I attended a conference a couple weeks ago called You Say You Want A Revolution, put on by Off the Map. I’ve been wanting to blog about it since then, but haven’t been quite able to get my thoughts about it in coherent order. I’m not even sure I’ve managed to at this point, but wanted to get it done anyway.
To put it simply, I really enjoyed the conference. Over the last couple weeks I’ve been keeping up on the Revolution blog and have honestly been a bit surprised at how disappointed some people were and how critical they have been of what went on. Some seem upset that so much emphasis was placed on ‘being kind’ and not enough on ‘truth.’ I really don’t get this. Sure, if all we ever talked about was being kind and never did anything else, I’d be getting worried. But I’ve been following the Way of Jesus for about 10 years or so now, and even in that short amount of time I would say the vast majority of the atmosphere and underlying attitude in what I’ve learned is all about being right (and if that doesn’t come across as being all that kind, well too bad for that person on the receiving end, because sometimes the truth hurts…). I can’t think of really any times where the ideas of kindness and mercy and grace and how to actively express them in our interactions with others (especially with those outside the faith) were really focused on and discussed or taught about at length. It’s always about truth and ’standing for truth.’ I’ve been a youth pastor for 4+ years now, and most of the messages I hear at conferences and youth rallies and festivals are about encouraging students to ’stand for truth’ in their schools.
I don’t think we’re really in short supply of learning how to be right. But I do think many Christians are pretty sparse when it comes to being kind and gracious. And if we’re lacking in our exercise of grace and kindness, why don’t we spend some purposeful time on that and figure out out to integrate it into our understanding of truth and interaction with others. They two aren’t mutually exclusive, nor does one need to be dropped for the other. But the way some have critiqued the conference you would start to think so. True, parts of the conference really honed in on kindness (especially Brian McLaren and same of the interviews with various types of people onstage). I don’t recall Barna talking about this in any of his talks. I don’t recall any of the workshops hammering into people “BE KIND! BE KIND! FORSAKE TRUTH…AND BE KIND!” Each workshop leader(s) came with their own focus and dealt with that, and they were all extremely varied in what they dealt with. So, again, I don’t see what the problem is.
In regards to other aspects and my personal thoughts of the conference, I’ll just quickfire some of my thoughts:
