ReKnew Conference
You are invited to
The Re|Knew Conference
featuring Greg Boyd
Details
September 21-23, 2017
Woodland Hills Church
1740 Van Dyke Street
St. Paul, MN 55109
Super Early Bird Price: $99 (until June 1)
Early Bird Price: $149 (June 1 – July 31)
Regular Price: $199 (August 1 – September 21)
About
For ten years, pastor-theologian Greg Boyd has wrestled with one question: How can Christians reconcile the peaceful life and message of Jesus with the violent depictions of God in the Old Testament? The result of his struggle was a breakthrough discovery: the Cruciform Hermeneutic.
Having been released in his books, The Crucifixion of the Warrior God and Cross Vision, Greg is going to present this revolutionary way to read the Bible at the first annual Re|Knew Conference. Held at Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul, the conference will be an exciting time of presentations, music, networking, and prayer. You’ll come away challenged and inspired.
Don’t miss it!
Speakers
Keynote Speaker
Panel Speakers
Bruxy Cavey is the teaching pastor at The Meeting House, a church for people who aren’t into church. The Meeting House is a multisite Anabaptist congregation in Ontario, Canada where thousands of people connect with God and each other through a widespread house church network, Sunday services, and online interactions. (You can learn more about The Meeting House at www.themeetinghouse.com.) Bruxy is also author of The End of Religion and (re)union. Bruxy and his wife, Nina, have three daughters and live in Hamilton, Ontario.
Rachel Held Evans is a New York Times best-selling author whose books include Faith Unraveled (2010), A Year of Biblical Womanhood (2012), and Searching for Sunday (2015). Hailing from Dayton, Tennessee—home of the famous Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925— she writes about faith, doubt and life in the Bible Belt. Rachel served on President Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, and keeps a busy schedule speaking at churches, conferences, and colleges and universities around the country.
Dennis Edwards is the senior pastor of Sanctuary Covenant Church in Minneapolis, MN and the author of 1 Peter in the Story of God Bible Commentary series. He holds a B.S. in chemical engineering from Cornell University, an M.Div. in urban ministry from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, and a Ph.D. in biblical studies from the Catholic University of America. He has been an adjunct instructor of Bible and New Testament Greek at various seminaries. Dennis has been married to Susan Steele Edwards for 34 years. They have four adult children and one grandchild.
Workshop Speakers & Preachers
- Natalie Frisk
Natalie Frisk is the curriculum pastor at The Meeting House, a church for people who aren’t into church. The Meeting House is a multisite Anabaptist congregation in Ontario, Canada, and the curriculum that they produce has made its way around the globe.
Natalie is also content curator of The Parent Blog. Natalie and her husband, Sam, have a daughter, Erin, and live in Hamilton, Ontario.
- Ted Lewis
Ted Lewis is Restorative Justice Specialist, and provides training and consultation services through the Center for Restorative Justice & Peacemaking at the University of Minnesota. Since 1996 he has done work as a restorative justice mediator, trainer, program manager, director, and teacher. Since 2004 he has applied restorative practices to church communities through reconciliation and workshop services. Along with being the Executive Director for the International Jacques Ellul Society, Ted is also the founder of the Agape Peace Center in Duluth where he currently resides. You can find Ted at www.restorativetrainer.com. - Reesheda Graham-Washington
Reesheda Graham-Washington has a heart for Christian Community Development both nationally and abroad and currently serves as the Executive Director of Communities First Association. Most recently, she co-founded Livexclamation, a grassroots generated café and creative space and is the cofounding pastor of a new Chicago-based church plant, At the Table. A preacher, innovator, gifted curriculum designer, and skilled facilitator, Reesheda lives to empower under-resourced communities to uncover and cultivate their God-given gifts and talents. She is currently co-authoring her first book, Courageous Living: 7 Pivots Toward a Transformational Movement.
- Catherine Hanna Schrock
Catherine Hanna Schrock is an expert in applied theater and creative facilitation. Her work emphasizes performance-based methods for community development within various, diverse, and often, under-resourced contexts. In addition to her work around the country, Catherine is an international peacemaking trainer with The Global Immersion Project. In all she does, Catherine integrates faith, theology, and the arts in order to raise our human capacity for the work of restoration.
- Jer Swigart
Jer Swigart is a modern-day peacemaker, a church planter, an organizer, a professor, and the cofounder of the peacemaking training organization, The Global Immersion Project. His engagement within national and international conflicts has equipped Jer to be a trainer and guide for the North American Church as she seeks to become an instrument of peace in our world. He's a sought-after consultant, facilitator, and speaker and the co-author of Mending the Divides: Creative Love in a Conflicted World (IVP, 2017).
- Erin Mehta
Erin Mehta has worked as a public health nurse at the Center for Victims of Torture (CVT) in St. Paul, Minnesota for 11 years. At CVT, her role has included conducting community research, training community partners in trauma-informed care and providing direct services to survivors of politically motivated torture.
- Neeraj Mehta
Neeraj Mehta is the director of community programs at the Center for Urban and Regional Affairs at the University of Minnesota. He is also an adjunct faculty member at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs where he teaches courses focused on equitable neighborhood revitalization. Trained as civil engineer, he quickly gave that up to work on racial and economic justice issues in the Twin Cities region, working in philanthropy, community development and community organizing. Neeraj has a master’s degree in public policy from the Humphrey School and was a 2011-2013 Bush Foundation Leadership Fellow.
- Brianna Millet
Brianna Millett received her MA in Public and Missional Theology at United Theological Seminary. She's an adjunct professor of theology at Bethel University with a commitment to a pedagogy that is hospitable, creative and fun. Brianna is also invested in her faith community, Woodland Hills Church, where she has the joy of serving as an Associate Pastor.
More speaker bios coming soon…
Schedule:
THURSDAY
12:00pm – Registration and Check-In Open
1:30pm – Opening Worship
2:30pm – Keynote One
4:00pm – Coffee Break
4:30pm – Workshops (see workshops listed below)
6:00pm – Dinner Break
8:00pm – Evening option: Homebrewed Christianity Live Podcast at O’Gara’s ($10 cover charge for conference attendees; $20 for general public – cover charge includes one beer, glass of wine, or soda)
FRIDAY
9:00am – Keynote Two
10:30am – Coffee Break
11:00am – Affinity-Based Roundtables (see more info in FAQs)
12:00pm – Lunch Break
2:00pm – Keynote Three
3:30pm – Coffee Break
4:00pm – Workshops (see workshops listed below)
5:30pm – Dinner Break
8:00pm – Evening option: Not Dead Yet in concert at O’Gara’s (Doors at 7:30, show begins at 8:00; $10 Suggested Donation, proceeds donated to charity)
SATURDAY
9:00am – Keynote Four
10:30am – Coffee Break
11:00am – Closing Worship
12:00pm – Adjourn
(5:00pm – All conferees are welcome to attend Saturday evening worship at Woodland Hills –Bruxy Cavey preaching)
Workshops
Kids and the Cross: How Do We Teach God’s Story to Kids? with Natalie Frisk
God is a good god. God is a loving god. These are things we want our kids to know from their earliest years. In fact, research suggests that children begin to develop their understanding of who God is (their picture of God) before the age of five, and yet, so many of our Sunday schools and children’s churches teach violent pictures of God that are incredibly difficult for kids to wrap their minds around. We want them to know God revealed through Christ. Let’s discover together what it might mean for the cruciform hermeneutic to inform how we teach God’s story to our kids.
Rene Girard and the Cross: Violent Redemptions vs. Redemption Over Violence with Ted Lewis
How is it that a victim of violence can be viewed by a society as an offender deserving a violent death? French scholar Rene Girard pioneered new understandings in how societies often keep order through ritual violence and scapegoating. Conversely, he saw how the crucifixion of Jesus upended this entire social convention by unmasking the injustice done to all victims of socially-approved violence. True followers of the Lamb of God can therefore shift their imitative impulses away from redemptive violence to redemptive nonviolence as a way to identify themselves and participate in God’s self-revelation through the death of Jesus. With 20 years of experience as a restorative justice mediator and trainer, Ted will integrate the power of Victim Offender Dialogue into a theology of the cross which addresses both human offending no less than human victimization. Indeed, the two cannot be separated if relational reconciliation is the goal!
Jesus-Centred, Cross-Shaped Apologetics: How the good news of a Jesus-looking, non-violent God carries evidential power in evangelism. with Bruxy Cavey
Historical evidence for the resurrection. Manuscript evidence for the reliability of the New Testament. Philosophical arguments for the existence of God. All worthy approaches to apologetics, but Bruxy Cavey suggests there might be a better way to engage others with evidence for the truth of Jesus. This workshop will examine the advantages of a gospel-based and Jesus-centred approach to apologetics.
Embodied: How the cruciform hermeneutic renovates our mission, informs our practice, and restores our world. with Jer Swigert, Catherine Hanna Schrock, and Reesheda Graham-Washington.
There is a chasm that exits between who the North American Church is and who she was designed to be. Current statistics indicate that her nationalism is thicker than her faith; her theology is shaped more like a sword than a cross; and her practice looks more like revenge than reconciliation. In this workshop, we’ll apply Greg’s cruciform hermeneutic to our life and leadership and, in so doing, find ourselves equipped as Everyday Peacemakers and mobilized to join an others-oriented, enemy-loving God in the work of restoration.
Suffering, the Warrior God, and Marginalized People with Dennis Edwards
Many of our Christian forebears suffered for their faith in Jesus. For example, the people to whom 1 Peter is addressed are constantly marginalized and ostracized by the dominant non-Christian culture. Yet, in the face of suffering, they are not to retaliate, but to behave as our Lord Jesus did (1 Pet 2:23). Should marginalized people simply be content to suffer indefinitely? Is there a place for advocacy? If so, what should it look like? Is violence acceptable when working to alleviate pressure on those who suffer for their faith? In this workshop we will consider how the work of Greg Boyd, found in Crucifixion of the Warrior God, helps us to answer such questions.
The Violence of Othering with Erin Mehta and Neeraj Mehta
At a time in which our cities and country is becoming more and more diverse, research continues to show that we are hunkering down into communities of sameness. Through the lens of issues like race and poverty, immigration and citizenship we will explore how to move from the violence of othering to building Christ centered communities of belonging. We will discuss how to counter the politics of oppression and violence found in the Old Testament with the politics of justice and compassion we find in the life and death of Christ. We will talk about the journey of opening ourselves to the other, of embracing him or her in the same embrace with which God has embraced us.
More Workshops Coming Soon…
Sponsors
For information on how your organization can sponsor the Re|Knew Conference, please email tony@jopaproductions.com.
FAQs
Q: Who is the Re|Knew Conference for?
A: The Re|Knew Conference is for anyone who’s perplexed by the violent depictions of God in the Old Testament and how they seem to contradict Jesus’ portrayal of God as loving and peaceful. This includes pastors, but it also includes many other people, too. During the conference, we will have affinity groups for you to discuss the implications of the cruciform hermeneutic in your own life and ministry.
Q: What will I get at the conference that I can’t get in Greg’s books?
A: Greg’s books, Cross Vision and The Crucifixion of the Warrior God, develop his argument in writing, but there’s nothing like hearing him speak about these ideas. Plus, at the conference, Greg will be in conversation with others—some of whom don’t always agree with him. And there will be chances for you to ask your own questions as well.
Q: Are meals included?
A: Snacks, refreshments, coffee, tea, etc. will be provided, but meals are on your own. We will provide lots of local restaurant suggestions, and we can even help you find someone to eat with!
Q: How should I get there?
A: Woodland Hills Church is on the east side of St. Paul, Minnesota. The closest airport is Minneapolis-St. Paul (MSP). There is ample parking at the church if you drive or rent a car. Ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft cost about $30 from MSP to Woodland Hills.
Q: Where should I stay?
A:Times have changed. It used to be that conference organizers could negotiate cheaper block rates at hotels. But nowadays, hotels just offer conferences their “rack rate,” which is 10% off. That’s the same as a AAA or AARP discount. In other words, not a great deal. You can easily beat those rates using an online service like Priceline, Kayak, or Trivago. Here’s a map of hotels near the church: https://goo.gl/7a312T. Let us know if we can be of any further help.
Q: What is your refund policy?
A: Through August 30, 2017, you may have your registration refunded, less a $25 handling fee. As of September 1, there are no refunds.
Q: Is there a discount for seminary students? How about for members of Woodland Hills Church?
A: There are no discounts during the Super Early Bird registration. After that, if you are a seminary student, email tony@jopaproductions.com for a discount code (you will have to register with your .edu email account). And if you attend Woodland Hills, watch the bulletin for a code.
Q: Can I bring a group?
A: Yes, groups are encouraged! And if you register a group of five or more, you get a free copy of Crucifixion of the Warrior God!
Q: Can my organization sponsor the conference?
A: Yes, we welcome sponsors at various levels. If you would like information, please email tony@jopaproductions.com.
Q: Are you going to do this again next year?
A: Yes, we plan to!
Q: What are “Affinity-Based Roundtables”?
A: Greg’s thesis in The Crucifixion of the Warrior God and Cross Vision has far-reaching effects in ministry and the Christian life, so we are going to have a time at the conference when you can gather with others in the same role as you. If you’re wondering, for instance, “What does this mean for youth ministry?” you can sit with other youth pastors and talk about that question. Other groups will include senior pastors, preachers, children’s pastors, missionaries, and non-profit executives — and if you don’t see a group that fits you, we’ll make one!