Semi-Liveblogging the Vineyard National Conference (Session 1)

Bert Waggoner spoke.  I’d like to say that he’s riveting, but I’d be lying, and we know where liars go…politics.  Here is what I wrote while he was speaking:

I’m sitting in the Vineyard National Conference.  Bert Waggoner is speaking about “Heroic Leadership in a Time of Change,” which is the conference theme.  He’s using the book of Esther as a template for a paradigm for heroic leadership.  It is nice to see that we are focused on “a time of change” right now.  I wonder if we are really late on this, but a lot of denominations haven’t caught on yet.  His message is:

Heroic Leaders are:

1-     Compelled by a controlling value
2-     Committed to a Necessary risk
3-     Captured by sacrificial love

He used the words “post Christian” and “fall of Christendom” quite a few times, maybe too many.  It seems odd to be eulogizing ourselves, although I know that we aren’t proclaiming the death of the Church.  I fear that somehow we are throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Christian America hasn’t been all bad.  I am dying for a change now, though.  I am praying that I hear or experience something powerful and transforming for our movement.  I want to hear something heroic.  I haven’t yet.  I’m keeping my eyes open.

After the session I prayed for Jason, a church planter about my age.  He was a great guy.  He prayed for me, against any cynicism.  I needed that.

Semi-Liveblogging the Vineyard Conference (a)

This week I’m on Galveston Island, southeast of Houston, for the Vineyard USA National Conference.  I am going to be semi-live blogging the event.  I can’t actually get internet in the conference room, and I’m blogging from a laptop.  I will be posting my thoughts that I have penned the old fashioned way and typed out.  I know, I feel like a luddite…or something along those lines.

Galveston was ravaged by hurricane Ike over a year ago.  The flood waters have subsided, or course, but there is still lingering destruction.  Peichi asked me tonight if there were any buildings left.  I guess that the media made it sound like that.  There are.  The whole place was underwater, but many of those places were cleaned and repaired.  But many places were also totally destroyed.  The closer you get on the island to the sea wall, the more you see hotels standing uninhabited, and buildings that look like they’ve been through a hurricane (duh).  The convention center the conference is at has no working elevators anywhere.  This is because of the flooding.

The most difficult thing for me is the fact that half the street signs have all been blown away, and have yet to be replaced, as if replacing street signs for me are a top priority to the city.  It is hard to find my way around sometimes because of it, though.

I’ll be taking pictures and will include them on a different post when time allows.

In a New York Minute

This was my sermon from March 22nd at Grace Vineyard.  I hope that it affects your life.  Please leave any comments.  I love the interaction regarding my sermons.

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What Are We Doing Here Anyway?

This blog really stems from who I am.  I am a youth pastor/church planter, Internet entrepeneur, and the husband of an awesome woman from Taiwan.  I have a passion for writing, seeing the Church use communication technology (specifically the Internet) in the most effective way possible, and helping to grow Christianity in America into what Jesus intended it to be.  I blog about these things here in separate pages according to these various themes.

Pledging Allegiance

We live in a world that no longer just accepts the idea that “God says it, so I must believe it.” If Christians can accept that, and reclaim the truth that Jesus is not (and never has been) a culture, then we can lead a world to ask “How can I have a life like yours?” Then they will start to naturally care what God says, and start believing it themselves.

A Letter to a High Schooler Who Moved Away

This is an excerpt from an email that I sent in response to a message from a teenager who moved away.  I just thought it opened a little window into my world.  Sorry it is long.

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Dear _____,

There are challenges wherever you go.  The difficulty of your situation is that a person’s tendency is to compare the best of one thing with the worst of the other.  That is why comparing ourselves to others is so bad.  We only see their best that they present to the world, compared to the things we see as wrong within ourselves.  The same thing happens with places.  There is good in every place.  People are people.  I miss the surf of Southern California.  I miss the mountains.  I miss driving on freeways where other drivers actually know the rules of the road. Read the rest of this entry »