Trent Emmack

Workshops

How to Kill a Culture, and How to Save One

Lets face it, things out there are pretty bleak nowadays. Every time you turn on the T.V., pick up your phone, or see a billboard, you run the risk of being exposed to the corrosive outgrowths of a pathological worldview that has overrun our society. In the face of this sort of cultural pollution, it’s easy to despair, to resort to cutting oneself off from the culture at large, and in some ways that’s a perfectly reasonable reaction. However, it’s not a sustainable one. Our culture is a runaway train, and if we don’t try to stop it, we’ll just be the last ones to get hit. In this session, Trent takes a close look at the ideologies fueling our culture, identifying the thinkers and ideas that have undermined the western world and brought us to this moment. Through gaining an understanding of these ideas we also learn how to counter them, not just in the apologetic sense, but in a tangible cultural sense, so that we may build a new counter-culture for the future.

Teen Track: The Privilege of Action

How often recently have you heard the term YOLO (You Only Live Once)? Even if you haven’t come across the term directly, the concept pervades our culture. Our world consistently defines hard work as something to be avoided. So, what happens when our culture takes an ordinary vice that we all are familiar with and turns it into a virtue? Just look around. You’ll see a culture that is broken, spiraling, and directionless. In this session, Trent takes a critical look at our culture’s understanding of what work really is, then turns to the Scriptures to identify why it is so critical for us to strive to create value on a daily basis and how we can lay a practical foundation for doing so.