Notes for Evangelism Conference

Possible Tagline

Evangelism is Dead. Long live Evangelism.

Things I Promised I'd Talk About

• Modern Church vs. Post-modern Church (Post-Modern? WTF???)
• Recent Cultural Trends and Ideas (My Favorite, See Below)
• Resources for Evangelism in Emerging Culture
• Emerging Flavored Presbyterians (Presbymergent)

Jeff's Outline for Me

1. Evangelism is Dead. Long live Evangelism.
2. Historical overview of emergent
   • moving to a church that is more relevant to postmodern culture.
3. Deconstructionism (critical to emergence)
   • What evangelism is not
4. Evangelism as Deliberate (or intentional) Community
   • Relationships vs. Rules
   • Church fulfilling need for daily community
   • Congregation as participant developers (open-source / prosumers) vs. listeners & followers

Evangelism in Emerging Culture

• It's all about community.
  • So how do I...?
• Three options (IMHO):
  1. Join an Existing Community (best)
  2. Create One (good but hard)
  3. Transform an existing one into one (hardest, possibly inauthentic)

Prosumers of Worship

• Old Model: leaders produce, congregation consumes
• New Model: leaders help congregation to produce AND consume

Concepts and Trends I Like to Talk About

• Web 2.0 & Church 2.0
  • Wiki Worship & Soft Security
  • Long Tail Church
  • Open Source / Transparency
    • Eyeballs & bugs
    • Release Early & Release Often
• Truth
  • Absolute Truth (Pluto?)
  • Truthiness: Greek vs. Jewish.
• Four Principles of "Wikinomics" (Per Williams & Tapscott)
  1. Openness
  2. Peering
  3. Sharing
  4. Acting Globally

Random Soapboxes (Ask With Caution)

• Presbyterians Are Big Time Geeks.
• Why Folk Music and Hymns are Emergent. And Cool.
• ASCAP Sucks. So does Copyright.
• Most Christian Education is Neither Christian Nor Education
• Emerging Church Dress Code (why do they all look alike?)