Emerging @ PTS

So, as some of you know I’ve been working on pulling together an event here in February.  ESF (Evangelical Student Fellowship) is a group that I’ve been active with since I started seminary and would say that it’s been a crucial part of my seminary experience.  Last year I joined the leadership team and remain apart of that this year albeit in a slightly different (but better suited role).  In many ways ESF’s leadership has been a model of how leadership should work.  We all trust one another, so the leadership team serves to empower and rather than control.  ESF has, in my time in seminary, hosted a number of different discussion panels and forums on various topics including inclusive language, The Passion of the Christ, Faith and Politics and I think something else that I can’t recall right now.  Anyhow, it was suggested to me to work on something similar on the emerging church.  So, I sat down with Dr. Sunquist (our esteemed advisor) and Rich (one of our co-presidents) and we laid some groundwork for it.  That weekend I went to the Generous Orthodoxy Conference, hoping that I could meet John Franke and convince him to be apart of it.  So, the first day of the Conference I introduced myself to him and we sat together during the first general session.  I mentioned “We’re having a discussion forum on the Emerging Church…” before I finished the sentence he said, “I will come at my own expense to be apart of that.”  Mission accomplished.  

So here’s the (very) preliminary plans for the day:

Noon:     John Franke @ ESF (Dining Room #1)
3:15:      John Franke, “The Many and the One: Toward a Theology of Christian Pluralism” (Room #4)
     Responding: Rev. Dr. John Burgess (tentative)
4:30:     A Conversation about the Emerging Church: Featuring John Franke and Emerging Church leaders from around Pittsburgh