salt the planet

On to the second movement in the world of the YS convention!

In the second part of the Critical Concerns Course, Mark focused less on self and more on dealing with conflict and moving as a team.

He made several primary statements that stuck out to me (None of which seem directly related now outside of context). However, they all revolve around the first one, which sums up a major part of who he portrayed himself as. (None of these are direct quotations, but rather loose summaries, which probably mean they carry more of my biases than they should. Apologies.)

• He said that his end is not to show you his way but to let you struggle with yours. Therefore he often makes comments that he may not even hold to himself, but simply serve as a way to make you struggle with what he is saying.
• He also said that we have a tendency to manage everyone else and try to control things rather than move alongside with what is happening in the light of how God is working.
  
• How am I going to be the steward of God's image in my life and in the lives of others?
  

He stated some things that, on the surface seemed contradictory to my being, but rather than post them here (and thus misrepresent a man that I have only spent a number of hours with), I choose to wrestle with them and would encourage any others who may be posting on the Convention to do the same. We can surely give our thoughts, but we must do so with humility in light of the nature of interaction we have had with the presenters. We may try to represent or even quote what has been said, but that will most likely carry with it too many of our own biases. I am going to try and walk nimbly around this as I know it is a danger of the blogosphere, especially when we rarely experience the full context of what was said.