ec05: day three

another wonderful and very different day @ ec05. it started with sleeping late and ended with a fabulous dinner with "methomergents."

• after sleeping in i gathered together randomly with jenny, eric, & jonathon. jay stopped by our table and decided it was a great time to record some interviews for methocast. i don't know what actual talking he is going to be able to use for his podcast. it all ended when marko showed up and then jay realized that his mp3 recorded was full and stopped recording.
• we rallied a local group for lunch and joined up with pat hinson from atlanta and april baker from north carolina (think the charlotte area). both were fab people and great conversation, april is a quaker, her and kevin got into talk of war and pacifism. i stayed out of it but eavesdropped a time or two. i especially like conversing with michael williams, one of my fav local pastors. we tried explaining out the hermeneutic's of the various peope we have been hearing from and explaining out our view of emergent. michael is wonderfully wise and was helpful in these conversations.
• first and only session i took in today was neomonasticism with rachelle mee-chapman. she was pretty cool, i totally respect what she and her ministry is doing, i don't know if i could embrace everything they do and all that, but she's in a different context than i am here. we'd agree on that one. i was surprised once when she responded to me asking a question by my name, then i remembered that i had a nametag on.. maybe not that amazing after all. in all, i was surprised to see how many people have their own view of putting together monastic practices into ministry. many questions from the army chaplain, those who want to start an intentional community, and youth ministry & a rule of life formed from monasticism (which is something i'm interesting in talking about). many quoteables from the session, but i liked how "they spend most of their mission moneys on beer." feel free to read my notes.
• took a side trip to cokesbury for their tent sale. i was surprised to find some standard emergent books plus some other wonderful reads. three that i picked up which i am interested in getting into quickly are "adventures in missing the point" by brian mclaren & "the practicing congregation" by diane butler-bass, plus some book on rituals and brain research. "the practicing congregation" to me looks like it could be the into/text for mainline churches wanting to embrace and work "emergent" into their spiritual practices.
• off then to an impromptu united methodists emergent gathering. this was absolutely the highlight of the day. i had such a great time in conversation with some other umc's. we talked about putting together a connecting website for us umc's. look for methomergent.com or methomergent.org coming soon to a browser near you (thanks to eric for the name). one thing i'm doing after the dinner (other than helping vision & form the website) is an idea stemmed from steve which is to see if i can set up a prayerroom for our annual conference in june. probably the same one i did for connection05 last month, but it would be a great start to introducing a new way of church to our umc in middle tennessee.

off to one of my youth kids graduation party and tomorrow may or may not be a day at the special olympics. so i'll either be bloggin about special olympics or emergent, click in and see.