Here and Now...and Yet To Come

This past Saturday we had a Pony Express District Training event at our church. For those of you who don't know the Methodist church is split into conferences and then districts. Our conference is Missouri and our district is the Pony Express. (Funny side note: I always made fun of the people who had to sit under the Poney Express Banner at Annual Conference. Now I am one of them. I'll be the guy with the dark shades on.)

Anyway, these events are usually a waste of time. What ends up happening is everybody sits in a room and says, "Here's how we did a harvest festival and it worked great!" "Well here's how we did ours. What about you?" And so on and so on. I have to admit that I was pleasantly surprised at this particular event. Well, at least the postmodern workshop. Yes, it is true that it was the workshop that I was asked to lead. (Even though I felt very inadequate at doing so.) But that's not why I say it went so well. It went well because we were able to get beyond the mind set of "what I do at my church is destined to work at your church!"

I began the workshop by saying, "If you came to this workshop expecting to learn how to attract young adults and students to your church, then I am afraid you will be disappointed." Truthfully, if I had that figured out then this church would be full of them already. I also told them that we were not there to discuss worship style either. Not because postmoderns don't care about how they worship but because at the heart of it the style is not as important to them as the relationships that are established in the course of worship.

So, in the next few posts I will outline and discuss some of the main points that we covered and give some of the questions that were raised. I don't claim to be a postmodern expert, but I do my best. My hope is that this will generate discussion and it will allow some of Ashland's students to better understand the topic. (That's for you Makayla.)

Stay Tuned

Adam