Bock

Jesus in Prime Time Oct 30

We had our Jesus conference yesterday with about 300 people present. It was quite a time with discussions of the issues being handled in NT studies related to the contemporary discussion about Jesus.

We had our Jesus conference yesterday with about 300 people present. It was quite a time with discussions of the issues being handled in NT studies related to the contemporary discussion about Jesus. Ben Witherington, Dan Wallace and I discussed the impact on popular discussion of Jesus of issues like the extra-biblical gospels, the way in which units of the New Testament are often pitted against one another, the idea of alternative Christianities and how the canon emerged. In addition we had experts from the media treat how the media sees "its calling," how Jesus is handled, and the strengths and weaknesses of the various medium (newspapers, radio, TV-Cable, Internet). Also covered was how the Net is changing the way information comes to the public. Finally some practioners examined how all these cotent and media factors should impact how the church engages in such discussions.

There were four separate panel discussions of 75 minutes each. Each session closed with a series of questions from the floor. If you could not attend or are interested in this content, the Center for Christian Leadership will be selling DVDs of the conference to be made available fairly soon. Contact them for information. Their site can be found at www.dts.edu.

It was a very profitable time with many lively discussions.