Ask and you shall receive. A couple of people have commented asking for my complete 43 (50 in pdf form, apprarently) pages of notes. I beseech thee to download and further thee…um, theeself?

Mars Hill Conference “Isn’t She Beautiful” Notes

A couple of notes on these, well, notes; first of all all of the highlighted portions are there because I used each of them in one of the blogs on Isn’t She Beautiful that I wrote. Each color refers to a different post as I went through each day…yeah, I’m a dork. Get over it. Secondly, there is a reason that the notes for the session on Narrative Theology and the session on elders is a bit short. The breakout sessions were poor.

The speaker for Narrative Theology probably could have really opened my eyes to some thing when it comes to this form of theology – I’m a big fan already, but when Bell speaks highly of someone I expect quite a bit. Unfortunately what he delivered was both much too dumbed-down (probably to reach for the lowest common denominator) and too specific (he chose to focus on Genesis 1-3 specifically) which you will probably be able to tell from the notes. We left after the first 20 minutes or so – if someone stayed for all of it and disagrees with me for some reason I will reconsider my stance. Right now I am wondering why a session which could have been really amazing was seemingly reduced.

I am keeping in mind, however, that I am a bit more familiar with the topic than most probably were at the conference. In any case…

The elders session was equally disappointing. I was expecting to see quite a bit – detailed background into the church for one, not to mention some glances into how the church is run behind the scenes. This wasn’t the case. We were given a shallow presentation and a few (noteworthy, for sure) facts sprinkled here and there. There was a noticable murkiness to the answers the two available elders gave, though part of me wondered how much they really had to tell. I was more than disappointed to see one of them show up in sweats…

But maybe I’m being too critical. I only want to give some explanation into why there are so many notes for Bell’s speaches (as if that should need any explanation) and why there is so little for others.

On a related note, does anyone else think that Rob may be a one man army, as far as the church’s success? I’m beginning to wonder…