The first step in any journey is the toughest.
F. LaGard Smith spoke to a few folks in the ICoC, as well as CoC and Independent Christian Churches. I would be surprised that any of the ICoC attendees could host a conference like this at their home church. I’d be surprised if it would receive much positive coverage at various conferences.
Still, it would be good to have such a conference sponsored by an ICoC church. Abilene and Pepperdine have made overtures to us. We attended the conversations, but not much happened after that. It’s our turn to reciprocate, no matter how few have any real desire to do so.
Individuals have done a lot of work, but imagine what would happen if an entire church would embrace reconciliation.
So I am going to help bring such a conference into existence. If you want to help, email me or comment here. What do you think is necessary for such a conference?
Comments
11 Responses to “Bring Us Back”
I listened to Gregg’s sermon yesterday and I’m guessing his comments have something to do with this?
Hey, I think it’s a great idea. My LE, as you know, was a participant at the first conference in Abilene. Of course, since then, I don’t know that he’s many overtures to the mainlines here in town.
ttk
It’s not just the sermon, really. I haven’t heard most of it. It’s talking about unity and realizing that I’m not crazy for what I believe.
Here I am thinking that Step 2 would never happen only to discover that many key people already know each other. The biggest thing that needed to be done was to simply ask.
Cool idea!
The Abilene conference and Jacoby’s teacher conference were established annual events. In both cases the main attendees were the same community that had been attending for years. To that group were added a few “outsiders” from the other side of the divide. In both cases a few of the “outsiders” were given a spot on the program, and a topic along the lines of improving relations. Lots of advance communication / meetings / discussions occurred before each of these conferences.
The same thing was done between mainline churches and independent Christian churches at several conferences in 2006. Essentially an identical formula was followed.
If you do it differently, it will probably require a lot more work up-front to build a coalition of folks to come from both sides. But if you can pull it off it would be marvelous!
Gregg just mentioned the idea of holding a unity conference in Omaha but then said he needed to check with the deacons.
It would be interesting how much response he would get from the ICOC side of the divide. It would be an indication, perhaps, how much the ICOC has crawled back into it’s old OTC hole.
ttk
So far, it looks to be different. The up-front work is helped by the fact that folks here have so many connections.
We have folks that have the Crossrodas-Arkansas church split as a part of their heritage. We have Crossroads people here, folks that were part of the Indi split. There are folks that joined from a few CoC’s. The leader of the original Milan, Italy planting teaches at a CoC school. We have folks from the failed North and South Dakota plantings and more.
Couple that with the Nebraska Christian College just moving in town, there is already a local coalition of CoC’s/Independent Christian Churches that have come together in the past two years.
At this point, I think it is possible, though I am not naive to real issues. The specific issues thus far include, as Alan mentioned, ICoC buy-in. Local CoC buy-in is likely, and maybe that’s all we can do. Maybe only 25 people show up to the first one.
Is Nebraska Christian College the same as the old York College? (my hubby went there for a very short period of time)
ttk
It’s different. York is still York. NCC moved here from Norfolk, Nebraska.
Sound great. I think it would be really cool if there were reps from ICOC,COC, ICC & ?? involved in the planning. Then it’s not an ICOC even with the COC invited or whatever. We hosted a conference here for the former ACR in 2004 and its a lot of work and potentially a lot of money if you don’t get the participation.
BTW - Who’s there from Indy? My wife was there from 1988-1991. Email me if you’d like.
Yeah, I put together everything for a visit from DJ three years ago and that was hard work.
Up to a certain point, having delegates from all around is a good idea. I’ll email you some of the specific ideas when I can. There’s someone in mind for a class on preaching already but some of the other things aren’t so fleshed out.
One advantage to having the church I attend host it is that we are too small to have the traditional “show-stopping-number”. Most of it will be lining up the venue and the speakers - that’s enough considering the scope!
Unity was the buzz in 2006 in these parts , it would be great to see more of it. I know that in Tulsa a CoC and CCs worked together in the ISWW. Then two of the churches worked to build a Habitat House.
I’ll be praying with you on this one.
We too decided against the “show stopping number” for a couple of reasons. One was that we weren’t big enough to pull it off (though we likely could have gotten help from Cinci), two we wanted a simpler feeling event and three we wanted to keep the cost down from where it had ballooned to. I don’t remember exactly, but I think registration was $20 - $25 and we at least broke even.
Even at that, there’s a COC conference (the name of which escapes me) in Columbus every year that was something like $10 - $15 for registration.