I'm gonna sound like I'm Brian McLaren's No.1 fan in Malaysia.

Maybe it's because I've been part of Emergent for the past 2-3 years. Maybe it's my inadequate reading of McLaren (only 3 books out of about a dozen). Maybe it's God knocking me on the head, on account of my lack of "spiritual involvement". But there were so many instances during McLaren's talks at the QRoH conference which "blew me away", for instance:

...when he tied discipleship to the making of the rare violins (like the Stradivarius), sharing how a master violin-maker and his apprentice would go cottage to cottage in the mountains of Switzerland looking for a particular wood to make high-quality violins, with the apprentice slowly mastering the art by imitating the master. It dawned on me that I've been spending so much time thinking and talking about the faith that I haven't been devoting enough attention to immitating its Leader and Perfecter. I/We have been so obsessed with rules of mastery that we've forgotten to follow and eat with and live like and love as much as, the Master.

...when he counseled that, with respect to adherents of other faiths, the proper response is to "love and know, serve and protect" them. Serve and protect Buddhists, "free-thinkers", Muslims?? Serve and protect them?! Protect them from Christians, maybe? This response feels so right and even though the Biblical 'alarm-bells' are ringing, I sense that's what God desires of His children. Our Christian narrative is not to be an irresistible meta-narrative steamrolling its way over other framing stories, but a redeeming narrative, suffering (even) for those who seek to stamp it out.

...when he suggested reworking our language in communicating the Gospel and declaring something like, "We are the Al-Qaeda of God, preparing detonationgs of hope, firing bullets of goodness, flying planes of truth into buildings of deception."


And to think that I initially declined being a facilitator...(*Alwyn shakes head at himself*)