Category: regular

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Lead Twit.

I just got my marching orders for my job at our regional Winter Conference.  For the past 7 conferences running I have been the “coffeehouse guy” which makes me sound like a barista.  In reality, I covered the content portion of the coffeehouse, which morphed over time to become the “Global Village” portion of the conference.  For a tour of the global village last year, check this out.

This year, I told them that my old job worked great as a single guy, but as a married guy, (and then a guy with a wife and child) my job of staying up all hours of the night became such that I was not giving it or my family the attention that both deserved.  So I’ve passed off that job into more capable hands, and am embarking on a job role that I am extremely excited about:

Lead Twit.

That’s the unofficial name of my new role, but it pretty well describes what I aim to bring to the conference.  If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s being a twit.

The more official name of my new role is “Online Experience Coordinator.”  The reality is that students increasingly live their lives in front of a computer screen, a mobile telephone screen, and in the online “world.”  While I think there is a real sense in which isolation (a functional anti-gospel) occurs online, I also am convinced that students living in a virtual world can (and are starting to) find real connections online that lead to life-change offline.

Our heart is not to give the students a distraction from what goes on at the conference, but to give them a way to further participate in the conference in ways that have been impossible in the past.  People are willing to say things online that they aren’t willing to say to your face.  While that’s not always a good thing, at the same time it is a great way to gauge how God is moving in the students, as it is actually happening.  Instead of having to wait to hear how God is moving days, weeks and months after the fact, we will get a real picture of what He is doing right in front of us.

How are we going to do that?(all of these are works-in-progress)

  1. live chat rooms (during non-meeting times, with a potential for “answer now” times during meetings)
  2. twitter hashtag #crutru09 (the conference theme is “Encountering Christ the Truth” this year)
  3. official twitter account for the conference
  4. 2 live blogs of the conference, including pre-conference news and events.  One blog will be primarily a window-in for parents, ministry partners, and other non-participants-who-are-still-interested, and the other will be geared for the students, and potentially run by the students.
  5. Live webcast of certain portions of the conference.
  6. Facebook fan page.
  7. Youtube account for the conference.
  8. BlogTalk radio channel for broadcasting—complete with easy sharing—of conference content.
  9. Other as-yet-undetermined interactive online things.
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Catalyst.

I’m not there, but I wanted to weigh in on Catalyst, and ask some honest questions.  Please hear that my heart is not to criticize, but to honestly ask.

I am a little surprised to see Rob Bell on the list of speakers for Catalyst.  I’ve written before about Rob, and what I think of the one book of his that I’ve read.  After a quick perusal of the recommended reading on his website, it seems that he puts more stock in Judaism than Christianity.  Having a Jewish understanding of the scriptures (unless it is a messianic perspective) simply means that you are listening to people who disagreed with Jesus on his most fundamental issue (his own identity—that he was and is God in the flesh, sent to save sinful, broken people).  That’s a pretty shaky hermeneutic.

So I wonder why Catalyst would have him come and speak.  I do not argue that he is a gifted communicator, and a passionate guy.  I’m not throwing stones at the guy, but I think that some of his teachings are dangerous (at worst) or confusing (at best).  Surely the organizers of the conference are aware of the uproar the mention of his name causes in evangelical culture.  Yet they brought him anyway.

The other issue that has me shaking my head is the use of the TNIV on the Youversion Live event for Andy Stanley’s talk.  This may simply be a technological deal, and they are unaware that it is using a gender-inclusive, highly controversial “translation” of the original languages.  If it’s just an oversight, that’s fine.  But if it’s an intentional choice, I have to question it.  Why go with that translation?  The NIV works just fine (and carries almost no connotative baggage even for more conservative biblical scholars), or the ESV, or the NAS, or the NKJV, or even a paraphrase like The Message.  Using the TNIV (intentionally) is a blatant theological statement.

Those are my questions.  Id love for some folks who are/were there to weigh in.  More than that, I’d love if some of the organizers could weigh in and explain these choices to me.

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The subtlety of Self.

It’s so easy to share even a message about Jesus and not share the message of Jesus.

Take Matthew 4:1-11 as an example.  It’s a fairly well known passage about Jesus being tempted in the wilderness by Satan.  Every single time I have ever talked or meditated on this passage I have made the action point something like, “and you, when you are tempted, can be like Jesus who answered the temptation with Scripture…” or some other vague encouragement to be a better person, like Jesus.  While that is partially true, in that scripture memory is important and beneficial, it totally misses the bigger point, and places the emphasis of an otherwise Ben-free passage on, well, me.

In fact, that’s a pagan point.  Pagans appease their god by doing enough good, and cleaning up their act, and memorizing enough mantras.

The bigger emphasis of this passage is that, as the writer of Hebrews says, we have a high priest who was tempted in every way just as we are, but didn’t cave.  Jesus fulfilled all of the law, even on the level of motive, so that sinners like me can have life.  In this passage Jesus is more than our example (because that would be an insurmountable load of pressure, now that we consider it), He’s our substitute.  Far from being a passage where I walk away feeling bad for not having memorized enough of the Bible, I am instead encouraged that Jesus memorized enough Bible, and followed all of it perfectly enough, to save me.

If you walk away from any sermon in any Christian church feeling like you need to work harder or do better in order to make God happy, you’ve either missed the point of the sermon, or the sermon was a pagan, non-gospel sermon.

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When he Falls and Bumps his head.

Is it wrong that I love it when my child bumps his head, or scrapes his knee?  Not in a sadistic way but because, at least for a minute, he’ll put his head on my shoulder, wrap his arms around my neck, and need me.

Today, as we were hanging out at a friend’s birthday party, he fell once, and needed me.  Then, every time he’d get scared he was going to fall again, He’d reach out his little hand in my direction, and latch onto whatever finger was closest.  Once he had my finger, he might as well have been bulletproof.

Fatherhood is pretty sweet.

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