Nazarene General Assembly - Day 5

Sunday was the traditional celebration of holy communion during the morning worship service.  Jesse Middendorf preached the promise of Pentecost and told the moving story of when he lost his 5 year old son in an overcrowded amusement park on the 4th of July.  His family and park security looked for little Jim for 3 hours.  Finally, when they found him, they discovered that Jim had been blissfully skipping to the front of the lines and riding every ride in the park.
This story drives home three truths into our lives.
1) At no point did Jess say to his wife, "Well, we have 2 out of the 3 kids we came with, that's pretty good.  Let's just go home."  Every single child of God is immensely important.
2) Some people are out there riding all the rides of life, and they don't even know that they are lost.  But God still loves them and desperately longs for their restoration to his family.

Nazarene General Assembly - Day 2

Everybody showed up today.  The workshops were out in full force and the delegates and representatives from around the world were finally settled in and active in the convention center.  I met friends from Bangladesh, Korea, Italy, Russia, European Nazarene College, MidAmerica Nazarene University, Nazarene Theological Seminary, and even an old girlfriend from Louisiana!

Most of the day consisted of morning to night workshops for me.   I learned a lot at each workshop, and I was able to make connections with some of the speakers for the possibility of working together in the future.  Here's a brief highlight from each workshop:

• Missional Partnerships: The Church of the Nazarene finally carved out a specific position for a missional partnership coordinator.  This is a huge step forward in facilitating long-term transformational missional partnerships.   (To read more about partnerships, go to David Wesley's blog.)
• Human Trafficking - Awareness: The average age a girl is first raped for profit is 12!  Trafficking is rampant around the globe, even in the US, even in rural communities.  (To read more, check out ONLY12.)

Nazarene General Assembly - Day 1

Every four years Nazarenes from around the world - 159 nations to meet in one place to celebrate, to learn, to worship, and to govern the church (through elections and policy decisions).  This is General Assembly.  I'll be here for 8 days, and I'll be blogging every day.

Registration of delegates began yesterday (Tuesday, June 18).  Today was the first official day of business, seminars, and meetings.  General Assembly always begins with the meetings of the auxiliary institutions (Nazarene Youth International, Sunday School & Discipleship Ministries, and Nazarene Missions International).
These first days are a mixture of dozens of workshops, regional caucuses, and legislative meetings.  Today's menu included:

• Loads of Youth Ministry Workshops (e.g. Intergenerational Youth Ministry, Building God-centered Self-Esteem, Vision Casting, and Engaging Youth in Compassion, Sexual Purity)
• Committee meetings for NMI delegates
• International Board of Education Nominations
• Global Consortium for Graduate Theological Schools
• Regional Caucuses for NYI delegates

Also, a little known but very important element of General Assembly is side meetings.  Simply having a huge number of decision makers in one place at the same time is a huge strategic opportunity.  Under normal circumstances, the only options for good group discussion are confusing email chains, phone or video conferencing (fraught with technical and schedule based difficulties), or extremely expensive and time-consuming travel.  It's hard to get important things accomplished like this.