Tony Jones, 2nd session

Moby, a Christian, as a picture of postmodernism.

Human objective truth is a myth. There is objective truth. But our minds are finite and it makes it hard to really know all the facts possible. And so human objectivity is a unicorn. Never existed. Instead there are authoritative communities of interpretation.

The interpretation of MLB’s strike zone is not a science. It is an art. The community of baseball changed the strike zone over time. It has been pulled down and outside. 2001 MLB tried to go back to the fundamentals of the strike zone, but by 2002 it had gone back to down and outside. “Balls and strikes come into being only on the call of an umpire.”

What is church? What is the church? On one level, the church is nothing, until we decide what it is.

Acts 10. Peter’s vision. Don’t let your blinders, like Peter, keep God from doing what He needs to do. Don’t let yourself be blinded from what God is doing throughout Christianity. God’s activity is not contingent on the church.

The church of my dreams, maybe God’s dreams, has bands of covert believers who are committed to interpreting God’s activity in the world through authoritative communities of interpretation.

Sidebar: Two interesting twists about this conference. First, they have flown in young adults who are sharing their thoughts on the church, and a lot of their experience of church and how church is now. The second thing is that they have an open mike at every session to allow immediate feedback and conversation. As in, Tony is not the only authority but that everyone has something to share. It’s very, very interesting.