Chuck Colson and the letter Q

Fridays are my favorite for multiple reasons.  The first of course is because it’s my day off and since it’s my day off it gives me a chance to go for long runs.  It’s be so stinking cold around here so I’ve been doing treadmill runs and today was 7 miles on a treadmill.   That equals NO FUN.  So I shuffled through my iPod quite a bit looking for anything to take my mind off of how long I was running in place.

The best thing I listened to was the first installment of The Fermi Podcast.   The Fermi Project is a pretty new idea that, according to their website…

 is a broad collective of innovators, social entrepreneurs, entertainers, artists, church shapers, futurists, scientists, historians, environmentalists and church leaders experimenting with ways to recapture the church’s role in shaping culture.

I’m going to a conference that they’re putting on called Q that is designed for church leaders who are passionate about understanding culture, its future, and how the church can better reach people with the gospel in the years to come.  They’ve got a killer line-up of speakers that include Rob Bell, Rick McKinley, Donald Miller, Andy Stanley and Rick Warren.  The list goes way further to include key people who are shaping culture like Susan Grant who is a VP from CNN, Mark Rodgers who is a political strategist, Kevin Kelley who is an editor from Wired magazine and Catherine Rohr who heads up the Prison Entrepreneurship Program.

The brilliance of Q is that it’s not just a bunch of presentations by big wigs. Here’s what they say on the conference website.

The setting of Q will create a constant flow of imagination, dialogue, and experience. Each speaker will be forced to share their big ideas in 20 minutes, so you can stay engaged in their thoughts, hear only their most thought-out concepts, and learn from myriad thought leaders in a shorter timeframe. When a story or thought is truly compelling, you will have the opportunity to seek out the presenter and  dialogue in a smaller collaborative setting or Q&A.

If your church has a budget that will send you to a conference like this I’m telling you that you should be there.  We’ll hang out.

OK, back to the podcast.

The first installment featured an interview with Chuck Colson.  I was BLOWN AWAY.  I had a pretty ill informed impression who Colson was.  I remember a few years back Colson had some sweet exchanges with McLaren and I guess I kind of just assumed he was an old school guy who hated the emergent movement (he wouldn’t be the first).

Boy was I wrong.

Aside from all of his work in the Prision Fellowship Ministry Colson has been passionately informing Christians that there is much more to following Jesus than just getting saved.  They spent a great deal of time talking through his book How Now Shall We Live and the implications that a Church in motion would have on this world.  It was a great conversation centered on the Kingdom of God here and now.

I think there is a real temptation for me to read and listen to the young hip guys who are doing “new” things but listening to this interview showed me that these things aren’t new (which is good) and I should be looking for more guys like Colson who have a great deal of wisdom behind their explanation of what the Kingdom is all about.

I would encourage you to go and download the podcast, especially if you’re like me and have no idea who Colson really is.