What If Communities Centered Their Energy on Christ?

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On Thursday, I attended Ignite Raleigh at the Lincoln Theatre. I was excited about the event and even announced I’d be live blogging throughout the evening. I don’t know if you noticed but my updates stopped coming about an hour or so into it and the blog post disappeared from my site. Allow me to explain.

I wasn’t sure what to expect in all honesty. According to Ignite’s website…

Ignite events were originally conceived as technology variety shows, but they have grown into much more than that. Ignite is about ideas. Ideas can change the world. And it takes less than five minutes to spread one.

Each speaker was given five minutes and a slideshow to share their ideas. It appears Ignite was meant to be something similar to TEDTalks. I mean no disrespect to the Ignite organizers or any of the speakers, but it fell a little short of my expectations.

The venue was dark and crowded. The first stop upon entering the theatre was a table to get an over-the-age-of-twenty-one wristband. The lobby was consumed by a bar. My first impression was reminiscent of the bar-hopping, concert-going days of my youth. My anticipation was something more on par with a smaller scale of this…

TEDTalks

Even so, I cannot blame the organizers because Lincoln Theatre may have very well been the best venue option.

Inside Lincoln Theatre

The event was a little late getting started. There were minor technical difficulties with the slideshow presentations. Some of the speakers were obviously not professional speakers. The ideas presented were a bit less revolutionary than I had hoped. Last my not least, the chatter among the crowd was so overwhelming at times it was difficult to listen. It wasn’t hard to hear, but it was hard to focus.

With all of that said, I do believe the concept of Ignite is a noble one. I love the idea of bringing together a local community for the purpose of sharing and cooperatively working to inspire advantageous goals. Unfortunately, it seemed the event lacked my kind of enthusiasm and desire for such a mission. Rather, it came across to me that most of the people were there to socialize and tweet. It was a night out, if you will, which allowed people an excuse to get out of the house while participating in something with lofty goals of a better future. It was a night of fun you could feel good about.

As I sat quietly in the balcony, I studied the crowd as well as the #IgniteRaleigh tweets coming through on my phone. Right or wrong, I observed two trends among the group. First, they wanted to socialize with others in their community. Second, they wanted to be a part of something that might make a difference in this decaying world we live in.

There was a lot of energy in Lincoln Theatre on Thursday. In addition to my observations of Ignite Raleigh, I’ve also been thinking about my summary of the media bias podcast I recorded and published the same day. When it comes to media bias, my conclusion is that, despite all our complaints, we actually want there to be bias in media. We love the controversy and division in the same way we love reality TV shows and sports. We like to be energetic and passionate about things. We also enjoy the formation of tribes that are pitted against others.

I cannot help but think about what might happen if we could take all of that energy and channel it so that it centered around Christ. I know that’s essentially what church is all about but I don’t just mean for the purpose of worship. What if we could bring communities together to discuss anything–social media, business, science, etc.–and do so with a common bond in Christ? What if we could forget about trendiness, alcohol, derision, and divisiveness as we get to know one another while sharing theologically-centered ideas that really could change the world and for the better?

I did not write this to give Ignite Raleigh a bad review. It just wasn’t my cup of tea in the end. The louder the folks at the bar got and the more cursing I heard by the speakers and crowd alike, the less interested I became. In all reality though, I was inspired by the concept. I just wonder what it might be like if taken in a slightly different direction. Maybe a better way to put it would be to say, I wonder what it might be like if laid upon a more firm foundation.

I suppose if I had been given an opportunity to speak at the event, I might have said some of these very things.
February 18th, 2012 | Jeremy Sarber | 1 Comment

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Jeremy Sarber

I'm the pastor of one of the most blessed churches in all the world. I'm married to the most wonderful woman to walk the face of the earth. I'm host of possibly the most unconventional podcast on the Internet. I am thankful because I deserve none of it. Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | LinkedIn | Email