Nashville L'Abri Conference
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Nashville L'Abri Conference
Phillip Johnston’s L’Abri journey began in 2008 when he walked through the big red door at Southborough L’Abri and quickly realized his abundant cynicism was a vice, not a virtue. Though a Christian from an early age, this dawning awareness opened his heart to the beauty of Christ and left him a changed person.

In the ensuing years, Phillip spent time as a helper at Southborough and at English L’Abri before enrolling at Covenant Theological Seminary in 2012. After completing a Master of Divinity in 2015, Phillip took up a post as a worker at English L’Abri for over two years. While in England, he met a Nashvillian named Christa and returned to the USA to marry her in 2018. He now lives and works in East Nashville.

Phillip is an avid student of the Bible and culture, and finds great joy in helping people navigate the many barriers to Christian belief that proliferate in our distracting, secular world. He geeks out on slow movies, Bach cantatas, liturgical theology, and all things food. He’s also the curator of Three Things, a newsletter digest of three resources to help readers better engage with God, neighbor, and culture.

Dick Keyes is the former director of Southborough L’Abri Fellowship, where he has worked with his wife and family since 1979. He holds a B.A. in History from Harvard University and an M.Div. from Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia.

Dick has also worked for L’Abri Fellowship in Switzerland and in England. He served as a pastor in the International Presbyterian Church in London for eight years. He has been an adjunct professor at Gordon Conwell Seminary and Westminster Theological Seminary.

Dick is the author of Beyond Identity and many other titles and is currently writing a book on the significance of Jesus’ questions. He has lectured widely in the U.S. and also in Europe and Korea.

Dick and his wife, Mardi, are minority members of an African American Church, which has enriched their lives and experience of worship enormously. Dick is a member of the Ministerial Team.

A1) Scrolling Alone – Staying Human in a Smartphone Culture (Joshua Chestnut)

No other gadget in human history can compete with the smartphone in your pocket in its ability to consolidate so much of your life into one single piece of technology. Yet this convenient consolidation has come for many with the unexpected cost of perpetuating social isolation. In this workshop we will look at the isolating tendencies of digital culture as well as the embodied practices of solitude, intergenerational friendships and walking as means to live well and wisely with our phones.

A2) Moving Out and Moving On – Why It’s Important to Run Away from Home (Mary Frances Giles)

In generations past, most young people could not wait to move away from home and embrace their independence. However, recent years have seen more and more twenty-somethings returning to their parents’ home after college instead of establishing their own households and independent lives. This workshop will examine some of the sociological factors behind this trend, as well as what the Bible may have to tell us about what it means to flourish in this important season of life.

A3) Becoming Less Fragile: Self-control as Inner Dominion (Sarah Chestnut)

If a biblical understanding of human dominion involves exercising care and responsibility for God’s creation, how might we learn to exercise dominion over our often chaotic inner worlds – the thoughts and feelings that fuel depression and anxiety? How might growing in self-control make us more emotionally resilient?

A4) How to be a Better Lover: Attention in a Distracted World (Phillip Johnston)

Our cultural moment provides us with more opportunities to communicate, network, search, and share than ever before. We are more connected than ever, but we are also more distracted. How is our capacity to love God and neighbor shaped in the world of beeps, notifications, feed refreshes, Peak TV and targeted advertising?

A5) Christ and Culture– Revisited (Jock McGregor)

Evangelicals have never been more divided or confused about our place in the world. Should we engage the culture on its terms or pull out and hunker down? Should we embrace ‘minority status’ or ‘take back’ the culture? H.R. Niebuhr’s classic formulations of Christ and Culture still have much to offer, but it is Scripture that best orients us for this moment.

B1) Living with Loss (Nickaela Fiore-Keyes)

This workshop will explore the topic of living with grief while parenting young children and balancing work and home life.

B2) The Lure of Mindfulness (Robb Ludwick)

Courses in mindfulness as an answer to our stressful and fragmented existence have become popular and common. Exercises in focus and appreciation of the moment are valuable practices. A proper view of reality, however, is necessary for it to be truly fruitful.

B3) There is a Crack in Everything: Learning from the Broken Hallelujah of Leonard Cohen (Dave Friedrich)

Come and listen to Leonard Cohen sing about what “everybody knows,” but what we find hard to accept and express in life and faith.

B4) Living with Contradictory Expectations: A Meditation on “Let it Go” and Other Inspirational Breakup Songs (Ben Keyes)

Daniel Boorstin wrote of Americans in 1961: “Never before has a people expected so much more than the world could offer.” This workshop will examine the song “Let it Go” from the Disney movie “Frozen” (2013) as a more recent example of extravagant and contradictory expectations. What did this movie encourage young people to expect of life and can we offer a helpful response?

B5) Bodies with Meaning: Christianity’s Liberating Sex Ethic

(Phillip Johnston)

The historic Christian understanding of sex – that the one proper place for sexual expression is in the covenanted marriage of one man and one woman – is often viewed in our day as an absurd vestige of outdated religion that places unrealistic limitations on human freedom. We describe such a view as traditional, but in the first-century world where Christianity was born, this ethic was both revolutionary and liberating. Could it ever be seen this way again?

Christopher Williams

Hailing from Nashville, but nothing like your typical Nashville songwriter, Christopher Williams is a songwriter, storyteller, and entertainer – offering songs that are honest and confessional, yet never overbearing; and performances that engage audiences with an appealing mix of intense passion and humor. Christopher’s eleventh album GATHER is available on iTunes at http://apple.co/2vAtBbo

Frankie Barranco is a Nashville native singer-songwriter and worship leader. With a musical background heavily influenced by the melodies of The Beatles and the lyrics of hymn writers, her sound is thoughtful and unique. Currently on staff as a worship director in Nashville, Frankie is passionate about writing songs for the local church. “I desire to write songs of hope, but I also feel a great responsibility to give words in song to those who are walking through great pain and suffering. The church is for the broken, and I want that to be reflected in the songs we sing. frankiebarranco.com

Drew Miller loves finding new ways of asking old questions. Inescapably spiritual, his music puts into practice St. Augustine’s insight that ‘to sing is to pray twice.’ As editor of the Rabbit Room, Drew is passionate about restoring community through the simple act of singing. His upcoming project explores the themes of desolation and consolation as experienced in today’s world, challenging listeners to ‘make peace, make dinner, make room.’

Becca Jordan grew up in Huntsville, AL and has been in Nashville for over 4 years. Becca works full time in a retirement community and loves serving her “oldies”. She leads worship at her church and enjoys writing and traveling as she can. She released a new single in April and is looking forward to recording another EP this fall. www.beccajordanmusic.com

C1) What Does the Bible Have to Tell us About Sexual Harassment and #MeToo?

(Mary Frances Giles)

Over the course of the past two years, the #MeToo movement has catapulted sexual harassment and assault, primarily against women, to the forefront of our cultural awareness. There appears to be a shift occurring in our collective American consciousness. Acts of sexual harassment and assault that have been historically overlooked are now being publicly discussed and confronted. This workshop will explore the issues and questions brought forth by this cultural moment from both theological and sociological perspectives.

C2) Grief and Anger: Appropriate Responses at the Tomb of Lazarus, in Dylan Thomas’ Poem “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night”, and in Our Own Lives (Anna Friedrich)

It is easier for some of us to make room for sadness than for anger, especially in the wake of tragedy, or even in the plain old story of getting older. Dylan Thomas’s famous poem of imperatives for his dying father set alongside the reaction of Jesus at his friend’s tomb, can together spark helpful reflections on how grief and anger are often just the right responses to the brokenness we encounter in our world.

C3) America’s Polarized Politics: Can Christians have a Redemptive Role? (Dick Keyes)

We live in a society which has created a level of political polarization almost to paralysis. The word “Evangelical” has come to signify a voting block more than a theological or spiritual designation for many people. What can thoughtful Christian people say and do to help in healing this disunity?

C4) The Ark of Speech (Dave Friedrich)

“How far does our hospitality go? How far can it go? What can we welcome and gather in, and how? Hospitality is, first and foremost, the hospitality that we give each other, exchanging words and silences, glances and voices. And yet…” These are the opening words of The Ark of Speech, by poet and theologian Jean-Louis Chretien, who is also one of France’s leading philosophers. In this workshop we will explore how to move beyond mere digital connection that leaves us alone together, and into a shelter for conversation, a safe place where we are heard, challenged and changed.

C5) What if You Want to Come to L’Abri? (Nickaela Fiore-Keyes, Sarah Chestnut and Robb Ludwick)

This will be a workshop with a short description of what it would be like to come to a branch of L’Abri as a student, but most of the time will be saved for questions that you might have about it. Nickaela will be joined by other L’Abri workers.

D1) Cultivating a Hopeful Imagination in a Pornified Culture (Joshua Chestnut)

In this workshop we will consider some of the fragmenting and dehumanizing consequences of pornography with the help of recent neurological and sociological research on the unseen costs of habitually viewing porn. We will then explore the importance of developing the virtues of patience, imagination and hope for ourselves and friends who are struggling to stay human in our pornified culture.

D2) Pursuing Freedom in a Culture of Choice (Phillip Johnston)

An inescapable aspect of life today is a constant sense of FOMO (fear of missing out). We are awash in options, a condition that has led to increased anxiety rather than enduring peace. At the root of this anxiety is a commonplace misunderstanding of freedom. What if true freedom is more than simply the ability to choose what we want?

D3) T.S. Eliot’s Idea of a Christian Society (Jock McGregor)

In our Post-Christian society, as Evangelicals struggle to find their place, a growing number of ‘options’ are being considered – from “Benedict’ to ‘Wilberforce” and everything in between. One voice from the past may, somewhat surprisingly, offer perspective – the famous twentieth-20th Century British poet, T.S. Eliot.

D4) Early Peacemaking: Can Conflict be Outmaneuvered Before it Starts? (Dick Keyes)

Much has been well-said and well-written about conflict resolution. But it is, by definition, reactive to conflicts already burning. Christian peacemaking is more proactive, with strategies which can help to avoid conflict altogether.

D5) Reflecting on the Incarnation with the Help of Poets: Jesus’ Humanity and Ours

(Sarah Chestnut)

The incarnation is central both to the revealing of God to the world and the redemption and restoration of true humanness. How might poems by George Herbert, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Denise Levertov and Christian Wiman give us imagination and hope for the restoration of our broken humanity?