ACM follow-up

Let's break temporarily from the book [momentary pause to enjoy LeRoy's solo performance of "The Hallelujah Chorus"] and spend some time reflecting on ACM. (If you have thoughts/suggestions about the conference format/infrastructure, we want to hear them, but not here. Please email those thoughts to Kevin or me.) Here on our blog, I'd like to discuss, reflect upon, process together whatever was hitting us from the content of ACM. For example, for those of us working in local churches, how do we figure out where our "feet are heading"? I know it cannot be reduced to a formula, but what are some of the ways we could assess whether our churches are spiraling inward or outward?
As always, the point of this is not to answer my questions, but to engage one another in meaningful conversation about topics of common interest.
So, as you're hoisting your backsides into whatever your current saddle looks like, what's sticking with you from ACM--what's nagging you, exciting you, provoking you, working in you?

Signs and wonders?

OK, let me toss something of a hot potato, based on Peterson's section "The Signs," pp. 92-99. I enjoy the way he challenges a popular understanding that, if we could just "get" God to do more signs and wonders, if we could only learn the secret of how to persuade God to do more miracles, the progress of the Gospel would be greatly enhanced. Let me make two comments (and this is me commenting, not Peterson):
First, wonderful as miracles, signs and wonders are, and as much a part of our Scriptures as they are, there will always be an ambivalent/ambiguous element to them. They don't have the power to change people and situations that we think they do. It's not that they don't have power, but I think it may be a different sort of power...
Second, I think that the quest for more signs and wonders may be a way in which we hide from and deny our failures to live faithfully as communities of God's beloved Son. I think that the demonstration of the Gospel that God intends to give may be confirmed by signs and wonders, but the real issue is the church becoming and being the church, demonstrating in and through our lives the Life that is Life Indeed.
Third (you can see that I have trouble counting or keeping track of numbers!) I'd like to suggest that our Chrstian approach to "the supernatural" is wrong-headed and maybe even heretical.
So let's put this in our pipes and light it up and see what kinds of smoke rings we can blow!

Christ Plays in Creation, part one

Let me know if the pacing is right. We need to balance moving through the book in an unhurried way with giving everyone a chance to keep up with the reading, weigh in, etc. My cue to create a new post is when the comments on the prior post seem to tail off.
Also keep in mind that what makes this blog work is us, our comments, cross-questioning of the reading and one another's comments, etc--think of "iron sharpening (sparking!) iron" in the context of a blog book discussion. What makes it go is each of us sharing whatever from the reading grabbed us, annoyed us, gave us pause, caused us to say "I never saw/thought of that before!"
So, we're now into the first half or so of the "Christ Plays in Creation" chapter (pp. 51-85). Instead of a scattershot set of questions, let me pose just two; respond to one, 'tother, or both:

1) What did you underline/highlight, and why?
2) Reread the paragraph at the bottom of p. 63 ("My shift from reading Genesis 1--2 primarily as an account of the beginning of all things..." through the bottom of p. 64. How do you see the people you serve living an "exiled" kind of life, and have you discovered ways to help them learn to receive and enjoy what Peterson calls the "creation gifts of time and place"?