Audio of William Cavanaugh

So the Ekklesia Project annual conference went quite well last weekend: good speakers and great people. Anyways, Chris Smith over at Englewood Review of Books has posted his audio copy of William Cavanaugh’s Friday morning talk. Go get it.

Off for the Weekend, And You should come too

I’ll be at the Ekklesia Project this weekend at DePaul in Chicago again this year. If you’re around the Chicago area, or do have the time to come from elsewhere, you should come! I believe they can still make room for ya. Trust me, it’ll be worth it for anyone who knows the real point of conferences: food, laughter, and great people.

Ekklesia Project Meeting this Summer

Here is another reminder about the Ekklesia Project’s summer gathering this summer, July 9-11 at Chicago’s DePaul University.

I’ve been a signer for some years and have been to the last two summer gatherings. It has great people and y’all should come.

Below is a partial description for this summer’s gathering:

Ultimately what struck us was less the importance of any one passage and more the importance of the scriptural story as the story of God’s economy. Or to put it another way, what struck us was the idea that the true economy is the work of God.

Our word ‘economics’ is related to the Greek word oikonomia, which refers to household management. (The Greeks had a separate word, chrematistike, to name efforts to make a profit in money.) So as we organize this gathering, we are thinking about questions like these: What is God’s household management (or home economics) style? How does God care for creation? And how do we who are invited to share God’s life participate in that economy—and get in its way? In particular, to continue our conversation on racism from last summer, in what ways now does our use of wealth build up the body and in what ways does it divide us?

Currently we have three keynote speakers confirmed, each of whom will address part of the story of God’s economy and our share in it. Bill Cavanaugh will be speaking on creation; Jonathan Wilson Hartgrove on Jubilee and Jesus’ teaching; and Kathy Grieb on Paul’s collection for the Jerusalem community. Workshops are being organized around four types of congregational practice: congregations that run businesses together, congregations that do community organizing to deal with economic problems in their neighborhoods, congregations that share a common purse, and congregations that take up collections.

But these plans are just a framework for the real work of the gathering: taking time to get to know each other, to share ideas and questions, and to talk together about what our good God is doing. We hope to see you all there.

EP 2009 Summer Gathering

I’ve been a signer of the Ekklesia Project for some years. The national summer gathering is a terrific time and I recommend it for all signers, and those who aren’t. Just announced is the basic information for this next summer gathering:

Gathering 2009: July 9-11

Please plan now to join us July 9-11, 2009 on the campus of DePaul in Chicago for our annual gathering. This year we will gather from noon on Thursday to noon on Saturday to focus on:

Wealth and the Household of God.

How does the oikos of the Body of Christ provide the locus for faithful engagement with economics? Confirmed speakers include Bill Cavanaugh, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, and Kathy Grieb.

One Last Reminder

One last reminder, for those of you around Chicago, the Ekklesia Project will be holding its summer gathering at DePaul again this year, this Monday through Wednesday. For those who will be there, see you there!

Crossing the Divide: Race, Racism and the Body of Christ
EP Summer Gathering, July 7-9, Depaul University
We approach this year’s gathering in great hope, believing that the church has been given adequate and even abundant gifts which make unity possible across the false divisions of race. We hope to explore some of those gifts and celebrate the practices of the congregations among us who are being formed graciously into a new body. We are also asking endorsers and guests to help us closely examine our own practices and institutions in order to expose and heal hidden wounds. We plan on worshiping and singing together, and on listening to one another as we encounter a difficult moral issue.

Speaking of Race

With the discussion of race finding its way back into popular discourse, I’d like to mention a “conference” this summer that has Race and the Church as its topic.

This summer at De Paul University, in Chicago, is the summer gathering for the Ekklesia Project. This is the big national gathering. I finally went last summer (I’ve been a signer for some time before that) and had a very fruitful time. I do plan on going again this year, so I hope to see some of you there. Last summer I even met the first person, who I didn’t know, that told me right after he saw my name tag, “Oh hey, I read your blog! I’ve got some questions.” I guess there actually is something redeeming at Duke then eh? I kid, I kid.

Seriously though, this is what the summer gathering will look like:

Crossing the Divide: Race, Racism and the Body of Christ
EP Summer Gathering, July 7-9, Depaul University
We approach this year’s gathering in great hope, believing that the church has been given adequate and even abundant gifts which make unity possible across the false divisions of race. We hope to explore some of those gifts and celebrate the practices of the congregations among us who are being formed graciously into a new body. We are also asking endorsers and guests to help us closely examine our own practices and institutions in order to expose and heal hidden wounds. We plan on worshiping and singing together, and on listening to one another as we encounter a difficult moral issue.

Plenary Sessions will be led by:
Rodney Sadler, Union Theological Seminary
Victor Hinojosa, Baylor University
Kelly Johnson, University of Dayton
Michelle Loyd Paige, Calvin College
Mike Budde, DePaul University

We will also feature a congregational forum in which we hear from two congregations with different approaches to the ministry of racial reconciliation.

Tentative Workshop titles include:
Wrestling with Scripture (led by Michael Cartwright)
Race, Immigration and the Divided Church
The Christian Community Development Association and EP in Conversation (led by Craig Wong of Grace in San Francisco and Glenn Kehrein in Chicago.)
The Liturgical Landscape of Race

As for who the Ekklesia Project is, here is what they say they are about:

The Ekklesia Project is a network of Christians from across the Christian tradition who rejoice in a peculiar kind of friendship rooted in our common love of God and the Church. We come together from Catholic parishes, Protestant congregations, communities in the Anabaptist tradition, house-churches and more as those who are convinced that to call ourselves ‘Christian’ means that following Jesus Christ must shape all areas of life. Our shared friendship is one of God’s good gifts. With deep gratitude for God’s ongoing grace, we are unapologetically…

*…God-centered: We seek to overcome the dominant culture’s limited vision of faith as merely private or personal. We hope to bear witness in our lives and work to the triune God who moves the sun and the stars and is found in the life, cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Against the many idols that compete to determine our lives, we affirm that real power and effectiveness lie in God’s hands; we live by trust and prayer.

*…Church-centered: We share a common commitment to the Church as Christ’s gathered Body, whose true heart is communal worship and whose true freedom is disciplined service. We share a common conviction that the Church is the material, living people of God that crosses all borders and human divisions. Our partnership in the Ekklesia Project deepens our commitments to our local congregations, broadens our care for the whole Church, and kindles in us the hope that the Holy Spirit is blowing fresh winds of unity.

*…Shalom-centered: We are committed to the peace established in Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. Embodying the crucified and risen Messiah, the Church must provide an alternative to the world’s violence. We challenge Christians to rethink values and practices that presume a smooth fit between killing and discipleship and to reject troubling compromises with institutions, allegiances and assumptions that foster a ‘culture of death.’ By practicing the works of mercy and offering together our various gifts in support of God’s reconciling work in the world, we continue to listen to and learn from each other on those matters we understand differently.

*…Political: We believe that the Kingdom of God transcends national identities and must be the primary focus of our political loyalty. All other loyalties – familial, political or ideological – derive their meaning by participating in the Body of Christ and bearing witness to his Kingdom. We hope to challenge ourselves and the Church to resist accommodation to America and analogous temptations globally. We humbly seek to be used by God so that together, as the Body of Christ, we might become more of what God has called us to be.

Seeing Christ’s Body as our “first family,” the Ekklesia Project aims to put discipleship and the Church as an alternative community of practices, worship, and integration at the center of contemporary debates on Christianity and society. We work to assist the Church as it lives its true calling as the real-world community whose primary loyalty is to God’s Kingdom that has broken into the world in Jesus’ person, priorities and practices, and that continues to do so in and through the gathered Body of Christ.

race in the coming year

I am not a fan of new years resolutions, aside from the fact that it takes away from the Christian calendar, personally they just never fan out. Empty promises I say. However, there are two things of note that I am really looking forward to this coming year – and now they have dates – so keep an eye out for them.

First is J. Kameron Carter’s book Race: A Theological Account. It’ll be available at the end of May. Woo hoo!

The second is the Ekklesia Project’s Summer Conference. It’ll again be at De Paul, and here is the description they just sent out:

Crossing the Divide: Race, Racism and the Body of Christ
EP Summer Gathering, July 7-9, Depaul University
We approach this year’s gathering in great hope, believing that the church has been given adequate and even abundant gifts which make unity possible across the false divisions of race. We hope to explore some of those gifts and celebrate the practices of the congregations among us who are being formed graciously into a new body. We are also asking endorsers and guests to help us closely examine our own practices and institutions in order to expose and heal hidden wounds. We plan on worshiping and singing together, and on listening to one another as we encounter a difficult moral issue.

Confirmed speakers or preachers include James Lewis and Mike Budde, but we will soon announce many more. As always we offer our time together in service of the church and pray that our efforts will contribute to its unity.

The future is no longer what it was: Those pretty falling stars are really fragments of a meteor headed right for you

This week, my personal life was a veritable shitstorm. It started sunday night, after I arrived at De Paul early for a conference where I didn’t actually know anyone. That was fun. I don’t mean to blame friends who had to stay home – far from it – instead I say this to highlight that I arrived at the Ekklesia Project Summer Conference, knowing no one and then everything fell apart after a phone call.

Interestingly, the conference was on congregational formation. Better yet, its a conference filled with scholars (generally of the theological type), pastors and lay people thinking about their congregation and the church at large. But they’re not farsighted, on Monday morning the introduction centered around what the EP is – family. I’ve heard this before, as I’m sure we all have, but its rare to see family realized in such a way. By God’s grace it was real; they really were real, really Christ. I can’t say enough, not only about the body of Christ, but the EP people. Strangers became family in three days. I can’t wait for next year. And thats the reason for this post. I highly suggest those of you who like the EP to go next summer – for both the discussion and the people.

In related news, the B. J. Hunnicutt in me got squashed (hence the meteor quip in the title). Perhaps Hawkeye is the way to go. Or the priest. Yeah. Hes the best. Maybe those vows aren’t so bad. “Remember what the good book says: Love thy neighbor, or I’ll punch your lights out!”

Ekklesia Project

Its official now. Despite that I’ve been a signer for a year or two now, I’m be going to my first Ekklesia Project Conference this summer (July 16-18 in Chicago). Yay. Who else is going?