Emergent Convention: The Renaissance Nashville Hotel
May 23, 2004
Had an interesting conversation with a few people about how we’re talking about peace, justice and mercy and we’re staying in one of the nicest hotels in Nashville at roughly $130/night – while you could have gotten a room at the Sheraton (a few blocks away) for only $50-something/night. Interesting. Let me just say that the Renaissance Hotel showers absolutely SUCK! The water kept fluctuating between scalding hot and freezing cold Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday mornings. What about Friday & Saturday you might ask? Absolutely freezing cold. No hot water. Absolutely ridiculous – and they still want to charge me $9.95/day for internet. Pathetic.
Tags: Blogging, Emergent, Emergent-Convention, emerging-church
Posted in Emergent
Adam Walker Cleaveland: 
May 23rd, 2004 at 5:51 pm
amen, brother!!! i stayed at a friend’s apartment. maybe we can try to encourage people to find alternatives like that… or even having an outdoor campout sort of event a’la cornerstone or one day or something.
May 23rd, 2004 at 10:12 pm
we did something like that a few years ago at cedar ridge, it was called the emergent summer institute. it was kind of disorganized (because i was in charge of it) but we had everyone stay at a host’s house, except those who wanted a hotel. we went out of our way to make it cheap… brian wanted everyone to camp, but he was the only one who wanted that i think. but anyway it was structured like what you are saying… lots o intentional time for hanging out, and some field trips, and some regular speaking, and then diff forms of worship.
i had just assumed the bigger conferences would be like that… it is very different! too bad we never did that summer institute again… it was really fun. it was only like 100 people though, so it was different.
May 24th, 2004 at 12:23 am
april, i thought i heard someone mentioning that they might be doing the summer institute again…that *would* be sweet.
May 24th, 2004 at 6:16 pm
april is way too modest about the summer institute.
i went, and it impacted my life tremendously. not only because of the content (though that was part of it), but because of the space it left for other interactions.
i read more poetry and think differently about issues surround the church and homosexuality because of one person. i am more expressive as an artist because of conversations with another person. i’m more connected to the quaker tradition because of book recommendations of another person, etc. etc. etc.
the small scale kept me present and not overwhelmed as you tend to get in the bigger venues. it wasn’t perfect, but it was beautiful.