What a day.

I’ll let the pictures do “most” of the talking tonight. It’s been too long to stay up now and type it all out…

Before the pictures – some news: Matt and Jody VanKirk had their baby boy today at 9:09PM – name was still yet-to-be-determined!

And guess what?! I was the first one Matt called!

What an honor!

Okay pictures:

First of the two “adventurers” Kory Pence and Stevan Sheets.

Kory doing some Bible-reading this morning while I scoured the “Dr. B’s” coffee shop for some caffeine!

Stevan in his coffee-drinking glory

Now for the incredible facility that is Willow Creek, I present to you the amazing new foyer/lobby/mall:

The evening ended “rightly” with an amazingly worship-full concert by Delirious. I was fielding phone calls through most of it, but from what I was able to actually “be” at, it was really an incredible experience.

Delirious.

Comments are now working.

Sort of.

You now have to click the “logout” button and then the “register” button and then you’ll receive a password and stuff..

So – looks like only the “dedicated” will be commenting on stevansheets.com – atleast this will keep away those stupid “Online Poker” posts I had to delete nearly daily!

First of all, some pictures:

An “intro” by two percussion-masters on various “instruments” provided much-needed “waiting for things to start” entertainment!

Erwin Raphael McManus

Uhm. Ray Vanderlaan is an amazing communicator.

Tonight he challenged me to think about how much I really want to be like Jesus. He challenged us to think about WHO it is that we are to be disciples of – and just how hard a task that really is.

Literally – if our “Rabbi” walked on water, we should do the same.

Tough stuff for this heart tonight.

This has been one amazing event already.

After our final message tonight, Kory and I planned on meeting some other Wesleyan’s for dinner. Well, we arrived at Kory’s car to drive to the location and what do you know, his battery was dead.

Yep. Dead.

Eventually – after realizing that his “back-up” battery in the trunk was also dead (way to go, KorP), a lady named “Connie” came to our rescue with her own “back-up” battery that actually had enough juice to turn the car over!

Note to Kory – charge your back-up battery if you’re going to have one!

When we finally got rolling – we couldn’t find the restaurant we sent the other guys to, so we drove around looking for it until we finally gave up and ate at TGI Friday’s.

We’re now in our wireless-ready hotel (Days Inn) and enjoying some relaxing.

theBOX was a success tonight – according to my wonderful wife who took up the slack with me being absent. She’s so amazing.

Tomorrow’s speaker line-up: Mike Breaux on “One Church”, Scott Rubin, Paul Jansen Van Rensburg, and Darren Whitehead on “One Team”. We also have two “breakout” sessions – A: “Some of My Favorite Teachers are D.J.’s” and B: “Music, Media, and Your Students”.

Should be another great day.

Top that all off with a Delirious Concert tomorrow night and it REALLY will be a great day!

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.

So, Kory and I got up this morning and hit the road. Seriously, we “hit” the road. It was pretty much frozen…

We drove the 3+ hours to Willow Creek church in South Barrington, IL

The Boys, Rollin’

The Sears Tower in all its pollution-making glory.

Kory is a professional photographer