Plenary Session 2 - Liveblogging


I'll give another attempt at liveblogging the next plenary session

I'm once again in the Calvary Chapel, awaiting the start of our second plenary session. I'm going to put this up and then begin liveblogging when it starts.....

John Schroeder opens us up for this session. He quotes my post where I described his jokes as "wonderfully bad," saying that instead he was going for "horribly bad"

Question 1 - Can Christian blogging effect culture, if so how?

Joe Carter: Blogging effects the way in which we encounter culture. Too often Christians don't take culture and make it our own, we simply take what culture gives us and Jesus-ify it - i.e. we put Jesus lyrics over Rock n Roll 20 years later.

Andy Jackson: Blogging by itself will not impact culture unless we are interpreting culture properly. If we don't know the trends and issues in our culture, we can't speak to them. The gospel is all about impacting our culture - it impacts our entire life, not just an individual conversion.

David Wayne: The gospel becomes our framework for interpreting our culture

Joe Carter: Jesus did not just redeem man. The Gospel means that He has redeemed all of creation.

Question 2 - How are we going to transform culture? How are Christian bloggers any different from other bloggers?

Joe Carter: We have to come together as a Church if we want to impact culture. We need to form our own community, come together, before we will be able to be effective at anything. "We can't just slap a WWJD sticker on something and make it Christian" but we should rather have a more holistic view that the Gospel transform everything in our lives.

Andy Jackson: We ought to be blogging from a holistic worldview. We can't be over focused on issues as though each was an island, but rather we should be blogging on individual issues from the connectedness of our worldview.

David Wayne: One of the things we want to avoid is having too narrow of a definition of evangelism. We've taken the approach in our evangelical culture that conversion is an event. We need to expand our definition of evangelism to incorporate the whole life - and that also means just as much that we are not trying to turn people into Republicans.


There have been more than a few questions from the floor. They're happening too fast for me to keep track of them all or get who was asking. One was a question as to why there are no female bloggers on the panel, especially when LaShawn Barber is sitting in the audience and gets more traffic than all of the other bloggers on stage? This generated some discussion back and forth, but didn't generate much resolution.

I'm having power issues... struggling to keep up here while trying to plug in.....

There is a good discussion going on now about impacting culture. The main theme is that we shouldn't see ourselves simply as individuals each blogging for ourselves. We need to think of ourselves as a group and cooperate.

Joe Carter: How many of you have individual blogs out there? How many of you have an individual church out there? This is why when he was asked to be involved with WorldMagBlog he brought in all these people to make spin off blogs in specific areas (2bHuman, Theologica, etc). Each of those spin off blogs are group blogs with a dedicated group of people who are gifted and interested in that specific area. Being a Christian is about being in community.

Question 3 - Should a Christian blog, if it was not labeled, be easily distinguish as a Christian blog?

Joe Carter: We should separate blogs from bloggers in our discussion. Blogs are static even if they are updated constantly. Bloggers will be judged by the culture in how we interact with others.

David Wayne: For some people, conversion is a point (Apostle Paul, for instance). For others, it is a process. We may not give a full description of the Gospel in a specific post, but we trust that God will take those little pieces of the Gospel as we apply them to different areas of life to work in the life of our readers. He doesn't look for a silver bullet in each post that is going to make someone pray a sinner's prayer, but he does feel the obligation to let the Gospel bleed through in everything he does.

Question 4 - Is politics an effective way to redeem culture? Is it part of the package, or is it a distraction?

Andy Jackson: I think it is how we define politics. If we understand that the Gospel has outworking implications in how we live as a people, then politics plays a part. Government is part of culture, but we need to keep in mind that is is ONLY a part, and not the whole. "Partisan politics should not drive public policy, as Christians... what should drive our public policy is Biblical truth" We should certainly be involved in political issues, but it should be driven by extending the Gospel into our politics. But we need to be careful that we are Christians first, and not party hacks.

Joe Carter: Politics is way too much of our culture right now. Songs, movies, etc are going to play a big role in culture.

David Wayne: quoting C.S. Lewis - our two main errors in dealing with the devil are ignoring him, or overemphasizing him. We do this with politics as well. We have to bring the Gospel to bear on our politics, but we can't make politics the Gospel.

Question 5 - Are inter-nicene squabbles helpful or harmful?

David Wayne: Gave the example of when he first heard the Emergent Church, he wanted to squash it (being a good Presbyterian). But in talking with some of the emergent church, he was able to really learn some stuff and gain from their criticisms. We shouldn't fear these debates inside the Church, but should make sure to keep them cordial.

This session has had a lot of questions from the floor and things have been moving very quickly, so I've been having some trouble blogging all of the different conversations. So for those of you who didn't make it this year and who are trying to follow along - I guess you'll just have to attend GBC II in person. Either that or check out the GBC Blog and find some other great bloggers who are no doubt covering this a lot better than myself.

One interesting thing our host John Schroeder brought up is to pray for the bloggers that we read. This is something that I really haven't thought about, but its something I need to do. Especially for the higher profile blogs out there, who need protection. On top of that, dropping an email or leaving a comment is also a way of encouraging people to continue. Joe Carter suggested we really need to support those smaller blogs out there who are the people who really need encouragement. LaShawn Barber commented that the larger bloggers also need to highlight some of the smaller bloggers out there - she does a roundup post every now and then and links to some of the less heard of bloggers.

Posted: Fri - October 14, 2005 at 01:34 PM | | | | | | |

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