What’s the Big Idea?

Scholars and students, ministers and laypeople, visionaries and pragmatists—almost three hundred participants from a wide array of occupations and locations came together for the Next Big Idea Conference, held February 9-11 on the Baylor campus.

The idea for the conference grew out of a conversation between Dr. Diana Garland, dean of the Baylor School of Social Work (pictured, second from right); her husband, Dr. David Garland, Baylor's interim president and dean of George W. Truett Theological Seminary (second from left); and Eric Swanson (right) and Rick Rusaw (left), co-authors of The Externally Focused Church.

Swanson, who is leadership community director with the Leadership Network, said he had come across some of Diana Garland's scholarly research about the impact of volunteerism on faith development. "I thought I had discovered gold!" he says. "This stuff needed to be talked about." So the foursome began to do just that—talk about how to move valuable research and good ideas outside the walls of the university, seminary, or church.

After they secured a $50,000 gift from the Christ Is Our Salvation Foundation, their idea began to become reality. The three-day conference was built around the theme of transforming ideas into actions and the conviction that the church must go outside its walls if it is to be an agent of real transformation in the world.

In the opening session of the conference, Swanson said, "When our passion intersects with God's purpose, it's the place where we feel truly alive. We usually see ministry as those things inside the church, but 80 percent of our people may find that intersection outside the church. That's what we need to free people up to do."

Other main session speakers included Rusaw, Swanson's co-author and the senior minister of LifeBridge Christian Church in Longmont, Colorado; Lynne Hybels, an advocate for global engagement at Willow Creek Community Church near Chicago, Illinois; Rick McKinley, founding pastor of Imago Dei Community in Portland, Oregon; Dr. Michael Stroope, associate professor of Christian missions at Truett Seminary; and Kay Warren, a global AIDS activist, speaker, and author who began Saddleback Church in California with her husband, Rick.

In addition to the five main sessions, the conference included breakout workshops, addressing topics like "The Church Has Left the Building" and "Me to We: The End of the Pastor-Centered Church." Other issues ranged from human trafficking to homelessness, climate change to confidentiality issues. 

Based on the chatter in the halls, participants agreed it was an excellent conference. One of those participants was Chris Ellis, a 2005 Truett Seminary graduate who serves as missions pastor at Second Baptist Church in Little Rock, Arkansas. His church was already involved in creating a nonprofit partnership with AIDS orphans in South Africa, and Ellis said, "It's always refreshing to realize the church is the one entity that is cross-cultural. We can utilize that to allow varied expressions of faith and church to challenge us here in the U.S. to learn from the majority of the world."

Another participant, Meredith Story Williams, MDiv/MSW '07, serves a church in Dripping Springs and is the central southern regional organizer for Bread for the World. She found the conference challenging but practical, and she planned to send audios of some of the plenary sessions to people in her church, to generate interest in these new ideas.

The three days passed quickly, and the participants came, were challenged, and left for home. But two banners adorn the seminary chapel as a permanent reminder of the conference's vision. The one on the left simply reads, "Love the Lord Your God," and the one on the right, "Love Your Neighbor as Yourself."

As participants prepared to leave, they sang the conference theme once more, "Keep us from just singing. Move us into action. We must go." Then Dr. Jon Singletary, social work professor and director of Baylor's Center for Family and Community Ministries, pronounced the benediction, saying, "The next big idea is as old as God's message of love, as the prophet’s message of justice, as the gospel of Christ, yet as new and as fresh as the calling on our lives as we leave this place."

For more on the Big Idea Conference, read these Web Exclusives:

Why Should We Care: Kay Warren session

Humans for Sale or Rent: Kim Kotrla on human trafficking