I wasn’t invited to the National Pastors Convention in order to meet with old friends or even to meet new ones. Nope, Zondervan asked me to speak and I was involved in not a little speaking … Monday evening and Tuesday morning and Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday afternoon. Some thoughts …
The Monday evening and Tuesday morning events were “hot button” topics discussed in a panel format by four of us: Phyllis Tickle, Tony Jones, Andy Crouch and McKnight. What hot button topics? Our views of Scripture, our views on political involvement, our views of homosexuality and our views on world religions. Hot enough? Indeed.
Tuesday afternoon I got to share the stage with Phyllis on prayer; I gave a brief on the biblical reasons and history of set prayers at set times (using my Praying with the Church). Then we all sat back and listened to Phyllis do what she is known for: resurrecting fixed hour prayer in the USA for so many of us. Not only does Phyllis practice fixed hour prayer and not only does she know the history of it all, she’s a magnificent speaker. Kris envied me getting to be with Phyllis.
Wednesday afternoon was my highlight — other than meeting up with friends: getting to bring out some of the new stuff from Blue Parakeet. I gave a fuller version of what I did at the session Monday night on the Three Approaches to the Bible and then I went through “shortcuts” and weaved in and out of some stories and some biblical texts that are right there in front of us and we have somehow discerned “not to do” them. That’s the burden of Blue Parakeet: how do we discern what to do and what not to do. Unfortunately, my flight was backed up against the session and I had to skee-daddle as soon as it was over.
Did I mention the weather? I got home about 11:30pm to 15 degrees and well over two feet of snow in the backyard.
Once again … as I was speaking I saw many names on name tags that I recognized who’ve jotted down comments on this blog. What a great blog community we have!