obligation and new tricks

I feel like since I traveled across the country this past week that should probably warrant some writing. Last Wednesday I left for the cross-country journey to Grand Rapids, MI to attend Calvin's Worship Symposium (or is it Symposium on Worship?) Obviously I wasn't too interested in the title. Anyway, after traveling 4620 miles and attending 28 hours of worshops/services I have at least one solid conclusion: I love academia. Seriously. I walked away from the conference thinking, "Was the main accomplishment of all of this to make me want to go to grad school?" I loved sitting down at a desk with a notebook in pen. I loved attending a panel that provided tons of questions and practically no answers. I marveled over people's master's and ph.D's. I love this stuff. Absolutely love it.

A few other tidbits. Five hours of Dallas Willard. A-ma-zing. It was a lot to take in and at times I thought my brain was going to explode (jet lag didn't help), but it was amazing to see him in person. Oddly enough, his was one of few books in college I straight up did not read (I found it incredibly boring at the time and my prof was going over it in class...also very boring). Perhaps it was out of guilt that I attended his workshop? Anyway, he had amazing things to say about real discipleship and how we train people to follow Christ rather than just telling them what to and what not to do. He also talked about transformation as opposed to just formation. He said that Hitler had spiritual formation, what we need is transformation. He had great things to say about the state of the church and our spiritual lives and it was obvious that he's learned from experience and really does walk with God moment by moment.

A few other great things...renewed interest in the arts and in the emerging church movement. Though I do love my reformed heritage, I really think I could get involved with the right emerging congregation, on the condition that its founders and leaders are theologically well educated people. When you've got people with their doctorates in philosophy and theology saying that they have tested and are continually testing all church practices (including those of the emerging church) it makes me less terrified to get involved. Here's one interesting point. At a panel discussion on arts and media we were talking about the instant gratification and overall slickness of media based art. There are so many bells and whistles these days. We're so overstimulated already, and we don't want to give people the same thing at church. (You can see an entry from Novemeber about my stance on that.) Anyway, someone was talking about how they're weary about using too much slick media because of the overstimulation factor, and in response the very intelligent Scottish man on the panel noted that most questions that people raise in regards to the emerging church can be turned on their heads and asked of traditional and contemporary models as well. You want to talk about overstimulation? What about singing four verses of a hymn. That's four stanzas of theological poetry. That's pretty much enough right there. Then say you sing three hymns, that's 12 stanzas of really heavy stuff. You get a 5-10 second pause between each verse. Could that be considered over-stimulation as well?

Okay, now I'm running out of brain juice. But before I go, one new trick I learned yesterday: the print screen key. Behold the print screen key in all its majesty and glory. Thank you O print screen key for all the new and fantastic things you have enabled me to do at work.