Wow.
Just being a part of a forum this morning and part of the afternoon on the subject of Spiritual Formations has been worth the money, the trip, and the time away from “normal”.
I’m impressed.
Joshua Loveless – student ministries pastor from Willow Creek – Wheaton Campus was our “forum administrator” today – he had a lot of great insight that I have gleened and taken note of.
One thing in paticular that I’ve been dealing with that was mentioned today was the subject of “Creating Christians”.
The word “Christian” is such a “negative” these days in our culture/world. The word has become synonymous with numerous “failings” and “hypocrisies”.
Something Joshua called us is Christ Followers, and more importantly – being a youth pastor, I need to be one who is a shepherd of “Christ Followers” – mainly because calling ourselves “Christian” lumps us into a pretty terrible category in today’s culture.
Once again today, too, I was humbled by the fact that I’m doing all that I can to consistently “keep my head above water” with youth ministry – with all of these “ideas” that are floating around – it’s almost as though I’ll have to clone myself to become better suited for being a youth pastor.
Or better yet – master a little thing called “Time Management”.
Kory and I are sitting on a sweet leather sofa in the foyer, awaiting the beginning of the “next leg” of this conference – a rally featuring one of my favorite authors – Erwin McManus. (I just bought his new book this morning – “The Barbarian Way”)
We just finished our “Willow Lunch” via their ever-present cafeteria-like lines of over-priced cheeseburgers. Today’s lunch at $8 included a cheeseburger, hotdog (with kraut!), fries, and a bottle of water.
This is fun.
