postmodern accent - day 1

As I mentioned yesterday, I am in Oklahoma City for an event called "worship with/in a postmodern accent." It is a very interesting event put on and attended mostly by United Methodists from Oklahoma. Most didn't even realize that it had been advertised nationally - of the 35 in attendance there are probably only 5-8 who aren't UM from OK. That makes it wierd because they have lots of inside lingo and people in common that I don't get, but I'm finding it a spectacular event anyway.

It began with a presentation by Dr. Ed Phillips of Candler Seminary and a bit of "postmodern humor." Not having audio/video for the "joke" made it tough. So I give you this

The question - "Is this anything" is the question being asked in our churches. When I pray, is it anything? When we celebrate the Eucharist, is it anything?

In a world where novelty is the status quo, how do you have true innovation?

Dr. Phillips' presentation was an enlightening journey through liturgical history. His assertion is that we are in the midst of a paradigm shift from worship as experience to worship as event. I have trouble with the nuance of experience v. event so I would rather use another word - worship as happening. Worship is no longer an audience viewing an expert do some cool things but an opportunity "to be with I am."

Jonny Baker of the Church Mission Society in the good ol' Church of England then presented on creativity. I immediately said to myself, "I am not creative." And he debunked my own myth when he pointed to research done by some major corporation that said the only difference between those who are creative and those who are not is perception. If you think you aren't creative then you won't be. If you think you are, then you will be. Damn! His advice to spark creativity was remarkably ironic - "deliberately schedule interruptions." Ha!

We then worked in our small groups on tomorrow night's "Communion by Numbers" service. I'm in group 7 which is in charge of the bread and wine portion of the evening - you know, the easy part. We worked very hard, and I think that we are being both genuine to our overwhelmingly UMC group while moving beyond everyone's comfort zones.

After dinner the conversation went back to Jonny who used a favorite metaphor of mine, one by Tom Wright - the Christian walk as improvization. Basically it says that salvation history is a 5 act play that has a scene missing in the middle of the 5th act - which is where we live. We must improvise that scene while staying true to the larger story (the tradition). The one thing I wish he would have mentioned was that some people improve by using the 1979 Book of Common Prayer and some people improvises by using ipods and macbooks and both are OK. We also were kinda fearful of the whole improvisation thing and nobody mentioned, though I stronly believe, that communities tend to be self-correcting.

Finally, a great analogy for people like Jonny, Brian McLaren, and hopefully me - and that is being bilingual - we speak both institution and alt.worship.

All in all a good day one. I'll talk more tomorrow about the "open space" conversations we're having each day.

Two other things