Thursday, May 24, 2007

Gen X/Y Conference Wednesday, May 23rd

Time I Awoke (Arkansas Time): 3:20 AM

Time I Spent In Transit: 11 Hours

People I Met On the Plane: Claudia, Freddie, and Isabella (who is 11 months old and remarkably well behaved) Martinez

Time I Arrived At the Mount Sequoyah Retreat Center: 3:00PM

Time the Conference Was Supposed to Start: 3:30 PM

Time It Actually Started Due to the Inevitable United Methodist “Technical Difficulties”: 4:15PM

Presenters: Tim Keel (The bearded, earringed, long haired pastor of Jacob’s Well in Kansas City)

Doug Pagitt (The balding, wispy-goateed, completely real pastor of Solomon’s Porch in Minneapolis)

The Content of Our “Worship Experience”: 2 Songs, 1 Sermon, Communion, and 1 Song (Which depending on whether you like cookie-cutter contemporary or not, was either heaven or hell)

Time I Began to Lose It Due to Lack of Sleep and Excessive Extroversion: 5:30PM

Time I Ended Up in Conversation With Doug Pagitt: 6:00PM

Number of Times I Unwittingly Spilled Out My Angst Regarding My Discernment Process To A Crowd Of People: One

Number of Times Doug Pagitt was Around When I Did That: One

Number of Conference Presenters Who Now Think I’m Crazy, Uber-Intense, and a Little Bit Troubled: One

Number of Times I Now Wish That I Had Kept My Bloody Mouth Shut Until I Got a Full Night’s Sleep: Beyond count

Memorable Quotes From the Day:

Tim Keel on Losing His Faith: “I wasn’t losing the content of my doctrine, I was losing my way of life”

Tim Keel on Seminary Education: “I felt like I was being trained and going into deep debt for a world that didn’t exist” (And I completely agree with him!)

Tim Keel on Church Ministry: ““The Church has loads of organizations, but don’t have enough organism”

Doug Pagitt on Living the Christian Life: “I got into Chrisitanity thinking that I was going to be a full participant” and ““If I’m going be a Christian, I’m going to be one fully and completely, I’m not going to outsource any part of it”

Amount of Sleep I Got Last Night: 9.5 Utterly Comatose Hours

Hopes For Thursday: To Be Slightly Less Crazy Than Yesterday

I’ll post a midday update if I get a chance.

1 comment:

Melissa said...

Ah, Ben -- you are too cute. I guess that's why I love you. ;-)