The Congress – Renov8 2009
This is the first in a series of reports written while attending Renov8. Hopefully others will post their thoughts, reflections, questions and frustrations also.
After a day in meetings with the Forge Canada National Team, and with the first plenary session on its way, we arrived at a restaurant not far from Center Street. We were to meet another group which included Stuart Murray and Juliet Kilpin of Urban Expressions UK.
As it turned out, the restaurant had lost our reservation, and we didn’t have a lot of time to spare. Hmm.. isn’t that a pub next door? We checked it out.. no line up and not crowded. Why not?
It’s surprising how consistently good the food is in pubs, and the portions seem generally larger. I ordered one of the best chicken club sandwiches I’ve ever had. Unfortunately, it’s hard to get BC Cider in Alberta, and I don’t like beer 
I sat at a table with Mike Frost, Glenn Smith and Anthony Brown. Mike was first up last night for the plenary last night and did a great job sharing his heart for the kingdom and God’s redeeming work in the world. At the pub I heard about his fondness for the beer produced by the micro-brewery in his home town of Sydney in New South Wales.
I sat beside Glenn Smith. Glenn is National Director for Christian Direction and professor or urban missiology at the Postmodern Metropolis Institute of Christian Studies in Montreal. I’ve linked a couple of papers by Glenn recently, and he is doing similar work on-the -ground as Robert Lupton. Sitting with him I had a chance to ask him about urban life in Montreal as well as his theological work. It turns out he is currently writing a piece that posits a dialogue between Charles Taylor and Karl Barth. Sounds fascinating, and perhaps we’ll be able to print a sampler in a coming issue of Missional Voice.
Glenn noted his pleasure with the work Charles Taylor is doing and the significance of his concept of the social imaginary. This is something deeper than worldview, and incorporates an inner dimension of vision that also involves our affections. Glenn closed his plenary session the next day be noting the tendency of evangelicals to live in our heads – a diagnosis and problem also strongly noted by James Smith in Desiring the Kingdom.
Glenn called us to move beyond this dualistic mode to embodiment – and thus the connection to “place” and neighbourhood. Ultimately we are only formed in place. As Eugene Peterson notes, “Everything that the Creator God does in forming us humans is done in place. It follows from this that since we are his creatures and can hardly escape the conditions of our making, for us everything that has to do with God is also in place. All living is local: this land, this neighborhood, these trees and streets and houses, this work, these people.” (Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places)