The Summit!

Thanks for your prayers for the Summit (or your attendance at it)! In a nutshell, it was awesome, at least for me.

We focused not--as per last year--on building a case for this approach to faith and mission. Instead we largely assumed buy-in and set up opportunities to talk together, which I at the very least really enjoyed. I left feeling connected in very much a new way to a number of other leaders and churches, and that was very encouraging and powerful for me.

There certainly were some great things said from the front. Charles Park was his customary inspiring and motivating self. I thought Chris Lowney gave us a lot of food for thought. The worship gang took us into the middle of a dynamic, ongoing conversation about centered-set worship. And I was at the very least able to let folks know about resources, opportunities, and ongoing conversations they might not have been aware of.

The worship itself was just great, from my perspective, with an interplay between Casey Corum's great, guitar-driven, up-to-the-minute contribution, Christopher Greco and the band's gospel perspective and David Linhart's neo-spirituals.

We spent some time on specific resources (Seek [on the way to DVD form, for those for whom that would be helpful], Leap of Faith [the erstwhile 40 Days of Faith], Culture Center Churches [a new book detailing an approach to church ministry in very secular places] in particular).

We talked about some blue sky dreams of putting together a formal "institute"--a brick and mortar place where people could come for training in this stuff from all over, at the very least, the secular west. A few of us who have started laying plans for that got together to push the conversation forward and we're hopeful the first concrete initiatives that direction will be in place and happening by next summer.

A few of us talked about the plan for this blog to transition sometime this upcoming year into being a resource-rich website for any folks looking to be helpful for Jesus in very secular places. Some of us took solemn oaths (can I remind those of you who did this of your solemn oaths? Solemn oaths!!!) to document what we're finding helpful along these lines in order to start to share more freely with those engaged in this same thing. The blog itself should continue there in column form.

And we threw out potentially fun joint activities--some of the churches will be joining together in a formal cohort to work together on some things this year and many of the churches, sort of spur of the moment, will be Daniel fasting together (in brief, a "Daniel fast" seems to involve fruit, vegetables and whole grains) during a 21-day stretch starting October 18. (My church plans to be one of those!) I'll have more on that later.

But this is mostly to say thanks so much for your prayers! They were very much felt. Going into the Summit, in candor, it wasn't entirely clear if this year's version was going to fly as well even as last year's did. But, far from "not flying," my feeling was that this was a completely-God-empowered, meaningful time together.

To those of you who came, thanks thanks thanks. And, to those of you who didn't come, but prayed, God bless you! May your prayers for this continue to have great impact.

The ongoing plan--as we talked about at the summit--is to run these each year as gatherings for partners in this endeavor, both new and ongoing. (Please do think about people you know--in or out of your area--who should be at these summits and get next year's on their calendar.) It's not intended to be a "conference" per se, meaning that it's not meant to be a place one comes to once, gets some new info that's either helpful or not, and then goes on one's merry way. It really will work best as a yearly gathering for folks who dream of seeing a centered-set awakening in the secular west and who value cultivating ongoing partners along the road there. If that's you, please do mark out, say, August 12-15 2010 (we haven't even talked dates for 2010 yet, so these are inexact, but this should be in the ballpark and we'll let you know soon).

Thanks again for your prayers and partnership! To those of you who were there, you rock! I already miss seeing and talking with you.

4 Comments

The weekend ROCKED! Thanks to Brian (esp. for the BBQ - I owe you one), Dan and everyone else who helped organize. And thanks to you, Dave, for being a bad a$$!

Posted by: Ryan NYC | August 17, 2009 at 05:33 PM

just back from my family reunion...so bummed i had to miss it this year...but i did pray for all of you! it sounds like some great initiatives and solemn oaths were birthed out of it...i'll be interested to hear more....

Posted by: steven hamilton | August 18, 2009 at 07:33 AM