Peter Rollins – Returning to the New: An Introduction to Transformance Art – what do flash mobs, performance artists, and pirates have to do with Christianity? exploring how the church can act as an aroma of the coming kingdom.
Notes taken during Pete’s uhh, lecture/performance/address/… uhh, If you have seen him teach, you know what I am talking about. He’s super high energy, incredibly intelligent, and the ideas are brilliant. Some people can’t listen to him because between the Irish accent and the intensity, they just can’t handle Pete. They say he’s too exhausting for their minds. I suppose when you have been brought up on Family Matters and 3-point sermons, this tends to be true (not that there’s anything wrong with that). I feel for them though, they must be cursed with boring smart people preaching long drawn out sermons every Sunday ;-)
Some of this will be familiar for those that came/read about the Emergent Mid-Atlantic organized by Thomas Turner & Friends. Anyway, this is what I got:
Life is lived forwards and understood backwards – Kierkegaard
Fairy tales contain our values
Living your dream can mean the ability of having new ones
Explanation of IKON non-membership cards (they have a card that says they are a non-member. Yes, an actual physical card that literally says that.)
The real roles of the analyst is to push back so the anaylyzed can learn from themselves.
We want leaders to be dominated by us. (brilliant)
Leader who refuse to lead are essential bc they allow people to learn/understand from themselves
more IKON practices …
Atheism for Lent – read critiques of C. to let them judge us
We know bigger car, home and money won’t make us happy. We act like we know but our social self acts like it doesn’t know.
Pete Rollins explains the Batman- Bruce Wayne problem – It’s Wayne’s company that creates the greed that hurts the city then he has to fight the criminals that his company has produced. He should either find a way for Wayne Enterprises to actually help the city or shut the company down …
The entire system needs to be changed
The church is a flash mob
Example of flash mobs
– A bunch of people show up to a train station and have some kind of pseudo-choreographed dance. Then leave.
– A bunch of people show up to a place with their ipods and listen and dance to the same song but only through their ipods and in as much silence as they can. Then leave.
The purpose of canned laughter – so the audience doesn’t have to laugh. The preacher believes so the congregation doesn’t have to believe.
As long as Rob believes, I don’t have to, you say you firm doubt but the structures doesn’t need to convince the chickens.
re-birth birth opens you up to experiences.
God is not an object in the world, He allows (or entrusts) us to change the objects in the world.
Some practices to consider:
1. Create the atmosphere that everything you believe could be wrong
2. suspended place – neither greek, nor jew, slave or free
neither freedom fighter or terrorost
so we empty ourselves
and look beyond the color of someone’s eyes
if you see them, if you know the color, your’re not really listening, your objectifying the person
Preaching should be descriptive, they should be performative
Bellieve, behave belong vs .belong, behave, believe
How can you have rock music if your parents give you everything you want?
Drawing people to conversation, they should be angry with what you’re saying, create ruptures
Instead of giving people water and epecting them to be thirsty, we should give them salt so they really can be thirsty
They’re not seeking God, they’re seeking meaning
Fear does not allow for transformational change (rabbit FBI, CiA RUC, bear)
Like being single, you usually find someone once you have accepted your singleness and are no longer looking.
The need is retrovertaliy true
Dramatic truth (I forget what this was actually. I really they release some kind of recording of this. You have to see/hear it and I have to again).
Anti-evangelism – no need for God so they can have an aroma of “bread”.
God is the one who gives God – Augustine
God became human, we want to be God-llike but God became human, incarnation is God becming fully human.
Rob asks top 3 moments of IKON
1. We askpeople to come to church and discover God but people must discover God in places they are not.
2. Pyro theology – the only church that illuminates is the the one that is burning
And I don’t think Pete made it to 3.
Reaction – As usual, I appreciated what Pete had to say. At times I’m not sure people give him the respect and credit he deserves because he speaks in such an excited state but that’s their loss – those who have hears, let them hear, right? I know I mentioned this in the intro but I had this conversation a few times whether it be the neighbors in front of me or conversations at the book table.
I left liking the idea of the practices of creating spaces where everything you believe could be wrong and suspended places. I am trying to figure out what that would look like in my context. I can see how it could work if the listener truly trusted the intention of the pastor-preacher. I see why these practices work better in less traditional settings. On the flip side, those are the among the excuses we tend to use. How can we as a community form a space where this would be beautiful and helpful for our faith and hopefully, for the faith of others?
Further, I think this among the reasons why the subject of apologetics is as popular as it is. Though the apologist doesn’t usually say it, “What if none of this is true?”, the voice of the skeptic gets to ask that question like, “What if God doesn’t actually exist?” In most settings, the question is quickly squashed lest anyone fall of the wagon. For me (and many like me), I’ve come to enjoy the great time of doubt because it makes me a better student of God, life and my Christian faith.
It could be my pre-suppositions or my ulterior motives, but the idea of suspended places always makes me think – pub-church. I’ve been really interested in that for a while now, hmmm ….
I was also a bit relieved when he said “We should be drawing people to conversation, they should be angry with what you’re saying, create ruptures …” Well, at least I’m doing something right ;-) In truth, I some times feel that I have gone too far and the next day I wonder if I’ve gone far enough. It’s a good thing to wrestle with but I was grateful he said this.
I hope to post Shane Hipp’s sessions soon.
While I cannot honestly say that DCLA is cheese-free (sorry Lost & Found), at least it’s focused on its mission. I do not claim to know the behind the scenes decisions, nor do I know specifics and I would only guess the names but from where I sit, it seems that after YS took over, the event underwent quite the paradigm shift. This year’s theme was “Be, Love, Serve, Repeat”. Perfect for our group. There were no bigger than CCM-life bands but it was cool that Family Force 5, Hawk Nelson, KJ-52 were there. All of us had a good time, we laughed, we were entertained and at times overloaded by it all but what I loved is that the focus on loving Christ and others was central. If you didn’t see it, you were daydreaming about Toby Mac and Mac Powell flying down from the rafters.
Shane Claiborne – we were debating whether to change our youth group name to the Shane Fan Club but another group already did that. They grew out their hair, had dreds, made their own clothes and ran their cell phones off of solar power. We were willing to do that and convert the church music room into a homeless shelter but we lost our momentum over the lifelong celibacy vow. In seriousness, judging from the low attendance at Shane’s seminars, he’s not the superstar to this age group as he is to X’ers and older Millennials but by Monday, everyone knew who he was. (Ours did of course, because Claiborne worshippers like 
– Kendall Payne – I’m pretty sure she’s not signed to a label but a true indie artist. I admit I almost missed the boat on Kendall. She had released some kind of anti skinny model looking girls song that encouraged girls to appreciate themselves for who they were and to pursue a healthy sense of identity but she probably didn’t hear how it sounded with a bunch of 14 year old girls singing it in the church van (a moment from a few years ago that resulted in Bose, noise-cancelling headphones to all youth leaders). The rest of her work is brilliant (like Scratch and I personally like the Grown album.) I usually don’t like to talk about the cover songs of talented artists but she did two that are worth mentioning. One was “What if God Was One of Us?” which was pretty controversial back recorded by Joan Osborne back in 1995. It seemed to me that too many of us Christians perceived it as an attack on God’s deity but instead, it said and asked a lot more. She also did a cover of U2’s “One”. It was smooth and slow and I hope one day a youtube clip of it appears. As a fan of U2 (Sept 26 at Giants Stadium can’t come 
fast enough!), this song is so overdone, but Kendall did a fantastic job.
– … the focus on our worship wasn’t on Starfield’s lead singer so much. With access to multiple camera angles, a million different types of backgrounds, a million more that motion backgrounds and the idea of flat worship, Tim’s face was on the big screen way too much and it got distracting. I know that is not Tim’s, Starfield’s or YS’s intention but it seemed considerably more than at NYW Conferences. This isn’t a criticism of Starfield, I like them but just the way we did worship seemed too focused on them. I didn’t mention this until one of our students brought it up. It led to a great conversation regarding worship.
What I’ve Been Enjoying –
In some ways, this story begins at Youth Specialties’ National Youth Workers Conference (NYWC). Most years, I attend this and among the great speakers and seminars found at this event is the Exhibition Hall.
After returning home, I remember sitting in my office filing some of the brochures and creating a “Top-5”.
HIV in Africa while there are approximately 250 thousand that have the HIV virus in the Caribbean area.
To be honest, I didn’t have any cut-off numbers as l mentioned some of this is arbitrary and stats are not always the best way to determine the legitimacy of a cause. What they did for us was provide context and perspective. Further it was helpful for me to those that speak in the language of stats and figures. Anyway, this is part of what I shared with those around me and then to our sr. high group and eventually to the church. Most people got it, supported it, and loved it. Today, I find myself so grateful to how this all came to be.
Maybe what was so unique about this experience was so many incredible aspects coming together.
Let’s be clear here, the work sucked.
We had a great team of students that got along great with each other which is hard to do when you’ve been together for 2 weeks, exhausted, hungry, and feeling disgusting most of the time.
mixing cement with us.
brother Vince who lost his eye sight while serving in prison but was committing Scripture to memory by listening to cds.
ourselves.
Q Conference, I understand that they want you to be here and be conscious of those who are gathered with you. I’ll respect it but when I put on my own conference, “Posers, Players, and Punks”, I’ll let whoever do whatever they want. Anyway, they say that they will release video of this one day but in the meantime you’ll have to deal with my subjectivity until you’re able to have your own:
For some it is to be evaluated, “Did you like it?”, “Did they do a good job?” As the preacher, you want to interrupt one of these conversations and say, “How did you do?”
The picture to the right is a quote of collected words of advice to every pastor. It was something like – “The preacher should be honest and transparent. He should use the Bible but not too much but it should be practical and it should be funny too but not too funny because you’re a pastor not a comedian but you should tell lots of stories but not too many because that gets old too. You should use personal illustrations like about your family but try to be creepy about it, and you should admit your faults but not too many because that’s depressing but you really should be open and honest …”
changing alien robots, it’s not supposed to be Shakespeare. If you liked the first one, I think you’ll like the second.
re-checked the votes, we were right the first time, Ahmadinejad won by 62%.” I am admiring, praying and rooting for Moussavi and his plan for a new party. He’s among the bravest in the world right now. 2. The Iranian govt, arresting British embassy workers.
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