Time for lament and repentance. As Kazusa Okaya and others have pointed out, plenary sessions included abrupt shifts from stories of pain to celebrations of God’s triumphant victory. In Gap Collaboration sessions as well, the poster-writing process led conversations directly from problems to solutions. I heard several delegates note the absence of two intermediate steps: lament and repentance. While there at least one plenary talk focused on repentance, some delegates hoped for praxis—times for corporate and individual repentance and corporate lament before so leaping into reminders of grace and victory.
On a related note, I listened to one group discussing how to respond to racial harassment experienced by a delegate. Their conversation pointed to the absence of the sort of reporting structures that most organizations of L4’s size might have for bias incidents, but which L4 apparently lacks.
From banking pedagogy to mutual equipping. “I’ve felt talked at a lot,” one delegate told me. Another observed that many L4 sessions seemed intended to inspire, but for a gathering of leaders already deeply committed to evangelism, inspiration might not be the most important objective.
The implicit pedagogical model of much of the conference was what Paolo Freirer calls the “banking model,” in which teachers are seen as keepers of information that they deposit into the depleted accounts of students’ minds. Liberatory pedagogy, in contrast, fosters spaces where any participant can mutually equip any other. At their best, the collaborative sessions achieved this sort of mutual equipping. But many plenary and issues sessions reverted to a banking pedagogy. Delegates tended to appreciate most the sessions where speakers focused on equipping and coaching others to equip each other.
Rest and solitude. By the last day of L4, when I asked people how God was shaping them, they often gave like “I don’t know. I need time to process.” For a gathering of jetlagged people, many with ongoing work responsibilities during their time away, the days shuttled away from their hotels grew long. Christian traditions of solitude and rest were notably lacking in the schedule.
The Spirit is moving. As I reviewed my notes, I recalled that whatever else happened in Incheon, the Spirit was working. My notebook is packed with stories people told of their encounters with the Spirit: a worship session outside the prayer room, a chance encounter on the shuttle bus, a new way of understanding the Lord. But these fleeting moments are far from all that the Spirit is doing. L4 is one week, but the movement is ongoing. God’s power manifests both in power and in weakness, wherever the people of the church respond to God’s grace.
