Beyond Apathy

“Our job is not to toughen our children up to face a cruel and heartless world. Our job is to raise children who will make the world a little less cruel and heartless.” —L. R. Knost

I’m back home from the Adventist Today panel in Loma Linda, CA, that I spoke at this weekend. It was a fantastic event, and I’m proud and grateful to have been involved. When AToday posts the evening’s recording, I’ll share it with you; in the next week or so I’ll also record the full version of my presentation and make it available here as well.

Before I comment extensively, I want to take a few days to reflect on what I saw and heard. But I’m comfortable saying now that I hope to see other panels that, like this weekend’s, amplify parts of the Adventist family that only appear in official media in caricature or don’t appear at all.

Many thanks to the Adventist Today Foundation and staff for holding space for Freddy Lee, Courtney Ray, Syd Shook, Edgar Momplaisir, Ryan Bell, and me to share parts of our spiritual journeys with the LLU community and discuss our visions of the future of our church.

My biggest hope? For us to move beyond pessimism, beyond apathy, beyond delegating our power to act and impact to others; for us to accept instead co-responsibility for what happens to our community and our part in making it happen. If attendees on Saturday missed everything else I said, I hope this wish sunk in.

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HT to Daneen Akers for sharing the photo-quote at the top of this post. So good.