See You at Streaming October 9th-11th

Hope to see you at Rochester College's Streaming conference, just a little over a month away (October 9-11 in Rochester Hills, MI, just outside of Detroit). The theme of Streaming this year is "No Fear, Only Love."

Greg Boyd will be a featured presenter.

I'm looking forward to Greg's two presentations entitled "The Unveiling of the True God and the True Human" and "Cross Power and Babylon's Power." There will also be a panel discussion about Greg's recent book Benefit of the Doubt: Breaking the Idol of Certainty.

For my presentations I'll be sharing reflections from my recent book The Slavery of Death. My first presentation is entitled "The Power of the Devil and the Shame-Based Fear of Being Ordinary" and the second one is “Perfect Love and the Exorcism of Fear.”

As you some of you might have noticed, the reference in my first title to "the shame-based fear of being ordinary" is a nod to the work of Brene Brown and her book Daring Greatly. Specifically, I'll be connecting my analysis in The Slavery of Death with Brene's work regarding shame and cultures of scarcity. Here is Brene describing the experience of scarcity:

We get scarcity because we live it…Scarcity is the “never enough” problem…Scarcity thrives in a culture where everyone is hyperaware of lack. Everything from safety and love to money and resources feels restricted or lacking. We spend inordinate amounts of time calculating how much we have, want, and don’t have, and how much everyone else has, needs, and wants.

As I'll argue it, the anxiety and shame associated with the experience of scarcity--not having or being "enough"--are symptoms of our slavery to the fear of death, and that this fear is the power of the devil in our lives (Hebrews 2.14-15). That is, there is a connection between scarcity, anxiety and moral failure. For example, in Daring Greatly Brene shares this assessment from Lynne Twist where Twist links scarcity, anxiety and moral struggle:

For me, and for many of us, our first waking thought of the day is "I didn’t get enough sleep." The next one is "I don't have enough time." Whether true or not, that thought of not enough occurs to us automatically before we even think to question or examine it. We spend most of the hours and the days of our lives hearing, explaining, complaining, or worrying about what we don't have enough of…Before we even sit up in bed, before our feet touch the floor, we're already inadequate, already behind, already losing, already lacking something. And by the time we go to bed at night, our minds are racing with a litany of what we didn't get, or didn't get done, that day. We go to sleep burdened by those thoughts and wake up to that reverie of lack…This internal condition of scarcity, this mind-set of scarcity, lives at the very heart of our jealousies, our greed, our prejudice, and our arguments with life.

In my first presentation I'll try to show how this "reverie of lack" along with our "internal condition of scarcity" are symptoms of our slavery to the fear of death and, thus, a tool of the devil.

On the last day Greg and I will have a conversation about the intersection of our presentations and work.

And there will be lots more. Sara Barton, author of A Woman Called, will be presenting on “Cultivating A Cross Shaped Heart for a Broken World." From Pepperdine University John Barton will present on “At the Foot of the Cross in the Middle of the World.” Our worship times will feature the preaching of Ben Ries and Jenn Christy.

Streaming also brings the arts into the mix. This year Jennifer Rundlett, author of My Dancing Day: Reflections of the Incarnation in Art and Music, will lead a time of reflection entitled “Stations of the Cross: An Exploration in Music and Art” using a blend of classic art and music, spanning the centuries from the Renaissance to the Modern Era, along with prayers and scripture readings to create a unique meditative experience.

Hope to see you at Streaming!