I’m in Denver right now for my denomination’s annual pastors’ conference. I love our denomination, and this conference is a great reminder of it. This year’s speaker is John Ortberg. After I have coffee with a friend, James Kim, I’m going to go into the opening session with Ortberg this morning. I look forward to hear what he has to say. They also have a lot of really great break-out sessions that happen throughout the days, and free lunches and…
This is a book about becoming water. It is a call for churches and ministries to become adaptable, flexible, and fluid with their cultural surroundings. Gibbons points to the increasing globalization occurring as the primary reason driving the need for churches to become this way. Neighborhoods are becoming more diverse, and the amount of cultural information that is available to us because of new media has created a sort of global village. The essence of Gibbons’ challenge to the church lays…
I’ve just wrapped up an orientation course called Theology of the Evangelical Covenant Church. I have to take a bunch of courses with the ECC as a part of completing my ‘orientation’ to the ECC in order to be ordained by them. I took a couple classes about 4 years ago that have since been combined into one course. So after this week’s class I’ve completed two of the four courses. Woo Hoo! For this course I had to read…
There’s nothing like a close friend. When we were in seminary at Gordon-Conwell and after Mary and I were just married, we were friends with three other couples who were all living in the same on-campus residence. We shared values, interests, life-stage, cultural backgrounds, missions in life, and location! We also had unorthodox schedules because of our studying, which allowed us to drop by during the day or stay up late hanging out and talking about the ups and downs…
I’m preparing for the annual Evangelical Covenant Church Midwinter conference. It’s a conference for pastors. They can connect with each other and hopeful be refreshed by the speakers and workshops put on by our denomination. They also run their orientation courses during this time for pastors who didn’t attend North Park Seminary, the denomination’s seminary. Since I didn’t attend North Park, I’m taking an orientation course this upcoming February called, The Theology of the ECC. I have completed some of…