Self-select Postmodern Pottage
I talked with Marc van der Woude today about getting Perspectives to emerging leaders in Holland and Europe. They are primarily postmodern, house-church, non-denominational, international, etc. The main problem with Persp is that it is teaching/lecture-based, and his contacts probably wouldn't be interested in this. They want discussion as the basis for teaching (not as a bone thrown to satisfy them). They want practical models or experiences to apply ideas.

We are working hard to incorporate discussion, and integrative experiences and exercises. But in order to do this organically, it would take a long time to cover the concepts – at least 3-4 weeks full-time. It is more organic if it is once a week. Then they spend the next week applying the concepts in their normal life of ministry. They have tie to reflect on how it might integrate into their lives. But we cannot do this for people who don’t live locally. The idea is to gather emerging leaders who are wired to do this, and expose them to the concepts. Then they go do this in the organic format.

But you are trying to attract people to invest a couple weeks for exposure to these ideas. That is a lot to ask of someone who had no previous idea of what you are talking about. What is the time threshold, Marc? Perhaps a day or a weekend. Wow, how do we expose these guys to enough of the ideas in Perspectives to give an overview, while doing discussion and integrative experiences and field ministry?!

Furthermore, it seems that usually when we get young people to come to Persp or Discovery Teams or another short-term experience, we get people who don’t seem to be postmodern. They don’t think outside the box, are not strongly creative, etc. Maybe that is because our format does not appeal to postmoderns. So, they self-select to other things. Our very format helps to self-select away from some of the people we most want to reach.