Saturday, November 19, 2005
YS Convention: Nashville 2006
After many broken promises and unfinished posts, here is my first...welcome to the blogosphere!!!
I am attending the National Youth Worker's Convention in Nashville this weekend and have been highly anticipating it as a sabbath for my partner in crime... I mean ministry, (Nick) and myself.
We were a little late in arriving to our Critical Concerns Course but this was more than made up for at the registration table as we received the sweetest man purse (murse) I have ever seen just because we were first timers! Maybe I should be a first timer every year!
After gearing up, Nick and I made our way to the course, led by Mark Dowds called One: Discovering the Power and Freedom of True Community as a Leadership Team.
As we moved through the session, I found that much of what Mark was saying seemed less directed toward how to develop and build a team and more about what I can be as a member of that team.
We discussed the things we are committed to for ourselves, our family and friends, and our community. He also discussed the need to be present in every situation. These made me think about how I am so caught up in my own philosophies, musings, and ideas that I am not present with people in their conversation, their life, what matters to them.
The big picture for me came as Mark began to discuss the idea that we are all made in God's image and how that should shape all of our interactions with anyone. He talked about, instead of seeking out the bad or evil in people, we should seek to find the redemptive workings and reflections of God in their lives in order to illuminate that. This would lead to a person becoming more and more in the image of God, which is what we were intended to be from the beginning.
The primary idea behind Mark's premise was grounded in how we view ourselves in light God's image. According to him, Calvin said that the image of God was effaced within us. The image of God is gone and the work to be done is to put in what our depravity has removed. Mark approached this issue from Calvin's perspective as a glass half emypty type of idea. The glass half full idea, then, is that we are defaced of the image of God: it is distorted, but can be found. Therefore, the work to be done is to draw out what God put in.
I felt like Jacob wrestling with the angel. It has been an accurate picture for my being these past few months. Struggling with new experiences and ideas has become the hallmark of me recently. So when Mark began to illuminate many of the ideas I had not yet been able to fully grapple with, it was like the angel had touched my thigh. (Don't get me wrong, I was not looking at Mark like an angel!) I knew my walking around, going about life would be different yet I am still unsure how. I know that the wrestling and struggle is not over, but I also know that there is something different.
I am attending the National Youth Worker's Convention in Nashville this weekend and have been highly anticipating it as a sabbath for my partner in crime... I mean ministry, (Nick) and myself.
We were a little late in arriving to our Critical Concerns Course but this was more than made up for at the registration table as we received the sweetest man purse (murse) I have ever seen just because we were first timers! Maybe I should be a first timer every year!
After gearing up, Nick and I made our way to the course, led by Mark Dowds called One: Discovering the Power and Freedom of True Community as a Leadership Team.
As we moved through the session, I found that much of what Mark was saying seemed less directed toward how to develop and build a team and more about what I can be as a member of that team.
We discussed the things we are committed to for ourselves, our family and friends, and our community. He also discussed the need to be present in every situation. These made me think about how I am so caught up in my own philosophies, musings, and ideas that I am not present with people in their conversation, their life, what matters to them.
The big picture for me came as Mark began to discuss the idea that we are all made in God's image and how that should shape all of our interactions with anyone. He talked about, instead of seeking out the bad or evil in people, we should seek to find the redemptive workings and reflections of God in their lives in order to illuminate that. This would lead to a person becoming more and more in the image of God, which is what we were intended to be from the beginning.
The primary idea behind Mark's premise was grounded in how we view ourselves in light God's image. According to him, Calvin said that the image of God was effaced within us. The image of God is gone and the work to be done is to put in what our depravity has removed. Mark approached this issue from Calvin's perspective as a glass half emypty type of idea. The glass half full idea, then, is that we are defaced of the image of God: it is distorted, but can be found. Therefore, the work to be done is to draw out what God put in.
I felt like Jacob wrestling with the angel. It has been an accurate picture for my being these past few months. Struggling with new experiences and ideas has become the hallmark of me recently. So when Mark began to illuminate many of the ideas I had not yet been able to fully grapple with, it was like the angel had touched my thigh. (Don't get me wrong, I was not looking at Mark like an angel!) I knew my walking around, going about life would be different yet I am still unsure how. I know that the wrestling and struggle is not over, but I also know that there is something different.
