Friday, February 8, 2013

Just Questions

A funny thing... My English book has been discussing the importance of a really good question. Tonight, I'm full of them. I've spent yesterday and today in a conference that's been put on by the Rocky Mountain Region of the United Church of Christ, called Congregations Alive. I went into the conference expecting to learn a lot of best practices, gain some new ideas for spiritual growth and leadership and meet a lot of people I've never had an opportunity to meet. What I've gotten are a whole lot of questions. And not the "how do we run our Sunday School" kind of questions. No. These are the "what is my purpose on this earth" questions, that have answers so complicated and different for each person that I may never figure them out.

A highlight of some of the things I've written down:

  • Are the youth of this generation less sensitive to sacred or sensitive subject matters than the generations before them?
  • One of the presenters suggested that our youth need to behave first, belong second and then believe. For this to work, it requires us to place community before theology. Do I agree that this is right or necessary or accurate? Why or why not?
  • A keynote speaker this morning said "Change can happen when people believe it can happen and if they believe the effort is worth it." Are the changes we've talked about making worth it? Do we believe they can happen?
  • How do we, as a faith community, encounter those who aren't part of our faith community in a way that they trust the story we want to share with them? CAN we encounter those who aren't a part of our faith community and help them trust the story we want to share with them?
  • Are we using the right language for Spiritual Growth, Faith Formation, Christian Education... Does the language we're using reflect our values and model?
  • Is it easier to love one another inside of a congregation? Why or why not?
  • What is our church's love language?
I've done three workshops so far, with a fourth on the schedule for tomorrow. Yesterday, I started with Becoming A Youth Whisperer. We discussed the "dominant breeds" of teenagers and how we can find and address their needs, instead of trying to "fix" their dominances (the dramatic, the comedian, the victim, etc), among other things. In ConnectMORE, we talked about how the church continually responds to our changing culture. This morning's keynote, Marian Plant, used the image of a desert flooding after a drought to talk about how we create water flowing from our chancels, down our aisles and out the cracks beneath the doors into our communities. In Faith Formation, Christian Education or Other, we discussed how the use of language in the church affects what people expect and how they perceive faith formation/spiritual formation/Christian Education. In Reaching Those Disabilites: Both Cognitive and Physical, we discussed what we can do to be more inclusive of those who are differently-abled. 

Now do you see why I'm so overloaded? My mind is going a billion miles an hour. There is just SO much to process. I think this could take weeks... I'm also going to make a to-do list of things that I think we could benefit from doing or discussing as a church. Gah. So. Much. Information. 


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