The Deconstructed Church: Understanding Emerging Christianity - Oxford University Press - due May 2014

Advance Praise for The Deconstructed Church

“As growing numbers of Americans say they are ‘nonreligious,’ observers note a comparable shift among those who are religious toward looser, more individualistic, anti-institutional, experimental expressions of faith. Marti and Ganiel have done a superb job of examining these emerging expressions, illuminating both the practices and beliefs of individuals and the innovative congregations they are forming.”

• Robert Wuthnow, Gerhard R. Andlinger ‘52 Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center for the Study of Religion, Princeton University

“In the midst of a polarized landscape, where ‘religion’ and ‘church’ signal a lack of vitality and authenticity, Emerging Churches are putting together something new out of the debris. Marti and Ganiel show us why we should pay attention. They describe the faith found here as neither shopping nor seeking, but a conversation carried on in congregations that are determinedly open and inclusive. This book provides a careful analysis of this much-discussed movement and shows why it is so well-suited to our times.”

• Nancy T. Ammerman, author of Sacred Stories, Spiritual Tribes: Finding Religion in Everyday Life

 

‘The Last Stop: Understanding the Emerging Church Movement’ Interview with Gladys Ganiel and Gerardo Marti Published in Bearings

‘The Last Stop: Understanding the Emerging Church Movement’ Interview with Gladys Ganiel and Gerardo Marti Published in Bearings

Thanks to my fantastic co-author, Gladys Ganiel, who posted our interview on her own blogsite. 

Gladys writes --

An interview with Gerardo Marti and me, ‘The Last Stop: Understanding the Emerging Church Movement,’ has been published in the Collegeville Institute’s Bearings magazine.

The interview begins on page nine and is based in large part on our forthcoming book, The Deconstructed Church: Understanding Emerging Christianity, and includes questions such as:

• How do you introduce the Emerging Church to those who are unfamiliar with the movement?
• What does the Emerging Church Movement tell us about the contemporary religious landscape? What is its significance as a modern religious movement?
• Do you think the Emerging Church Movement will play a role in Christianity’s historical development?

CLICK HERE TO READ THE INTERVIEW

The Deconstructed Church: A Quick Update

My co-author Gladys Ganiel and I have been working diligently to craft the final contours of our forthcoming book The Deconstructed Church — a book oriented toward describing the identity and practices of "Emerging Christians." While the draft is not complete, it looks like we're on target to turn in the manuscript this summer.

A lot of writing exists (and much more since we received the contract with Oxford University Press) about the Emerging Church Movement—mostly a mixture of suppositions, speculations, and various spokespeople representing their visions for the movement. But sociologists of religion have been reluctant to pay much attention to this group of network-dependent, loosely-affiliated, and largely marginalized "Christians." There are insiders and critics who are sick to death of hearing about emerging/emergent Christians, while there are plenty of outsiders who are still discovering it, intrigued by the orientation, and struggling to figure it out.

And there are a few scholars of religion who have found enough permanence among these groups (existing since the late 1990s, with and without the label) that one esteemed colleague said to me that she's heard of several people who are trying to stake some kind of scholarly "claim" to understanding the movement.

Like a lot of researchers, I follow my nose: meaning, I have a set of questions that intrigue me, a set of observations that coalesce at various times, and moments of opportunity to investigate things that serve to highlight important aspects about identity, social change, and the often surprising dynamics that govern our lives.

I have zero interest in staking any exclusive claim to understanding the Emerging Church Movement. I've spoken about it at academic conferences and written about it. Occasionally, I've been interviewed by a reporter. But there are others. Gladys certainly has her expertise. Other social scientists have recently published some insightful analyses (James Bielo's Emerging Evangelicals and Josh Packard's The Emerging Church come to mind). What I am interested in doing is taking a fairly extensive data set that combines my interviews/observations with Gladys', and supplementing those with data gathered originally by Tony Jones for his dissertation in Practical Theology at Princeton (you can find it on Amazon).  Although Tony has published his thoughts, I have avoided reading this work closely as Gladys and my goal has been to systematically analyze the whole of the data and inductively assess the patterns that (ahem) "emerge."

I'm very pleased with our work so far. I think our book holds some surprises—even for those who are long time observers and insiders. We bring our own conceptual lenses to bear to what has become an impossibly ambitious task: How do we frame the workings of a diffuse religious orientation against the backdrop of the changed society that makes it possible? The Emerging Church Movement would not have existed 100 years ago, even 50 years ago.  It is a manifestation of shifting ground for what it means to be religious today, and what the possibilities for congregational life are in the near future.

As a book-length analysis, it strains a blog post to summarize our findings. You'll forgive me that I won't even try. But I am excited enough to say "Stay Tuned," this book will be worth the wait. Expected sometime Fall 2014.

Evangelicalism, Continental Philosophy, and the Deconstructed Church

Thanks to a wonderful invitation from philosopher Jack Caputo, I spent much of last week at Syracuse University participating in The Future of the Continental Philosophy of Religion conference.  

This was quite the event, a gathering of philosophers from the US and UK who specialize in distinctive readings of Hegel, Kierkegaard, Merleau-Ponty, Derrida, Deleuze and the like along with more recent thinkers like Zizek and Meillassoux (you can check out the conference program).  I was pleased to hear Catherine Malabou, Thomas Altizer, and Merold Westphol interacting in  sessions.  With Harvey Cox, Clayton Crockett, and Philip Goodchild in the mix, it was really quite an occasion. 

I was invited to a session focused on Peter Rollins, what I called "the phenomenon of Peter Rollins," as a means to explore one development in the Continental Philosophy of Religion.  When I was invited to present, my follow up email to Jack Caputo said something like,"You realize I'm a sociologist and not a philosopher, right?"  They were quite willing to introduce a multi-disciplinary dialogue that described not only with the ideas of Peter Rollins but what he may represent as actions and movements in our broader religious context. With thirty minutes to share, I tried to unpack my best understanding of how Peter Rollins lies along a long path of renegotiating conservative Christianity that has been brewing for almost two decades.

Most of us know that the spectacular success of Evangelicalism in the 1970s through the 1990s created a self-sustaining Evangelical world—and that these successes created a backlash. Evangelical leaders came to seek ways to overcome the churched/non-churched divide. But the journey hasn’t been smooth.

As Evangelicals became attentive to creating a closed “Christian culture,” many disaffected evangelicals left their churches, becoming critics rather than compliant members. Listening to criticism from outside, atheistic thinkers resourced their critique. There emerged a number of Christian readers of secular philosophy who were pleased to take up an aggressive questioning of the certainty, “truth,” and the resulting morality and politics that came with it. Much of the underlying tone of such criticism draws on a hermeneutics of suspicion with its post-Marx, post-Nietzsche, and post-Freud sensibilities. Notions and paradigms promoted by these new "Christian" writers and thinkers is buttressed and often inspired directly by Continental Philosophy.

Attention to "postmodern thinkers" complimented a broader surge of interest in “postmodern philosophy” among Evangelical seminarians and church leaders. Christian publishers are still catching up to this hunger, producing more books building on recent philosophical work (e.g., Philosophy and Theology series from Continuum / T&T Clark and Church and Postmodern Culture series from Baker Publishing Group). In practice, a growing number of evangelical church leaders are moving from simple “Bible Study” to openly engaging Continental Philosophy through their books and concepts in small gatherings. On my twitter feed yesterday, I mentioned Gianni Vattimo's work, and that initiated a stream of follow-up discussions with fellow tweeps who pay attention to theology and religion. 

This engagement with such deeply intellectual work represents a significant shift. Mark Noll in his Scandal of the Evangelical Mind articulated the historical basis for anti-intellectualism among Ameircan Evangelicals. Now we are seeing more educated evangelicals who are finding their religious frameworks “lag” behind the theoretical or epistemological/ontological sophistication of their schooling. They have fundamental critiques of what they see as “modern” ways of reading the bible (hermeneutics), organizing the church (ecclesiology), and assessing morality and devotion (spiritual formation) and are forming new types of Christian gatherings to express their developing values.

Continental philosophy "works" because it involves thinkers whose work invokes a sustained social critique. Continental philosophy is concerned with structures, underlying structures of society (often drawn from Marxist orientations) and underlying structures of the psyche (often drawn from Freudian orientations). A pursuit of uncovering the working of underlying, non-conscious, structures, cultivates observations that eventually can move to practical efforts in what to talk to people about (preaching), what humans are to become (evangelism and discipleship), how community is to be lived together (ecclesiology and “loving one’s neighbor”), and how to act in the world (duty to God and others). These writings provide resources for being prophetic to the church and to the world.

These Christian critics have been helped also by the “religious turn” in Continental Philosophy and the greater availability of religious thinkers in this vein as primary and secondary works were made more available at the same time as the disaffection and pursuit of alternative frameworks happened among evangelicals. This includes writings from and about Jacques Derrida, Jurgen Habermas, Rene Girard, Jon-Luc Marion, Emmanual Levinas, Paul Ricoeur, Jean-Luc Nancy -- Slavoj Žižek,, Giorgio Agamben, Alain Badiou, Gianni Vattimo). Jack Caputos’s appropriation of Derrida, Levinas’s rejection of Heidegger, Marion’s religious reinterpretation of phenemenologists, and more emerge amidst this re-thinking, aggressively incorporating insights from philosophers who engage in distinctive readings of Hegel, Kierkegaard, Marx, Freud, Husserl, and Heidegger.

In the conference, I dared to raise Peter Rollins to a more significant level by placing him in a broader socio-historical context. Trained in post-structural philosophy, with a PhD from Queens University in Northern Ireland,  Rollins intellectually stimulating style of speaking, writing, and consulting fits efforts to flesh out Christianity in new ways that are sensitive to societal shifts and emerging sensibilities. In other words, the happenings around his person are a manifestation of changes across mainstream Christianity. So while Peter Rollins is an interesting person in and of himself, I moved away from assuming that compelling ideas from a single, charismatic leader initiates social change. Instead, Peter Rollins unique “ministry” (which I place in quotes) is an interesting and timely development of American Christianity that finds resonance in the cumulative contradictions of modern Evangelicalism.

I suspect that Continental Philosophy is underpinning a profound reworking of theological questions including what is the church (ecclesiology), what it means to be human (anthropology), and how life is to be lived (ethics) -- at least for a significant segment of American Christians. Peter Rollins’s appropriation of Continental Philosophy fuels provocative practices in the form of preaching and new types of groups among those who resonate with his message.  And it’s the practice of new religious gatherings (like "Pub Churches") that especially attracts the interest of this sociologist.

Welcome to Pub CHurch

Image from public Facebook Page for Pub Church in Buffalo NY

I began an online conversation with church leaders, theologians, and seminarians on Monday over at the Duke Divinity Call and Response Blog (part of their Leadership Education program) on the phenomena of "Pub Church."

The Pub Church is broadly defined there "as spiritual discussions held in 'open spaces' like bars, pubs, coffeehouses, and restaurants."

From a sociological perspective, this represents an interesting form of social assembly for religious purposes.  From a theological perspective, there are several issues about whether such meetings should be considered "church" at all.

I invite you to check out the post there and contribute your comments.  I especially appreciate the links provided on Theology Pubs and the experience of participants in their own versions of Pub Church.

Open Session: Scholars and National Leaders of the Emerging Church Movement

I just created a *facebook* invitation for a special session organized at this year's Association for the Sociology of Religion in Atlanta, Georgia. Free, open, and sure to be stimulating, this is going to be a real hoot - All are welcome!

Open Session: Scholars and National Leaders of the Emerging Church Movement You are Attending · Share · Public Event

Edit EventMessage Guests

Time	August 13 · 3:00pm - 5:30pm
Location	Hyatt Regency Atlanta, International Tower Level, Cairo/Hong Kong Rooms
Created By	Gerardo Marti
More Info	Critical dialogue featuring Doug Pagitt, Troy Bronsink and Tim Hartman, along with anthropologist James S. Bielo and sociologist Gerardo Marti. Join us for a unique exchange on the promise, challenge & future of Christianity hosted by the Annual Meetings of the Association for the Sociology of Religion - an international, interdisciplinary association. MAP & LOCATION BELOW Session begins promptly at 3:15pm - arrive by 3:00pm to save your seat! Atlanta, GA - Hotel Map & Room Floor Plan - Cairo/Hong Kong Room - http://atlantaregency.hyatt.com/hyatt/images/hotels/atlra/floorplan.pdf;jsessionid=3D7ADA7CA1DCC18CB2CF43C18D458E4E.atg01-prd-atg1 Full meeting program highlights here: http://www.sociologyofreligion.com/2010%20ASR%20Annual%20Meeting%20Prilim.htm

Not only are the special guests coming from across the country offering a rare opportunity for constructive dialogue, but anthropologist James S. Bielo will be talking about his own "ethnographic observations" of emerging church dynamics.

The meeting will also bring together an international, interdisciplinary group of scholars active in all forms of religious research. The experience and expertise being gathered in this room will be tremendous.

Click here to let me know you're coming so I can say "Hi!"

Spending Time with My New Friends Derrida, Lacan, and Žižek

Winding up this past semester was one thing, getting through an intense immersion through the works of Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, and Slavoj Žižek is another...

Derrida via Wikipedia

Lacan via Wikipedia

Žižek via Wikipedia

I have a long interest in social philosophy and chip away at stacks of books at home and my office every few months. Since March, my work on the line of Hegel-Marx-Freud-Saussure-Heidegger-Derrida-Lacan-Žižek has exploded. I can still rely on my past learning of Marx and Freud, have just enough of Hegel to bumble around, and enough of Heidegger and Saussure to make the leap. But the last line of Derrida, Lacan, and Žižek needed sustained attention for some new queries I'm exploring.

There's no way I'm going to summarize these thinkers. Let's say for the moment that I find Derrida's critique of Husserl's subject to be fundamental and important, introducing a radical opening/gap/crisis of subjectivity that demands attention. Derrida is directing me back to Heidegger, and a new translation of Being and Time is coming out in time for my new resolve to think more carefully about the metaphysics of human subjectivity.

Lacan, on the other hand, reworks Freud in intriguing and productive ways. I'm glad I quickly found that one cannot simply "read" Lacan - he demands much prior preparation. He never explains himself, and his ideas have shifted over time. In the experience of reading him, the translated seminars are one thing (conversational, narrative); the massively compacted ideas in Écrits is another (compact, dense). Still, this remarkable thinker opens ways for understanding the self and human relationships that are still being developed.

Which leads to Žižek. Here we find a creative (almost frenetic) thinker who is both a social critic and a metaphysician. Žižek's Sublime Object of Ideology reveals a Lacanian reading of Hegel (via Marx) that brings forth surprising insights into the nature of guiding "beliefs" or "truths" at a macro-level. The conceptual apparatus is daunting to the uninitiated, so I'm grateful for graduate school and my continued readings in philosophy from Descartes onward to get me through. Nevertheless, Žižek's understanding of ideology has got me pondering a lot of things, and it is this orientation that feeds into his approach to Christianity as found in The Puppet and the Dwarf among other writings. It is this reading that has been attractive within the Emerging Church Movement, and Žižek's popularity is making its way through reconsiderations of Christian theology in books recently published by T&T Clark (see also here and here) and Eerdmans. In contrast, his social critique is quite different from such metaphysical considerations, thus accounting for the difference in the experience of reading The Parallax View and Living in the End Times.

So, I've been busy spending time with my new friends. Back to reading.

Young, Amateur Sikhs Lead New "Emergent" Congregations

NY Times reporter Samuel G. Freedman shows young professional Sikhs participating in amateur-led services as part of the "emerging movement."

Today, I caught another intriguing article by the Samuel Freedman on young Sikhs in Manhattan.

Seems they are creating new forms of worship, "youth gurdwara" or youth temple, created by and for young professionals. News of their meetings are spread by word of mouth, email, and social networking sites like Facebook.

By Getty Images via Daylife

Mandeep Singh remembers his first diwan located in a rented multipurpose room in a luxury condominium:

What most caught Mr. Singh’s eye, though, were the other members of the congregation, or sangat. They were, like him, young professionals, the BlackBerry crowd, and as the worship service, or diwan, proceeded over the next several hours, these amateur clerics took turns leading the chanting of sacred poetry and the singing of devotional hymns.

According to Freedman, this is "the Sikh version of what religion scholars call the emergent movement, a growing trend toward small, nimble, bottom-up, laity-led congregations that especially attract young adults."

Kanga, Kara and Kirpan - three of the five articles of faith endowed to the Sikhs via Wikipedia

This is "not your chacha’s (in Punjabi, your uncle’s) gurdwara."

On reading about all this, my friend John Schmalzbauer called these "Sikher sensitive services." Yow!

The article describes how worshipers enter with bare feet and covered head, bow before the holy book, and so fulfill centuries-old obligations. "The service follows the time-honored sequence of readings, hymns, a discourse called katha, the distribution of the sweet sacramental food karah parshad and finally the sharing of a communal meal known as langar.

"But the words of the liturgy are projected from a laptop, both translated into English and transliterated phonetically for the many members who cannot read Gurmukhi, the script of the Sikh religious texts. One set of projections carries the logo 'Sikh to the Max.'”

While a diwan in a conventional gurdwara goes four or five hours, this one finished in two.

Freedman mentions other emergent congregations, evangelical Christian and Jewish ones, but the focus of the article is how 28 year old Singh has become a more religiously active person through this peer-led temple. Being with other young adults seems to motivate attenders.

Freedman notes, "For while news media coverage of Sikhs in the United States has tended to focus on controversy — bias crimes against Sikh men, who are mistaken for Muslims because of their turbans, or civil rights suits by Sikhs to allow men to wear turbans and keep beards in various workplaces — the more prevalent, day-in-day-out experience is of finessing the balance between accomplishment and assimilation."

"Balance between accomplishment and assimilation..." Nicely said.

By eyesplash Mikul via Flickr

Another attender Amit S. Guleria said, “When you’re living the life of someone in your 20s, it gives you a different energy.” He added, “When you go to a traditional gurdwara, you feel more like an observer than a participant. Here, the onus is on us. And that’s a responsibility we want to have.”

Who are these 20 somethings? "Well-educated and upwardly mobile... the diwan includes doctors, lawyers, bankers, engineers, computer consultants, graduate students and at least one chef. Perhaps half are the American-born children of immigrants, half are immigrants themselves...

Either way they have a foot apiece in tradition and dynamism."

Workshop on Theology and Social Science - Jürgen Moltmann Conversation in Chicago

Quick Post: Scheduling for the coming year is in full gear, and I'm happy to have a few opportunities to dialogue and develop new directions in my thinking with others.

The annual Emergent Village Gathering this year features the notable theologian Jürgen Moltmann in Chicago in September.

In addition to four sessions with Moltmann, the conference is adding several workshops on various topics connecting his work with a variety of issues. I'm pleased to host one that centers on possibilities for connections between theology and social science.

From the workshop announcement:

Can We Bridge Social Science and the Theology of Hope?

Gerardo Marti

For most of the 20th century, the study of God and the study of humanity have been at odds. The uneasy and often antagonistic relationship between sociology and theology might yet become productive - if we realign the paradigms guiding the conversation. Jürgen Moltmann's theology offers several points of connection that can energize a new dialogue centered on a common concern over the future of humanity.

Other workshops are listed on the conference website.

Registration is limited to 300 participants, but as of today there is still room for more. Join us in Chicago!

A Week in Berkeley - Course in Creative Leadership

I've just accepted an invitation to return to the Pacific School of Religion, a seminary affiliated with the Graduate Theological Union which happens to be the largest and most diverse partnership of seminaries and graduate schools in America. I will teach a one-week intensive course on leadership.

Gothic inspired architecture on PSR's campus - Image by >>>WonderMike<<< via Flickr

I am happily returning to Berkeley the first week of August 2009. The course details are below, and more detail is available on PSR's summer session webpage.

Catalyzing Creative Leadership for the Emerging Church
Instructor: Gerardo Marti, PhD
Date and Time: August 3-7, 2009; 8:30 am -12:30 pm
Course School Ownership: PSR

Units: Audit ($330.00)
2 Continuing Education Units ($355.00)
1.5 Semester Hours (General - $636.00; Current PLTS/PSR Student - $523.00)

Description:

This course explores the relationships between culture and the emerging church and the implications of these relationships for effective spiritual leadership.

In addition to references to church history and biblical scriptures, the course continually connects societal arrangements with contemporary innovation and experimentation in congregational beliefs and practices.

By incorporating scholarship rooted in a sociological perspective, the course also looks more generally to the ongoing changes and negotiations that the Christian Church always makes in relation to the broader social world.

Northern Coast of California - Image via Thinkin

Trust me, this will be an enjoyable week together, so if you can make it over to Berkeley -- a wonderful city during a beautiful part of the year in California's fantastic Bay Area -- please join us!

Hot-For-Jesus Former Fundie - A Story of Deconversion, Doug Pagitt, and 9/11

Compelling prose and heart-wrenching stories often center on religion. In fiction, I think of Flannery O'Conner. In non-fiction, I listen for personal stories. And I just found one.


A Story of De-Conversion

I clicked on Christine Vyrnon's blog because of its title: HOT-FOR-JESUS FORMER FUNDIE. Humorous and personal, her blog features quirky and ironic pictures of Jesus. Her writing focuses on her own experience of faith.

A note posted last October caught me. It's part of a story of de-conversion, and features one of the most influential member of the Emerging Church Movement - Doug Pagitt and Solomon's Porch. In

JINXED: Solomon's Porch and My Leap From Faith into the Arms of Yoga

she writes,

The night of 9/11 I attended an impromptu prayer service at my favorite “church”: Solomon’s Porch. Under 12 people showed up. We talked and prayed and consulted scripture. I, who never liked praying out loud, a form of improv on one’s knees, prayed aloud, fervently asking God to keep our nation from resorting to violence in response to violence.

Solomon’s Porch was there when I needed it the most. I was settling into a church, which was a Big Deal for a girl who had seen church politics at its worst...

As she tells more about her path to Solomon's Porch, she writes about the service that night,

After careful consideration and prayer, the Spirit moved me to tell my story, something I’d never done before. Though I’d been singing solos in church my whole life, I’d never spoken so publicly about my dedication to Jesus.

The time had come.

Read the blog entry to see what happens next.

Affirming-Rejecting Religiosity

One thing I find compelling in her story is her deep appreciation for Solomon's Porch as a church while adamantly rejecting Christianity. We don't know enough about how this kind of paradoxical religion-affirming/yet-religion-rejecting religiosity.

I think it's part of the "new atheism" in today's world. Not all atheism "hates" all aspects of religion. And as the percentage of atheists in the world is growing (sloooowly), we will move away from simple dichotomies and come to understand the variety of "atheisms" that exist out there.

What do you think?

A Little Extra - Books by Doug Pagitt

• A Christianity Worth Believing: Hope-filled, Open-armed, Alive-and-well Faith for the Left Out, Left Behind, and Let Down in us All
• An Emergent Manifesto of Hope
• Church Re-Imagined: The Spiritual Formation of People in Communities of Faith
• Listening to the Beliefs of Emerging Churches: Five Perspectives
  

Church Innovators Meet for Idea Camp

Innovative church networks continue to emerge. Here's a new one built on the concept of an "unconference."


Innovation in Irvine

Several Church leaders from Southern California are participating in an upcoming event called,
Image via Wikipedia
The Idea Camp

Promoted as "a free hybrid conference for idea-makers to share, network, and implement ideas." It will be held at New Song Irvine, a church pastored by David Gibbons.

From their website:

We are gathering some of the most innovative and creative leaders from around the country (this means YOU!) to share ideas, intentionally network, and move collaboratively into idea-making. Whether your passion is church leadership, non-profit work, social entrepreneurialism, technology, media, creativity, culture making, church planting, spiritual formation, compassionate justice, etc., this is the conference for YOU.

The focus of this conference will be on the participants (yes, You!) and not on keynote speakers. We function under the belief that the crowd is always smarter and wiser than any one speaker. In fact, you are invited to create and refine some of the major components of the conference prior to the gathering itself via our web interface. You are welcome to suggest specific topics for our workshops (called Idea Sessions), leave comments, ask questions, share case scenarios for discussion, and even volunteer yourself to facilitate one of our Idea Sessions.

Planning the Unconference

The event is planned as an "unconference" -- an interesting new form of self-organizing, self-regulating, self-referential group interaction. Many of the church leaders I talk to are tired of being tied to their chairs listening to keynote speakers and hassled by a barrage of product-booths before and after events. This new form provides an intriguing opportunity to maximize networking while negotiating the amount of input each person wishes to give.

Taking their cues from the high-tech arena, an unconference allows a high level of interaction and self-organization. An article from Jonathan Follett in Digital Web magazine describes unconferences as "self-organizing forums,"

The unconference format is based on the premise that in any professional gathering, the people in the audience—not just those selected to speak on stage—have interesting thoughts, insights, and expertise to share. Everyone who attends an unconference, such as those put together by organizations like BarCamp or BrainJams, is required to participate in some way: to present, to speak on a panel, to show off a project, or just to ask a lot of questions.

As an event, the character of the unconference falls somewhere between that of a bazaar and that of an intellectual salon. It is, to borrow a phrase, a free “marketplace of ideas.” There are no themes or tracks to guide you, as in a typical conference; the whole event is centered on what might be called the discussion group.

The ad hoc nature and the low cost of this forum (they’re usually free, compared to the hundreds of dollars needed to attend some industry gatherings) make the unconference accessible to many.

Another brief article on unconferences can be found here.


A Who's Who of Innovation-Friendly Evangelicals

The structure of an "unconference" is built around respected facilitators. They become the key, the glue, for sustaining a thread of dialogue focused on the theme at hand.

The long list of facilitators for this event include a who's who of local church leaders and innovation-friendly evangelicals. The names and (for most of them) websites are:

Brad Abare (http://www.thinkpersonality.com and http://www.churchmarketingsucks.com)
Shah Afshar (http://www.shahshankedredemption.blogspot.com)
Greg Atkinson (http://www.gregatkinson.com)Image via Wikipedia
Dawn Nicole Baldwin (http://www.aspireone.com)
Eric Bryant (http://www.ericbryant.org and http://www.mosaic.org)
Spencer Burke (http://theooze.com)
Chris Cannon (http://www.kingsharbor.org)
Dawn Carter (http://www.decarter.wordpress.com)
Eugene Cho (http://www.eugenecho.wordpress.com)
DJ Chuang (http://www.djchuang.com and http://digital.leadnet.org)
Mike Foster (http://www.ethur.org and http://www.deadlyviper.org)
Dave Gibbons (http://www.davegibbons.tv)
Keith Kall (http://www.worldvision.org)
Todd Hiestand (http://toddhiestand.com)
Penny Hunter
Zach Hunter
Charles Lee (http://www.charlestlee.com)
James Pearson (http://www.jamestravels.com)
David Ruis (http://www.davidruis.com)
Matt Russell (http://www.myvcc.org/uturn)
Greg Russinger (http://www.just4one.org)
Jeff Shinabarger (http://www.jeffshinabarger.com)
Cynthia Ware (http://www.thedigitalsanctuary.org and http://digital.leadnet.org)
Tony Wood (http://www.generatelife.com)
Robert Yang (http://www.kindlejoy.com)
Henry Zonio (http://www.elementalcm.com)

Overall, events like this are becoming more common and are contributing to a re-distribution and re-framing of congregational philosophies. New networks become institutionalized, and new initiatives can be birthed from unanticipated collaborations.

What do you think?