Here we go. Refresh and you will see more…

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10am… started with prayer and a few announcements.

10:41am… “Thinking with the Church, Thinking with the Vineyard”

Caleb Maskell is speaking on the subject through a conversation with Pope Francis and how his initial ecclesiological vision casting opens doors to the type of intellectual and spiritual community that the Society of Vineyard Scholars exists (to foster).

Caleb’s gold mine idea: All Vineyard scholars need to get really good to listening, and listening more, and providing substantial feedback and then listen some more. (He also pulled a ninja stealth Jedi I’ve on us too)

Let’s get back to:

Pray for healing and for miracles.
(not sure of 2nd)
Practice of waiting on God.

110:05am… Beth Stovell starting on thinking through the subject as a biblical scholar.

She sees her calling as a biblical scholar to share the love of a god with the world. Works to create tools to help people better understand the ancient world, ancient languages and Scripture as ancient texts. The role of hermeneutics is to help people understand what we are doing when we read and interpret Scripture.

When we say “church,” who do we mean? We should read across traditions (read Scripture together).

What does it mean to be a Vineyard Scholar? The core values of the Vineyard shapes how we do it. It starts with the kingdom of God. We are instruments of the king, and it happens in all our contexts.

A value we have is to be a bridge builder in our “reconciling community.”

Beth was awesome. I love her. Good friend. Oops. Sorry. Too personal. Haha.

11:20am… Derek Morphew presenting on doing theology in the Vineyard. Considers himself an amateur church based theologian (What?!?!).

Started as a pastor and church planter.

Theology is often dialectic conversation.

Derek desired to start a Vineyard publishing tradition (see Vineyard Publishing).

Working toward a Vineyard position paper on the LGBTQ question (has read 40 books and needs inner healing since he has read so much!).

The growing scholarly focus on Jesus is new (for us) though it is ancient (orthodox?).

Large group of church groups looking at using VI.

11:38… Q&A has great convo. Too bad you aren’t here…

“The southern Bible Belt spirituality is not a theology, but a culture” – Derek Morphew (boom!)

1:34pm… John Pittard of Yale University, a philosopher who thinks on unity and disagreement, etc.

We need to engage in difficult conversations…

Giving disagreement its due demands we be open to changing our mind.

“Conciliationism”… new cool word to use.

This guy is smart… reminds me why I am not a philosopher.

What I am hearing, to simplify: don’t be an arrogant jerk. Be humble. (Yes, it is more complex than that).

“Conciliationism” doesn’t need to require religious pluralism. It tells us how to respond to theories in hand (epistemic credentials being sought).

“Not all bads are equal.”

1:20pm… Response to Dr. Pittard by Janna Gonwa.

Great push back responding to an over emphasis of individualism.

The afternoon session that I attended included papers by Gary Best, James Mumford, and Bethany Joy Kim. Sorry I didn’t “live” blog. Battery was charging. Here are my thoughts:

Gary Best seemed to be talking about what I would call the “SVS-elephant-in-the-room” (the LGBTQ questions). I really appreciated Gar Best’s reminder to emphasize love, grace, and time (for dialogue) as a posture. Great reminder.

However, I am unclear on the “model” of engagement when one enters into a place where there is significant problems theologically with a certain issue. The model, as best I can tell from Gary, is that there is no model to follow due to a lack of ecclesiological depth or, I would argue, clear explanations of how we think about or understand our polity. Lots of questions on that, and I am afraid there is almost an over emphasis on the need to be gracious and loving in our engagement to the point of not really thinking about the implications of Titus 1:9 and 1 Timothy 4:1-2 and Matt. 7:15-23. I will talk more on that later.

I liked Gary’s thoughts though, overall. I just don’t find it much helpful in how we are currently thinking as a movement on certain issues.

James Mumford was great. Generally pretty hilarious and insightful. He is smart. That is all I know.

Bethany Joy Kim is smart too, and as the respondent noted, needs to be thought on more. I am not so sure I agree with the center set thinking she employs though. And this has more to do with an observation that some of us talk about center set thinking differently. It appears some think of center set as an ecclesiological ontology and others view it more in line as a missional methodology. I would have to think me read her paper though. Super smart.

More coming…