a different kind of conference – Awaken
In Pasadena this week is the Awaken Conference that Erwin McManus and the Mosaic Alliance is hosting. I’ve never been to a conference by the Mosaic gang, aka The Origin Project. I hope to drop in on Tuesday and/or Wednesday. I haven’t seen a whole lot of blog chatter on this, surprisingly, so maybe it’s reaching more of a non-blogging constituency.
Awaken has an incredible lineup of great communicators (trade secret: most great speakers recycle their messages, having delivered a talk many times over; you could almost say it’s eco-friendly). On stage will be names like Wayne Cordeiro, Bill Hybels, Mark Mittelberg, Nancy Beach, Lee Strobel, Mark Batterson, Eric Bryant, Dan Kimball, Rick McKinley, Erwin McManus, Henry Cloud, Phil Cooke, and more. Most of these are veteran household names, sprinkled with a few newer voices. I’d like to have seen many more fresh voices, but that’s me, and I can kinda get lots of fresh voices at Q and The Whiteboard Sessions.
Looking at the schedule, I’m not sure how Awaken will carve out time for more interactivity to create the church for a postmodern, post-Western, post-Christian world, as Erwin said in the first promo podcast. The promo that’s been spread around says:
AWAKEN is more than a conference…
AWAKEN is an invitation into the imagination of some of today’s most inspiring spiritual leaders. Join us for a 3-day conversation between uniquely different voices, generations, styles, passions and perspectives.
I’m much more interested in the conversations that’ll happen, as that conference schedule permits, more than the content. But I sure hope that they don’t tell the audience to break up into groups of 3 and 4 to talk about a topic — my experience with those has been mostly forced and contrived.
Will report here what I find out when I’m there on the ground.
Looking forward to reading your notes from the conference.
It sounds mean, but I don’t understand how, with people like Bill Hybels (who thinks church is STILL a business after REVEAL) and Lee Strobel (one of the masters of modernist apologetics), you can talk about creating the church for a post-modern world.
I hope you are challenged and encouraged by the Awaken event. The speakers come from three different fields: experienced, expert, and experimental. Hoping for many take-aways!