Advances

2021 Pacific Advance with Robert Woods and Rebekah Woods

March 12 & 13, 2021

Conversation Partners: Robert Woods and Rebekah Woods.

I am pleased to announce our conversation partners for the 2021 Pacific Advance. For the first time we are inviting a husband and wife to be our resources, Robert Woods and Rebekah Woods. My doctoral students will know the name of Robert Woods well, since they have read either his Words and Witnesses: Communications Studies in Christian Thought (2018) or his digital proverbs from Ethics in the Age of Social Media (2019). Robert is an expert in the fields of communication, media and culture (including pop culture), and currently serves as the Executive Director of the Christianity and Communication Studies Network (www.theccsn.com). Rebekah started out her career as an attorney, but for the past twenty years has been involved in higher education. Currently she serves as President of Columbia Basin College in Pasco, Washington, where she and Robert have lived since moving from Spring Arbor, Michigan in 2017. They love their new home in eastern Washington, which they share with three rescue dogs and one rescue cat. The cat doesn’t seem to like Robert very much, but Rebekah has  promised to reveal the secret of the cat’s dismissal of her husband of 25 years if we’re really interested. I for one want to know, and we will press her on this along with an assortment of other questions about the future of education, the nature of digital communications in the church and culture, in the role of learning and living in the world at large, and the importance of lifelong learning in the arena of faith.

At each one of the “advances,” you will not find motel-like (centralized buildings with square-box accommodations linked by long narrow corridors and wide parking-lots) spaces. Instead SpiritVenture Ministries is bringing back the old-fashioned, decentralized get-away-cottages you used to see all along US America’s blue highways — except each one of these cottages is more “English cottage” in size, luxury-class in appointments, and future-fitted with what you need for a healthy mind, body and soul. See http://www.the-salish.com for more details.

*The cost of each Advance includes all registration fees and six meals for the two days. Each Advance begins with breakfast on the first morning, and concludes with supper and after-dinner conversation on the second evening. You are responsible for your own housing, although we are available to help you find lodging and make recommendations.