Can We Skip the Middleman?

One of the more-intriguing themes at the recent Blue Ocean Summit was the thought that the sort of spirituality we talk about here might, in some ways, boil down to "Can we just skip the middleman?" 

So Tanya Luhrmann, a Stanford anthropologist, talked about her astounding multi-year study of people who talk to God in hopes that God will talk back to them.  (I asked her before her talk: has anyone in human history done an anthropological study like this one, of the actual dynamics of what happens when people try to "relate" to God?  She hemmed and hawed for a moment and then said, "No.")  But after hearing her utterly provocative talk on what she learned, one implication we talked about was: is there a case to be made that we just bring this relational dynamic with God to anyone we meet who might like it?  Or do we need to take an intermediate step where we briefly change terms?  Do we need to tell our non-churchgoing friends, "Wow, your life can change if you learn to interact with this invisible but seemingly-very-real God and I'd love to teach you how to do it.  But first I'd like to offer you historical proofs that Jesus is the Son of God and, who are we kidding?, God himself.  And then I'd like you to sign off on that and pray a prayer to that effect.  And then we can get down to business about this change-your-life-by-interacting-with-God stuff."  Maybe, we hazarded, we can just jump to that last part and see what happens?

And then we enjoyed a really provocative "culture panel" with the following people: Jill Lamar (editor-in-chief of Henry Holt publishers), Peter Eavis (recent Wall Street Journal banking columnist), Brian Odom (Northwestern faculty in physics) and Gary Stratton (recent head of Act 1, perhaps the largest gathering-point/training institution for Christians in Hollywood).  And we asked the question: is this sort of faith relevant primarily to people who go to churches?  Or is it directly relevant to the financial and publishing and Hollywood and academic worlds?  That gave us about an hour of things to talk about together.  But most-assuredly the upshot was, yes, take this to the larger world and get moving as quickly as you can pull this off.

Now what "this" is, of course, takes some conversation.  (As we have endlessly tossed around on this blog.)  And whatever "this" is, it was agreed it wasn't an over/against thing: "I have something you need."  It was fundamentally collaborative.

But what do you think?  Can we offer whatever it is we have to offer to anyone, directly?  Or is a conversion of some sort required first?