Nazarene General Assembly - Day 4

        Sarah arrived Friday night, so some of the main agenda items for us for Saturday were meeting with old friends.  First we by the Northwest Nazarene University booth to reconnect with Julene Tegerstrand (whom we spent time with at Korea Nazarene University).   Then, we had lunch with Matt and Darci Johnson, our good friends from our MidAmerica Nazarene University days.  With Matt and Darci we talked about the present and future of our respective churches and discussed the blessed difficulty of having an amazing church in our history (Olathe Christ Community).  Most of our friends look back wistfully on those years and that community, and we struggle not to compare our churches to that experience - no matter how good our current churches are.  There is something profoundly encouraging and strengthening about spending time with old friends with whom you can connect with the same depth as if no time has passed!

My professional goal for the day was networking with magazine and book editors.  I have accomplished more in the past two days with just a few hours of face time than I have accomplished over years of emails.  Again, one of the great benefits of General Assembly is simply getting the decision makers from our far flung positions in the same place at the same time.

The focus of the evening service was missions.  We called on people to sponsor children, with the goal of sponsoring 1,500 new children that night.  I'm eager to find out how many sponsorships were gathered.   One sponsored child from the Philippines is now a youth pastor in the USA, and he was able to meet the retired couple who sponsored him throughout his childhood - live on stage.  That brought tears to my eyes as I thought about the future of Jibon and Asanti, the two children we sponsor in Bangladesh.

Nazarene General Assembly - Day 3

More workshops and more networking and of course more worship.
The day started for me with a workshop called, "Holiness in the 21st Century," with Dr. Carl Leth of Olivet Nazarene University.  A few highlights:

• In recent years, unfortunately, the doctrine of holiness has more often been a place of controversy and struggle rather than proclamation and blessing.
• The process and crisis debate has immobilized us unreasonably.  Process people believe in crisis, and crisis people believe in process.  A difference in emphasis shouldn't either freeze us or turn us against each other.  
• We need to recapture the scope of holiness as involving the whole mission of God, redeeming and reordering our broken world.
• Holiness is good news.  God can break in, ANYWHERE ANYTIME TO DO ANYTHING FOR ANYBODY.

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.