Friday was the day dedicated to interactive sessions. These sessions were set up with a main speaker who would give a commentary, and then several other panel members who would respond to the speaker. Afterwards the floor was opened for questions and comments.

After worship, the first interactive session discussed the "Pastoral/Cultural/Missional Landscape". The main speakers were Darryl Guder of Columbia Seminary and Mark Labberton of First Pres Berkeley. This session focused on Post-modern thought.

Mark Labberton-

One of the themes is that we live in a fractured world, which is becoming more and more fractured. One of the quotes Labberton used to describe our society was "meaning is context bound; and context is boundless". Context is everything; the words we use get their meaning from the context the speaker and hearer are in. Meaning is something we are constantly creating. This is a part of the challenge of the Church. (Participants at the conference were given David Henderson’s book Culture Shift, which deals with this issues very well)

Premises: We are confident that there is a God

We are confident God is God self revealing in Jesus Christ

Labberton used the analogy found in 2^nd Corinthians about seeing through the glass darkly. Liberals feel that the "glass" is opaque. Humans cannot see through the glass to see God at all. Fundamentals feel the glass is clear. God’s will is clearly and easily known.

The debate then, is how do we affirm the reality of truth, the Lordship of God, and hold onto the tension of seeing through the glass darkly. Post modern thought calls us to the
"mat" when we overstate the type of glass through which we claim to see and understand God.

Labberton looked at 1 Peter 4, to see what assumptions must be held in order to understand the text. There are dissonant chords in society. Television versus First Peter, how do we bring this together?

Some assumptions: reality of God, that God has spoken, God claims our lives, God shows our suffering to be a call to moral behavior despite everything, living our lives as disciples, suffering as a mark for good---these are not common assumptions in our culture.

In the culture war- people expect life to be full of pleasure, pain-free and immediate; and then God says there is a place for suffering- how do we bring together these dissonant chords in our preaching? How do we show the world that being a Christian means that our pleasures are subordinate to God’s pleasure, that we may have to give up some pleasures…

C.S. Lewis said we are too easily pleased. God offers joy. God can be seen and known, if only through the glass darkly. We matter, set against a backdrop of eternity.

There is a fractured landscape out there. Pastors are also seeking the pain-free life, along with their congregants, but we have to listen to the Scriptures and the voice of the Spirit- look through the glass darkly-what matters there is more important than what happens here. Gospel says what God is doing may not be as visible as we want, but God is visible enough to change the world.

Guder-

There is a radical challenge facing North America. What does it mean to be called to God’s people here and now? We are very context bound. We inherit traditions of "rightness". People are resistant to looking biblically and radically at our societal assumptions. The shattering reality of the Good News-the people don’t see as good too much anymore. We are not radical enough- and yet we have the audascity to draw up plans for renewal.

1 Peter is missionally important for the West. These are tough questions for comfortable Christians. The Western Church is characterized by resistance to radical claims of the Lordship of Christ. How do we repent as a community? How are we transformed into God’s people? Guder’s hunch is that church programs are getting in the way. Pay attention to the imperatives in First Peter.

There is a Reformed issues as well- are the imperatives in First Peter obeyable? Repentence formed around the king of community we are striving to be. In 1 Peter we encounter the Holy Church, that we are to be a royal priesthood, and then the Western Church stops reading the text. "We’re cool, we’re okay." But the text actually continues- in order that- you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into the light.

We need to learn all over again how to hear the gospel. What does it mean to be God’s people- the house where all-mighty God dwells?

Seminaries are not safe places- they are mission fields. We are called to evangelize the Church God is making.

Questions- comments

Presbydave@earthlink.net