GodBlogCon

In addition to the emerging church conf at WTS [see my previous post] something called GodBlogCon is on this weekend. Their site describes it as:

how best to bring The Gospel into a culture withering for lack of truth, goodness, and beauty. New Media has already proven itself a potent cultural force, but the rules are changing and only the thoughtful will survive. GodBlogCon will exhort, equip, and encourage you and other Christians from all walks to engage the culture as thoughtful, articulate, and winsome witnesses of the redeeming work of Christ in every area of life!

Here is the list of bloggers attending.

Dr. John Mark Reynolds kicked-off this year’s GBC with a rousing speech about the process of “revolutions” and where the “new media revolution” stands as in the great scheme of revolutionary processes. Here are some highlights:

• When new technologies come out, the standards are low.
• More players get in the game, the standards are raised, small players will become squeezed out.
• Who will the big players be? We are still in a time of relative flux, but those big players really have yet to be determined.
• The revolution is in its final stages. We have one last opportunity to make an impact - people will demand that quality and quality defining bodies in their new media experience.
• The age of the internet as the “wild west” is over. Will Christians have a place in the new media hegemony? No, probably not.
• We should present an alternative vision of the way in which we wish the world was, unconstrained by the limits (or approval) of old media power.
• This does not mean that we are people who deny truth, rather, we are people who open their minds to think in new paradigms.
• Dream, tell stories.
• We must (as Godbloggers) begin to ask ourselves hard dialectical questions. Everything I believe has to be on the line. The Lord tested the knowledge and beliefs of believers after his death and resurrection - then he began to teach them.
• Christian GodBloggers have not been willing to take a tough, thoughtful position and defend it. We should try to work through every aspect of life. We can try out our ideas in virtual reality before we try them in reality. We need to be willing to experiment and we lose the advantage of writing unexpected opinion.
• We need to go beyond a hypothesis and be willing to be able to tell a good Christian myth. There is vanishingly poetry, fiction, or story telling of any kind. Into what will we fit our ideas? What is the Gospel? God sent stories and letters to us.
• We must become apart of a whole new story telling. We must be careful as we begin to tell this new story. We must incorporate the very best of what has been. Don’t lose Dante, don’t forget the great ideas of Lincoln, Roosevelt, Martin Luther King Jr. … bring forward the best of what has been, placing the Cross of Christ at the center.