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VANCOUVER WORLDVIEW CONFERENCE
Vancouver Worldview Conference
Rekindling Christian Imagination

with   
David Smith   

Saturday, January 24, 2009

Trinity Western University
7600 Glover Road, Langley, BC
Northwest Building Auditorium

            

Also coming to
· Vancouver: Jan. 24
· Edmonton: Mar. 21
· Toronto: Sept. 26
· Ottawa: Oct. 3
· Grand Rapids: Nov. 7

 
You are welcome to download and print
this brochure for distribution. (PDF, 345KB)
 

Rekindling Christian Imagination
We tend to associate imagination with fantasy, and reality with facts, but the ways in which we picture the world to ourselves have a great deal to do with how we live in it. The Scriptures bid to shape our imaginations, weaning us away from reductive ways of seeing and towards a graced vision of the world.

David I. Smith is the Director of the Kuyers Institute for Christian Teaching and Learning at Calvin College as well as Associate Professor, Department of Germanic and Asian Languages at Calvin College. He completed his MPhil at the Institute for Christian Studies and PhD at the University of London. David's interest lies in foreign language pedagogy, particularly in relation to moral and spiritual development as well as in Christian philosophy of education. David is a sought after speaker by Christian educators.

Co-Sponsors

Institute for Christian Studies
     Kuyers Institute for Christian Teaching
and Learning at Calvin College
 
Graduate Teacher Education Program

Schedule

9:00 – 9:30 Registration
9:30 – 10:00 Opening, welcome, music, ICS update
10:00 – 11:00 The Garden of Delight, Keynote and First Respondent
11:00 – 11:15 Break
11:15 – 12:15 Second Respondent and Audience
12:15 – 1:15 Lunch
1:15 – 2:15 Learning from the Stranger, Keynote and First Respondent
2:15 – 2:30 Break
2:30 – 3:30 Second Respondent and Audience
3:30 – 3:45 Final Reflection, David Smith
 

Morning

KEYNOTE: The Garden of Delight
The world invites us to imagine ourselves as consumers satisfying needs, as competitors in a battle for security, as computers processing information. What if instead we followed a long tradition of biblical reflection that invites us to think of ourselves as called to be pleasure gardens, gardens of delight? What if we heard in present-day talk of Kindergartens a faint echo of an older image of school classrooms as gardens of delight? What if we began to wonder, in imitation of the biblical prophets, in what ways our society is a wilderness or a garden of delight? This first lecture will explore through this lens how Christian thinkers have imagined the threads linking learning to our life together.

FIRST RESPONDENT
Vaden House taught philosophy at The King's University College, Concordia College, the Vancouver School of Theology, and the Institute for Christian Studies. He is the author of Without God or His Doubles: Realism, Relativism, and Rorty (E.J.Brill, 1994) as well as a number of journal articles and book chapters. Besides his interests in philosophy of science and technology he is an accomplished poet and an avid reader of historical Jesus research, contemporary theology, and political theory. He currently works in private industry as an Information Technology consultant. He holds a Ph.D. from the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam.

SECOND RESPONDENT
Jeff Adams is a full-time worker at Canadian L'Abri on Bowen Island. He enjoys lecturing about Christian imagination, especially as expressed through spiritual formation, fiction and the history of Christianity. Jeff taught History and Bible at Eugene Bible College in Eugene, Oregon for a year. He then spent four years in real estate development and project management before going to L'Abri, with his wife Carrie in January of 2008. He holds a masters degree in Church History from Regent College, Vancouver.

Afternoon

KEYNOTE: Learning from the Stranger
The world invites us to imagine foreigners as competitors for resources, as exotic objects of fascination, or as dark threats to our wellbeing. Scripture calls instead for a radical love of strangers, a practice of hospitality that reaches out to embrace the outsider. This call to hospitality can help us to see how learning from other cultures can connect with nurturing a Christian identity. It also challenges a variety of basic ways in which we tend to imagine our place in the world. This second lecture will explore how learning from the stranger can be a Christian practice, and what it means for how we teach our children.

FIRST RESPONDENT
Bill Chu, a lay leader in Vancouver with connections throughout the local Chinese community has a 20 year history of growing relations with aboriginals in British Columbia. Rooted in the biblical Jubilee vision, he founded "Canadians for Reconciliation". Among other involvements, he uses the common history of inequalities and colonialism experienced by both communities to draw them together and to help western Christianity explore its own bondage. Their common journey has grown through shared stories, parades, historic banquets and bus visits. During BC150, the sharing of hitherto unknown Chinese archeological sites in the Fraser Canyon by aboriginal elders led Bill to embark on a major effort to preserve the sites and to recover missing pages of BC history.

SECOND RESPONDENT
Brent Hendricks, a 2006 graduate of Whitworth University, lives in Spokane, WA with his wife Amy. He has spent the past two years helping refugees from all over the world resettle and integrate in Spokane. He hopes to further build up his non-profit, "Global Neighborhood", and go on to study international development and aid.

Registration

Please register by the 20th of January to ensure lunch availability.

If you have any questions please email
or telephone Eleanor McComb at 778-298-7770.

 
Online Registration Amount Number
(8 max.)
Adult, 1 seat $40.00  
Student (thanks to our sponsors) $15.00  
Adult, 5 seats $200.00  
Eg. To pay for 24 adults select four 5-seat and four 1-seat adult registrations.

Click here for a printable mail-in registration form.

For a printable mail-in registration form go to
  http://www.icscanada.edu/events/20090124wc/print-form.html

Directions

Transit: http://www.translink.bc.ca or call 604-953-3333

Road: From Hwy 1, take the Langley/Ft. Langley exit 66 at 232 St/Hwy 10. Turn south on 232 St. (which becomes Hwy 10) and take it to Glover Road. Turn right on Glover Road at the lights. Follow Glover Road over the railway tracks; TWU is on the right.

Campus Map: http://www.twu.ca/campus/map.html

Sponsors

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               
      

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