Wild Goose Festival: A Recap

I've never been to Greenbelt, the famed nearly-forty-year-old British festival of faith, justice and creativity. I've heard countless friends tell me how awesome it is, strongly suggesting I go, but I've never gone. So it's existed to date only in my imagination. But last week, after ten years of talking and planning and organizing, Greenbelt came to the United States in the form of the Wild Goose Festival. I went to that. Here are my reflections on the experience.

It was awesome.

I attended Wild Goose Festival in an official capacity, as a representative of my employer, InterVarsity Press. Several of our authors (many of whom I worked with as their editor) were presenting or otherwise attending; some of them were even part of the planning committee. We had a book release party for my friend Mark Scandrette to celebrate the release of Practicing the Way of Jesus, and we hosted a dinner attended by Mark and his son Isaiah, and about twenty-four other authors, author-spouses and otherwise friends of the Press. Beyond those two events, I was schmoozing, attempting to acquire book projects, indulging would-be writers as they talked about their book ideas, and generally enjoying myself.

I did enjoy myself, quite a bit, despite the oppressive heat and humidity. For starters, the authors whom I've worked with and who attended the festival are some of my favorite people in the world--in the world. They're geniuses, intellectually and morally, and they live lives worth emulating. I've recently been encouraged to not write about God and only write about music, but I find it difficult to do so when I meet people like these folks who love God and are so worth writing about. My apologies if that offends you.

Anyway, having as many businessy conversations as I did, I only hit a handful of planned presentations, all of which were awesome. The aforementioned Mark Scandrette was part of the opening and closing ceremonies, and he spoke a few times about his book, and he participated in a revival of a roadshow he did with friends Tony Jones and Doug Pagitt a few years ago, in which they each expressed their unique, emergent theological perspectives in the form of a 1911 big tent revival, complete with singalong music led by the Tom Waitesy Vince Anderson. That was all kinds of brilliant--a fun and semi-ironic entree into an ultimately profound and heartfelt celebration of the gospel. I didn't know they were going to do that, but I'm so glad they did.

My friend Sean Gladding and his wife, Rebecca, presented a chapter from their immersive Bible study The Story of God, the Story of Us, in which Rebecca played the narrator, Sean played a Hebrew priest in Babylonian exile, and Troy Bronsink played an angry psalmist. Troy's rendition of Psalm 137 ("By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept") was stunning, and the whole moment was a breathtaking experience of Scripture retold. If you have Sean's book, grab some friends and try reading it out loud to each other; it's the way Sean and Rebecca intended it, and it really, really works.

I also got to see living legends Tony Campolo and Richard Rohr. Rohr was particularly meaningful to me, given that he's talking about the lifespan and arc of spiritual formation, and since according to his model I'm roughly at the apex of the arc. Time for me to put away childish things and let myself go in grace, or something like that. It was the sort of thing you feel rather than recite. I got to listen to Rohr with Tamara Park, author of the delightful Sacred Conversations from Rome to Jerusalem, and Tabitha Pluedemann and Anthony Smith, all three of whom have been friends for a while now, all three of whom are particularly good listening partners when someone like Rohr is doing the talking.

Beyond the talks there was, of course, the music. I haven't listened to or even thought of Michelle Shocked for about twenty years, but there she was, teaching us songs like "Memories of East Texas" and the mantralike "Let It Go," reminding me how important her talkin' blues "Graffiti Limbo" was to my nascent sense of justice back in the day. She doesn't like being videotaped, for the record. Also on hand was David Wilcox, who wrote the beautiful "Missing You" made popular in the 1980s by John Waite. He has this crystal-clear voice and a smooth storyteller's style; if you like Jack Johnson you should probably thank David Wilcox. And then there was Jennifer Knapp, who went off the radar for a while and whom everyone at the festival was missing, and who came back in style. I heard her from a distance, since we were hosting a book release party during her set. I also heard Beth Nielson Chapman and the Psalters from a distance, both of which sounded haunting and powerful from far off for entirely different reasons. But the musical highlight for me was Over the Rhine, whom I might consider traveling to North Carolina to see all by themselves. So groovy, so artful, so jammin'. They're great songwriters and brilliant musicians, so every song just takes its time, just like the banter and storytelling between songs.

My favorite moments of natural comedy:

* Andy Marin, author of Love Is an Orientation, calling me desperately late at night to ask about hotel options, then rolling with jokes at his expense (e.g., "The Marin Witch Project") throughout the rest of the week.

* My friend and coworker Nick Liao observing that he saw about five "markers of white progressive culture" from the parking lot, among them a drum circle and a "COEXIST" bumper sticker.

* A five-foot snake that slithered up just as Sean and Rebecca were talking about God creating the man and the woman in the image of God. Sean's ad lib: "He also created snakes."

* The inordinate, nigh-on countless number of u-turns we made in our daily commute from Chapel Hill to the festival.

* The litany of menu items at the breakfast deli we visited daily that were out of stock, alternately because not enough or too many people ordered them.

* The "Waterfowl Impoundment Center" within spitting distance of the Wild Goose Festival. I still don't even know what such an impoundment center does.

I'm leaving lots unsaid. In short, it was great, and I'm eager for Wild Goose Festival 2012. You should come too; it'll be good for your soul.

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From left: Peter Rollins, Jay Bakker, Gareth Higgins, Tony Jones

Every time I saw event organizer Gareth Higgins at Wild Goose, I begged him to book Billy Bragg for WGF12. (He's at this year's Greenbelt, along with the legendary Mavis Staples.) I'm willing to be so brazen with him on your behalf as well, so here's your chance. What speakers and singers and other artists should be on the bill for next year's Wild Goose?

Dangerbooks: The Story of God, the Story of Us

I got two problems. Problem a: I keep running out of ideas to post. Problem 2: I got books to promote.

I work for a publisher, and I edit a lot of people who over the course of the publishing process become friends. Selling your own book can be tough; you need all the help you can get. So I have these friends in need, and I have this blog in need, and I think they can help each other.

So, without further ado, the first in an occasional series of reviews of books that make my work worthwhile. I call them dangerbooks.

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Today's dangerbook is The Story of God, the Story of Us, by Sean Gladding. Sean is British, but he's spent most of his adulthood in either Lexington, Kentucky, or Houston, Texas. He's back in Lexington these days with his wife, Rebecca, and two kids. Sean and Rebecca serve in pastoral roles for Communality, a new monastic community active in urban agriculture and other community development efforts. Before this most recent stint at Communality, Sean was copastoring Mercy Street in Houston, a church made up largely of people in the recovery movement. I met Sean five years ago at a retreat in New Mexico, where he told me about a teaching tool he and Rebecca had developed to help people understand the "grand narrative" of Scripture. Sounded wicked awesome to me.

I developed a bit of a man-crush on Sean during that retreat, and I made it something of a personal mission to get that teaching tool into book form. Five years later, it's now in print. It still sounds like Sean, but it covers the whole terrain of the Bible--and not only that, it manages to transport the reader into the story itself. Eight chapters are set around a common fire lighting and warming an exilic Jewish community in Babylon. The Jews gather in the evening to sing songs of defiance and recall the glory days of the kingdom of Israel, but invariably their praise and memory gives way to bitterness: How did we, the people of God, wind up here--slaves again, exiled from the land of God's promise?

The community turns to a wise elder, one who recalls the days of temple worship in Jerusalem. This elder is himself chastened by his time in exile, and he embraces this call to confront and encourage his people: they have arrived in this place for a reason, but they have reason to hope. He retells the story of God--which, he reminds them (and us), is our story as well. from creation, where we are reminded that God is creative and good, to conceit, where we are reminded that we all too easily lose sight of God's goodness and banish ourselves from God's presence.

We leave the Old Testament with hope that God will once again deliver his people. After a brief interlude, when a student of the elder--now fully grown--tells of her return to the land of promise and her people's wait for a fuller deliverance, we are introduced to a new scene, this one an ekklesia in a major city. A visiting merchant learns what motivates such joy in his host and the people gathered in her home: the promised one of God who taught the Law, performed miracles, died and was resurrected. Now, the host tells her guest, everything is different. We see Jesus as the fulfillment of the messianic promise and his story as a continuation of the story that begins in Genesis. That merchant provides the link to the final chapter--he is now the leader of another ekklesia, this one meeting secretly to avoid persecution. He tells the end of the story, with the Roman empire (and all empires) subverted by the kingdom of God, the Roman tyrant (and all tyrants) supplanted by the Prince of Peace.

I loved this book; it's remarkably creative, pastorally sensitive, prophetically provocative. It rewards private reading but is intended to be read out loud in community. You can get the book at ivpress.com or at fine booksellers wherever.

Just for kicks, Sean teamed up with the folks at The Work of the People to supplement his book with a six-session video series. The videos run eight minutes each and cover six core themes in the Scriptures. Here he's not telling stories; here he's raising questions and suggesting ways of living more in sync with the love of God. The videos sell for $15 each, but you can get all six, along with a discussion guide, for $30. Trust me, they'll provoke plenty of discussion and reward regular viewing--I've found myself moved every time I've watched "Reconciliation," to say nothing of everything else.

This was a great book to edit; it was also an adventure, since we rushed the book so it could be made available at a conference called, fittingly, "Story." That meant multiple conversations every week with Sean over the course of several months. I miss those regular conversations, honestly. So I'm hoping a ton of people will buy the book so we can acquire another one from him. Do Sean and me--and yourself--a favor, and pick up a copy of The Story of God, the Story of Us. Then pick up another one and give it to someone you enjoy spending time with. You'll be doing them a favor too.

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That's it for episode one of "Dangerbooks." Hope you enjoyed it. Look for the next installment whenever I run out of other material to report.

Early Endorsements

Very nice comments from two very cool people about the forthcoming book, Deliver Us from Me-Ville. Don Everts, who's written four-soon-to-be-nine books and is the unofficial posterboy for Likewise books, read the draft and had this to say:

Selfishness has always been subtle and insidious. But Dave Zimmerman, with his keen eye on our culture, on scripture, and even (humorously) on himself, brings selfishness more into the light of day. Deliver Us From Me-Ville, with its wit and brutal honesty, helps me see selfishness as the ugly thing that it is and provides practical steps I can take away from its subtle, far-reaching clutches.
--Don Everts, author of Jesus with Dirty Feet, The Smell of Sin and God in the Flesh

Sean Gladding, copastor of Mercy Street in Houston, Texas, and one of the most delightful people I've ever met, wrote the following endorsement:

With his characteristic wit, Dave Zimmerman knocks on the front door of our comfortable home in Me-Ville. Before we know it he’s sitting in our living room, drinking coffee with us and gently – but insistently – inviting us to consider a move to a new home in the City of God.
--Sean Gladding, Co-pastor of Mercy Street, Houston, TX

They both, of course, had very incisive, insightful things to say about how the content can be improved, but these endorsement are nice pieces of eye candy until the book releases next June. So chew on that for a while, why don't you?

I am, by the way, working on discussion resources for the book, and presentations and retreats based on the book, so if you're looking for special content for some venue next year, let me know. I'd love to come meet your community.