May 17, 2008

Day 1- Rethinking Forum

Well, it's nice to finally be on the trip.  We've been building up for months, preparing, reading, packing, and meeting and finally we are on our way.

Today began our first day.  This first leg began with  two hour flight from DFW to Minneapolis for a two day hiatus, also known as the Rethinking Forum.  Basically practitioners, scholars, and people interested in the conversation about mission to Hindu's have gathered for a few days to talk about contextualization.  

My first impression has been very different from most conferences I have attended.  This forum is very intimate.  I feel like this is a conversation among peers, partners, and friends.  This is a very important conversation, but like most conversations that push beyond the veneer and surface level of what we often call "conversation" the discussion can become frustrating and difficult to maintain.  So like this conference, this is trip is about a difficult and sometimes frustrating conversation.

Not that I think this trip will be bad or even overly hard, but to fully engage and get everything out of this conversation it will take effort and be hard at times.  

Tomorrow we go back to the conference and Dr. Stroope will be presenting a paper.  Monday, we take the morning to rest, fly to DFW with a layover, then to San Francisco with a layover, then we fly out to Hong Kong for the long 13 hour...23 hours with time changes ;) 


No comments: