Aj Schwanz

I took some notes while at the Emergent Theological Conversation, partly because I wanted to remember what was said, partly out of habit, and partly because my companions had brought their laptops and were furiously typing and I didnít want to look like the unprepared ding dong.

These may make sense; they may not: my mind is generally focused on grocery lists and MOPS publications and blog entries, not hefty theological pontifications. You can find those out there in the blogosphere: this is simply an interpretation of stuff thatís relevant to my world (or at least the stuff I had the faintest inkling that I might know a little bit of what they were talking about).

Background
• Volfís father was a pastor. People in his country knew what ìpriestsî were, but not pastors. He had to spend a great deal of time, awkwardly and in rather belittling situations, explaining himself. It reminds me of having to explain ìQuakerî to folks in Idaho in grade school, as well as trying to explain/justify Dadís job, especially in emerging ìnon-structure orientedî circles. Nothing to the degree that Volf had to – but still: the feelings are there.
• He was a rare professing Christian: most others were closet Christians (not a safe environment to be professing). Similar to going to YouthQuake where I felt embarrassed a bit to say that I was a ìChrist-centeredî Quaker: it brought up all sorts of negative images and baggage for non-Christ-centered Quakers: ìwhy would you want to be *that*?î
• Volf went to compulsory military service at the age of 27 so that he could continue to return to his country. He went as a pacifist.

Theology

• Christians should be practicing/living/flowing out of a grounded, practical theology. We should offer a *way to live* in the world, not to be removed from living in the world. Instead, we tend to offer ìa thinned out version in the bookstore today.î Theology should involved consistent thinking: pieces falling or sliding together in all areas of thought and life.
• Thereís something good about the incompatibility and inconsistency of the Scriptures. Itís like shoving too much stuff in a suitcase so that things are hanging out the side: you can still take the items around with you that you need, but it doesnít all fit or look pretty. We should not make Scripture say what we want it to say.
• We need to stop this incessant moralizing of the Scriptures that often happens while preaching or sharing the Word. We listen to a message, and we feel worse about ourselves: this is a betrayal of what is at the heart of the Gospel. The church is over socializing/psychologizing the Scriptures.
• Church should be organized around God rather than around what we think we should be doing: God should be at the center.
• If Volf could recommend one theologian to read, it would be Augustine.
• Am I trusting the power of the story of the Gospel, or am I accommodating by trying to explain away the unexplainable/hard/non-fitting stuff? If I donít trust the power of the story, I wonít stick with it to see things that arenít apparent immediately. We need to redeem the story: to let it shine for what it is.

Culture
• We need to *discern* how we live in the world today (rather than live intentionally unintentional). Look through cultural lenses – at others, ourselves.
• In what places can boundaries be good things, especially in a culture such as ours that has power issues?
• Volf believes we can theologize in all spheres of life: everything can/should be filtered through a lens of theology, because that points us back to God who is the Creator of it all.
• Miroslav Volf keeps mentioning the word ìreconciliationî – itís a word thatís been haunting my mind as of late. How am I called to play a role in reconciliation? What would that look like in my daily life – the simple rather than the larger ìreconciliation between warring nationsî?
• To be effective, we need to act as a social body – ecclessially [side note: I think that was my favorite word to hear him say ]. Religious and nonreligious voices on equal footing. There should not be a separation of church and state, but neutrality. Christian language and values have influenced our culture, but now thatís coming undone, and people are at a loss of what to do or how to act as a social body.