pondering the future with Erwan McManus

This was the final session of the Global Leadership Summit.  By this point I was exhausted and ready to go home.  I prayed he wouldn't be boring.

He wasn't.

He started out by reading from Ecclesiastes 1, then declaring, "Solomon was wrong."  I chuckled when he talked about having discussions with his wife about how he was sure the Bible was wrong.  She'd shake her head and say, "Fine, whatever, just please don't ever talk to people about this!!"  I could sort of relate to that. ;)

Of course his point wasn't that the Bible is "wrong" but that we read it wrong.  Statements like "there is nothing new under the sun" are not factual, literal truths from God so much as the expression of a man who tried to find fulfillment by using things and people to satisfy himself.

Erwan challenged the way many (most?) apply that "nothing new" statement as God's truth.  Really?  What about Isaiah 43:18-19 where God tells us He is doing a new thing?  What about Jesus telling us we can't put new wine in old wineskins?

We are part of a creative order, not a created order.

Why do we keep waiting for someone else to create the better future?

The church needs to become cultivator of human talent, nurturing people's creative capacity.

There has never been an ordinary human born, but sadly most of us die copies.

The church should must be a nurturer of the human spirit - the epicentre of creativity, freeing and liberating dreams inside people's souls.

There is NO conflict between human talent and the glory of God.

We need to be narrators of the human story. (this is where he really started speaking directly to me)  We've accepted a false narrative.  We need to take back the truth telling power of the narrative of Christ.

Truth is LOST in a bad story.

***We need a revival of great story-telling. Whoever tells the best stories frames the culture.*** (hello!?)

It's not that hard to bring people to Jesus when you tell them a story they can find themselves in.

There's a future to be created, if we return to being the narrators and the poets. (in the margin of my notes here I wrote, "I can't breathe!")

Jesus has come and he makes all things NEW.