Craig Groeschel closed his message at this year’s Leadership Summit with a Franciscan prayer as a benediction. It was a bit of a summary of his message in some ways, and the prayer sent shivers down many a spine as we heard it prayed over us all.  I thought it seemed somewhat appropriate as a prayer for those of us in DE land who are wanting to quit pretending and actually live in the way of Jesus.  And it reminded me of many of you who I have had the privilege of meeting and knowing through this place.

May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers, half truths, and superficial relationships, so that you may live deep within your heart.

May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that you may work for justice, freedom and peace.

May God bless you with tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation, and war, so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and to turn their pain into joy.

And may God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in this world, so that you can do what others claim cannot be done.

Sandy and I were given tickets to attend this year’s Leadership Summit, put on by the good folks at Willow Creek Community Church and the Willow Creek Association, and hosted in various locations around the world by either satellite or dvd.  I have been to several Summit experiences in the past, but my wife has never been able to go with me.  For the second year in a row, The Rock Church in our town of Sparks, NV, hosted the Summit.  Their senior pastor, Art Lenon, was kind enough to provide free tickets for us this year.  We were not planning on going, until he offered, for a couple of reasons:  

1. We couldn’t afford the ticket price (discounted to about $135.00 per person though our own church, which was offering the discount because we helped sponsor the event).  

2. It was mid-week (Thursday and Friday) which meant that Sandy, our steady breadwinner, would have to take off at least one day of work.  

3. I wasn’t really all that interested in the lineup, frankly.  I had been to Summits in the past where the “faculty” (as Willow likes to call them) were international experts, political powerhouses, celebrity/rockstar/hugelypopularreligiousicons who were intriguing, beguiling, or perplexing choices before I even heard what they had to say.  This year’s lineup was stunningly bland on the uptake.  I had not even heard of most of the featured speakers, except for Chuck Colson and Gary Haugen (most people hadn’t heard of Haugen, apparently).  And I thought I’d pretty much heard or read most of what those two might say.  

So…it was with some degree of skepticism and dread that I committed to spending two days cooped up in a church building, listening to the talking heads and pretending not to be impressed with “the show” (I always am, however…Willow knows how to put on the show like nobody else).  But because my wife had never been, and because we could actually go home for lunch, and because I love and respect Art Lenon and his staff at The Rock Church and didn’t want to reject their very generous and kind offer…I went.  

It was a really good decision. Read the rest of this entry »

Last weekend, my husband received about six boxes of 45 records that his aunt left him and we spent some evenings last week going through them. It was a lot of fun, but we started thinking about all the changes that we have made through the years in the way that we get our music. I am now an owner of an iPod, and I love it. I can just carry this little credit card sized box around all the time and plug it in whereever I go. I have my entire catalog of music inside an external hard drive the size of a sandwich, and if I need to, I can just pop it into my purse.

When you think about it, how we got from records to iPods was a long process, but it happened in a relatively short period of time. After albums, it was eight tracks, then cassette tapes, then CD’s, and now we are well on our way to iPods and cell phones. It’s all about change.

Read the rest of this entry »