Speakers & Workshops
Plenary Speakers:
Dave Schmelzer
Dave is the author of Not the Religious Type: Confessions of a Turncoat Atheist. He developed the popular Seek Course for people who are exploring faith. Along with Charles Park, he also convened the Blue Ocean conversation.
Dave has a background both in theology (Fuller Seminary, '87) and the arts (Stanford University, '84, and a decade as a working playwright). Dave pastors the Vineyard Christian Fellowship--Greater Boston (www.bostonvineyard.org), keeps his hand in some fiction writing, and lives just outside Boston with his wife, Grace and their five children.
Tanya Luhrmann
Tanya joined the department of Cultural and Social Anthropology in Spring of 2007. Her interests include the social construction of psychological experience, particularly in the domain of what some would call the “non-rational”. Her current work looks at the way American evangelicals learn to experience God and at psychosis in psychiatric clients. These are very different projects, but both concern the way that social learning may affect even someone’s sensory experience. One of her research goals is to distinguish the different patterns of sensory experiences most commonly identified as divinely inspired and those most commonly identified as psychiatric symptoms, and to understand those patterns in historical and social context.
Charles Park
Charles emigrated to the U.S. from Korea at age 14. He later went on Stanford where he received degrees in Computer Science & Economics. He continued on to M.I.T. where he earned a Ph.D. in Economics. After striving hard to achieve the American Dream, he found getting tangled up with the story of God made life much more interesting and unpredictable! He's been involved in full time ministry for over 10 years, including helping plant the Vineyard Christian Fellowship of Greater Boston. He and his wife Caroline moved to Manhattan in June of 2004 to start the River. They live in Battery Park City with their three children, Clara, Ariel and Caleb.
Caroline Park
Caroline was born in St. Luke Hospital on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. She later moved to Korea where she went on to study math and business at Pohang University. She then returned to New York to get an MBA at Columbia Business School. She was reluctant to marry a pastor, much less become one! Yet she has found that pursuing God has brought more life in exciting ways. Her leadership at The River includes children, family and leadership development. She is the proud mother of 3 beautiful kids: Clara, Ariel and Caleb.
Christopher Greco
Christopher Greco and his wife, Dorothy, have lived in the Boston area for 30 years, having met as students at Boston University shortly after each became a follower of Jesus. For the past 15 years, they have been leading prayer-based discipleship programs for men and women seeking healing in areas of relational and sexual brokenness. They especially enjoy the challenges and pleasures of serving as a couple, and with a team, as in-process healers.
Christopher arrived at the Vineyard in 1998, as the church’s founding worship and arts pastor, after directing theatre and music in college, high and middle school settings. Christopher has been collaborating with Canadian worship leader, Brian Doerksen, on a new musical based on the parable of the lost son. Prodigal God was released in October 2010 (www.prodigal-god.com), and is being produced for podcast, film and stage in the coming years.
Panel Discussionalists:
Blue Ocean Breakout Discussion Groups
Tuesday, Aug 2 | 11:00am -- 1:00pm | 2:30pm -- 4:30pm |
Senior Pastor's Gathering
How can a Blue Ocean Faith strategy engage your church and community? What’s different from what we are doing today? How can we engage with an ever-increasing secular society? How and what can we offer a person that is disconnected from church a personalized Biblical “faith pathway” to make Jesus the “centerpoint” of their lives? How can we mobilize the whole church to engage in their neighborhoods and communities?
Running a Leap of Faith
How can we mobilize the whole church to engage in their neighborhoods and communities? How can we establish and deepen a church’s interest and love for the faith questioners and confused? What sorts of “faith conversations” stimulate a healthy faith discovery process?
Seek: How to Run Your Own
How you can use “Seek” to engage your community in faith conversations?
Centered-Set Kid's Ministry
How to frame and shape a children’s ministry using a centered set strategy to make Jesus the “centerpoint” of their lives?
Centered-set Faith on the College Campus
How can we lead a centered-set faith strategy on college campus so that our next generation has a pathway for making Jesus the centerpoint of their lives?
"Meaning in a Pub" & "The Faith Experiment"
How can we help our congregations bring meaning and faith into a 24/7 lifestyle—even in the pubs!
Having Faith Conversations
How can we help our churches begin to have simple, relevant and life changing faith conversations with their neighbors and friends? How can we abolish the “code word an phrases” in a church that people don’t understand? How can we establish and deepen a church’s interest and love for the faith questioners and confused?
Surprising Benefits from "Praying for your 6;
What sort of benefits and revelations can you expect from having a BOF come into your church’s culture?