens with LIFE…there is a moment: writes it, take a picture of it, save it, ask for it, get it, clip it, tear it out, story it, mark it, remember it….all with NO EDIT BUTTON. You dont know what it will mean and how it will fit in the sermon.

He didn’t mention it, but there is a SWEET program for iPhone and iPod Touch called EVERNOTE. Another handy tool for this sort of filing is a MOLESKINE, for those non-technophiles

This could be incredibly useful for this sort of filing thing. The idea is to soak in every conversation, moment, idea, object, movie, song, statement for the purpose of connecting the Story of Life to the Story of Christ.

2) EXEGETING THE TEXT

Memorize—just memorizing it is the beginning of exegeting…it roles around in your mind all day and your mind makes connections and finds insights. It frees you to focus on how to navigate it. It opens you up to all the other

Inhale—what have other people said for thousands of years? how have others interpreted it?

Words—any key words? Go right to the words…what are the key words and do the words have pictures behind them? How do the words connect to other things and other words and other ideas? How is it used,

Location, Culture—where does it take place…anything else take place there? It happened where? What are the people, places, smells, etc like in which the story takes place?

Concepts

Stories—how are the other versions of the gospel accounts said? what is different? what other stories does on particular story connect to?

Time—what time period did this happen in? what else is going on? what ‘technological’ age is it…what period of human history is it?

as a side note form him: much of the best scholarship on history, location, culture, time typically comes outside of the church…more conservative people tend to place the bible in a bubble. but from many different sources the world of the bible can be blown wide open.

Pictures—use a picture from where the narrative takes place.

Actions—does anyone do anything…anything happening? and how about acting that action out in the sermon…

9:18—PS-I love it that Rob’s been wearing the same clothes all 3 days!!

The CONTENT of the sermon…

Every preacher has started with “the blank screen.” How do you get to the place where you don’t start with a blank screen? Idea is to get to the place where you never come to a blank screen, where you are constantly marinading on a sermon or teaching series.

Hope is to move from having to say something to having something to say…Are there some everyday postures and ways to see the world where you have something to share. You are sick and need help if you try and work under pressure on Saturday night…or simply wait for the spirit to move. What if you give the Spirit 6 months to move instead of 14 hours. GREAT POINT!

Why can we only say it is all God…and also not human effort?

How about working really hard to communicate what God has already revealed? How about pushing oneself and studying and preparing a kick ass message that creates space for the love and grace of God to be dispensed through us and our mouths into the lives and hearts of our people?

What if there was something going on all around us, all the time, everywhere, in everybody….instead of simply Tuesdays at 9am? Rob begins with premise that wherever he is, whatever he is doing, whoever he is interacting with…the Lord is in that place (Gen 28). He’s invited to realize the Lord is in that place…and WE show up.

9:01—starting with a vid…

8:57—final day of sessions starting soon…

8:13—TEST…final live blog begins in 45 min.