Emergent Event in March

For those of you in the Minneapolis and St. Paul area, Emergent Village has just announced an event while I am there on March 1 at Solomon's Porch.  You can see the announcement here. 

As many of you know, I've felt some hesitation about writing a more "popular" book but Tony Jones has convinced me!  I worked through the material in Malaysia and it was great fun, so now its time to try it out on an American audience.

Although we haven't decided on a title, it may be something like "The Delightful Terror of Transforming Churches."  I have long been interested in how fear and desire play a role in our formation, but this book will explore the way in which these dynamics shape the structures and practices of everyday life in religious communities.  To make it more concrete, I will focus on our ambiguous relation to four things we desire... but feel somewhat ambivalent toward desiring:

Food
Sex
Money
Fame

Each of these creates tension in our lives and shapes our capacity for intimacy.  I hope to bring some of the broader issues of spiritual formation into concrete dialogue with specific practices and attitudes toward "religious others," exploring how these hinder or facilitate the process of becoming a transformative community.

Comments

[daniel eller]

LeRon,

that announcement was hilarious: "spend a day with LeRon Shults." It made it sound like they were auctioning you off in one of those bachelor auctions/fund raisers... except in stead of winning a day on the town with a sexy bachelor, they have to talk theology and philosophy with a guy who makes Mensa look like a gathering of plebes ;)

--dan

[Matt Wiebe]

I think that your rubric of fear and desire is a potentially quite fruitful approach. Will you tease out any of the political implications I wonder...?

[LeRon]

Hi Dan,

Great imagery of an auction... perhaps we could start a new TV show... theological survivor? ... ;)

By the way, John is helping me set up a place where people can come and hang out (no auctions as far as I know! ;) on the Thursday night I am in Mpls. Hope you can make it.

Hi Matt,

Thanks for that... I have a good feeling about the potential fruitfulness too! Interestingly, you are the second person to ask about political implications (another in Malaysia)... yes and no... in a sense it is all about the way we "police" each other, the way we live together as "polis," and I will talk about implications of broader cultural engagement, etc., but I will probably not have space to engage political theory in much detail... perhaps another book someday... I'm doing a paper on eschatology, politics and Badiou in the UK in a couple of months.

[Tony Mills]

Sounds great LeRon, I will definitely make it out for this.

I am wondering about your four areas, though. First, are you identifying these four as topics of fear for Evangelicals or Christians in particular? If so, the topic of food seems a little unusual...it is arguably the least ambiguous of the four and I am wondering what you will do with that. In relation to food and church community (or maybe even community in general), you definitely need to see two films: "Chocolat" and "Babette's Feast." Perhaps a more popular book could include some reflection on these.

[LeRon]

Hi Tony,

Oh yes, I know both films well... and they are definitely relevant - nice idea!

Hmmmm.... I think I will hold off on explaining the food thing, which actually may be more problematic than it appears initially. ;)

[peter boumgarden]

Hey LeRon
Sounds like a fascinating project... are you aware of much research out there that takes a look at these topics already? I would love to take a look, and I look forward to your upcoming book.

It seems as though historically there has been a tendency in Christian community to move towards suppressing this ambivalence by attempting to remove these desires... prescriptive advice by the church that we ought NOT want fame, money, sex and food (at least in excess). I think Charles Taylor's work in "A Secular Age" might be helpful as you explore this tension. I think Taylor rightly points out that a push towards reformation (both capital and lowercase r) has led us towards a highly excarnated faith and consequently a great deal of ambivalence towards these material things/ desires... I think he rightly suggests that this has undermined a deep part of what it means to be human.

[LeRon]

Hi Peter,

Yes, I agree with Taylor's analysis on this point, and I hope to bring such discussions into the book... but the difficult task will be expressing these issues in a way that is more accessible (than my previous work). I plan to try out some ideas in this direction at the Emergent event.