2010 Dallas Willard Conference in Southern California

A longtime friend and mentor of JP Moreland's, Dallas Willard, will be doing a conference at JP's church, the Anaheim Vineyard in Southern California. Dallas also wrote the Foreword to Kingdom Triangle.

When: April 17, 2010 (Saturday)
Where: Anaheim Vineyard (directions)

The all-day Saturday conference will center on this theme from Dallas:

"Knowledge for Life: Learning to Trust & Grow in Spiritual Knowledge."

In January, at www.vcfanaheim.com, tickets for the conference will go on sale.

In part, the conference will echo similar themes in Dallas Willard's Knowing Christ Today.

JP writes:

Dallas Willard’s Knowing Christ Today is a stunning achievement. I could not put it down. It is the foundational book for all of his other works on the spiritual life, and a must read for all who wish to grasp the appropriate framework for knowing and following Jesus in the contemporary setting. Far too often, Christians interested in the intellectual aspects of Christianity do not pay much attention to the distinctively spiritual formation side of things. But just as importantly, those who are committed to spiritual formation frequently set aside the more philosophical, cognitive side of the journey. Both sides in isolation are truncated and, fortunately, with the publication of Knowing Christ Today, the intellectual and spiritual facets of walking with Jesus are brought together in one place in such a way that their essential inseparability is laid bare for the reader in a life-changing, persuasive way. This is one of the most important books published in my lifetime, and I urge everyone to read it with care. However, I am happy to announce that those of us in the So Cal area do not need to rest with merely reading the book; no, we can attend a critical conference at which Willard himself will interact about the themes and implications of his book and handle questions from the conferees. I am deeply involved in this conference and consider it to be of critical importance. I urge everyone who can to attend it.

If you are in the southern California area, JP will also be giving a full review and leading a discussion of Dallas' book on March 25, 2010 (Thursday @ 7 pm) at the coffee shop of the Anaheim Vineyard.

Kingdom Triangle and Christian Intellectuals that Serve Global Christianity

In November, at the 2009 annual meeting of the Evangelical Philosophical Society, JP gave a talk to over 100 members in attendance about how Christian intellectuals can serve the Non-Western church.

While audio is unavailable, here are the main points from JP's talk. We are happy to feature these ideas here since this topic echos so many wonderful aspects of Kingdom Triangle.

1. The church is exploding all over the world outside of Western cultures, and the disciples in these countries hold to an overtly supernatural worldview.
2. The emerging young intellectual leadership in these countries look to the ETS/EPS/SCP for guidance and help. They read our writings and follow us. They are confused and hurt when we advance ideas that undermine the commonsense, supernatural worldview of the Bible that they embrace. Thus, we have a responsibility to do our work in light of how it impacts our brothers and sisters in these countries.
3. Here are four suggestions for how to better fulfill that responsibility:

• Work together with others to write books, produce edited works, and so forth. The synergy of such efforts increases our impact and it models the importance of the body of Christ and cooperation among its members.
• Produce works that range from popular to technical, but be sure we do not look down upon those who work at the popular end of the spectrum. The key is to find one's role and play it well.
• Beware of living for a career and for the respect of the "right" people in the profession instead of living for the Kingdom and seeing one's work as a calling from God rather than a place to re-assure oneself that he/she is respected.
• Require a burden of proof before one adopts a view, e.g., Christian physicalism, that if read by a brothers and sisters outside Western culture, would hurt their supernatural faith, especially if the view is not one held by a significant number of people in church history and if it is "politically correct" to adopt it under pressure from the academic community.