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Amber liked my attempt at a descriptive writing post yesterday so I thought I’d give it another go. Just more observations from the Moody conference.

The stupid wifi still doesn’t work. All I want to do is just sit here and write directly to my blog, but it doesn’t work. Arrgh. I’m back in the student center at Moody, at another one of those square tables that host mid-day meals, conversations between old friends, and students with backpacks full of homework. At the table behind me is an Army chaplain with oak leaves on his lapels, that makes him what, a captain? It warms my heart to know that he’s taking the time to minister to our servicemen.

Across the room to my left is the Moody sales table. Either they stocked up on Conference polo shirts this year, or grey isn’t a popular color - Richard assured me the shirts are usually sold out by Monday afternoon; it’s Tuesday afternoon and they still have quite a pile left. Maybe their color choices aren’t always the greatest; they have t-shirts for sale left over from last year that are a not-quite-so-nice shade of brown… but they’re only $3 so I might just pick one up anyway. You can also buy coffee mugs, baseball caps, and some various books and literature. Sadly, for their sales prospects, I don’t drink coffee and it’ll take something more special than a pastor’s conference to supplant the Cubs on my baseball cap brim. Maybe the t-shirt is the right call.

Display booths on my right advertise products attractive to those in ministry: graduate school, online bible courses, bible study software, a publishing house. The representatives at these sales booths are worth a closer study. I don’t think I’d find it a fun assignment to have to man a booth like that. There are two across the room from me. Both are men in their late thirties or early forties; both are somewhat overweight and dressed in their best professional oxford shirts and sweater vests. Both are browsing on their laptops, eating lunch. Maybe I should see if either of them have gotten wifi to work… When a customer approaches, you can see them go into this “Christian sales” mode. It’s somewhat weird to me, because I typically think of salesmen as pushy, annoying, caring little about you and what you want, and more about how they can manipulate you into buying their product. But with these guys, they’re restrained, trying to be helpful, obviously in sales mode with their product, but at the same time remaining mindful that the men they’re selling to are their brothers in Christ who need enhanced ministries, not just a cool (expensive) software program. I wish there were more salesmen like them. I’d love to buy a car from a guy who had my best interests in mind rather than his own… but that’s a totally different subject. :-)

It’s quieting down now that the next general session has started. There’s a round table with five guys around it and the remnants of their lunch still on it; apparently they’re skipping the session to continue the discussion - a good idea if you ask me. There are several guys sitting around singly, like me, taking time to read, write, think. There are still some t-shirts for sale… I think I’ll go buy one. At $3, they’re a steal, even if they are brown.

It’s 1:10 PM and I’m skipping a general session to sit and write. Richard described this conference as “trying to get a drink of water from a firehose”, and he’s not much wrong. So far today we’ve had general sessions with D.A. Carson and Gene Getz, and I went to a workshop also with Dr. Getz. And that was all before lunch! This afternoon there’s another general session and then a workshop before dinner. As I already said, I’m skipping the general session to do some writing, mostly because if I don’t take the time to write things down, I’ll start forgetting… and I don’t want to forget. It’ll be much more valuable for me to cement some things in my mind rather than just go soak up some more things that I won’t have time to remember.

Last night was Ravi Zacharias. He is brilliant. In the areas of metaphysics and logic, few are his equal. His topic was “Questionable Questions: Four questions skeptics ask that point to Christ”. I’ll write a separate post just on his message. Very impressive. Had a snack, decided to skip out on the late movie (National Treasure) since I’d just seen it last weekend, and went to bed.

One other thing I don’t want to forget from last night: we had a pianist providing special music. His name is Anthony Burger, and he usually plays with the Gaithers. His style is very showy, which means I don’t like it much. He plays with an instrumental track, it makes me think that Liberace got saved and started playing Christian music. But the last song of his set was Handel’s glorious Hallelujah Chorus. The power of that music drove away my discontent with the style of the presentation. Within the first few measures of the song, all 2000+ men in the auditorium stood to honor God in that great tradition of the Chorus. All the guys that knew parts were singing along. Words to not do it justice. Being in a room with 2000 men who want to worship God and having such a majestic chorus to do it with? Amazing. Fantastic. Superb. I’ll shut up now. :-)

This morning we had our first general session with Dr. D. A. Carson. He is probably the most “intellectual” speaker of the week. He apologized at one point early in the presentation for ending a sentence with a preposition! Just that kind of guy. He is a research professor at Trinity Evangelical School of Divinity, which means they basically retain him just to do research and write books. That being said, he’s a very good speaker as well. His ten-dollar words and presentation had John’s eyes permanently glazed over, but Richard and I loved it. I’m really looking forward to hearing Dr. Carson again tomorrow.

As Dr. Carson’s session dismissed, I headed off at a trot to get to the workshop with Dr. Gene Getz on Elders and Leadership in the church. It was a very good session… he reminded us that we need to stop assuming that the “form” that we’ve practiced with in our culture for all these years can substitute for the “supracultural” principles of leadership. There are the principles, which are universal. They transcend culture. Then there are the practices. They have to be customized depending on the culture and circumstance the church is in. I will have to take some time to digest it some more, but I think we can gain some things that we can implement at Noelridge. Dr. Getz then had the second morning session, where he taught on the importance of godly leadership in the church. Nothing super profound, but still encouraging and challenging.

The music times here have been pretty decent so far. Don’t get me wrong, the band is quite good. I always have a little trouble not being critical with bands, I guess they stick out to me more because I’m the musician. They’ve had a good balance of both old and new music; at the second morning session we sang Matt Redmond’s Blessed Be Your Name and followed it up with It Is Well With My Soul. Nice. I wish the worship leader were a little less showy and a little more of a musician, but I get the feeling that it’s just style, not heart attitude, so I can look past it.

Richard and I are going to be slackers tonight; we’re going to a Cubs game. The Astros are in town and Roger Clemens is pitching. Now, that probably means that the Cubbies will lose, but then, what else is new? It will be a little chilly tonight, but should be a great time. I love Wrigley Field. It will be a good break from the fire hose.

Monday, May 23rd 3:30 PM

Richard picked me up at the house at 8:20 or so this morning. Said goodbye to Becky, Laura, and Becky’s parents and headed out to Chicago. We picked up Sam and John on the way and then traversed I-88 in a purple Chevy Blazer to get to Chicago.

It’s my first time at Moody and it’s an interesting campus. Land is obviously at a premium in downtown Chicago, so the campus feels a bit cramped. I’m sitting in the student center writing this, where I can view the registration area and various folks milling around, waiting for dinner and the start of the conference’s activites tonight. If only they had wi-fi access… I asked before I came and they said there was wi-fi in here, but I guess they were wrong. Or maybe they have it turned off… who knows? So, I guess I’ll have to resort to dial-up back in my room.

You can see the whole cross-section of evangelical church leadership just here in the student center. At the table next to me is a guy in jeans, a t-shirt, and a University of Wisconsin baseball cap. He looks typically midwestern. Across the room is a group of several black guys dressed to the nines - suits, ties, very slick. One of them is probably 5-9, 325, wearing a lime green pinstriped suit with the lapels turned up. Stylin’, I guess. Basic attire seems to be jeans and t-shirts, which is nicely relaxed for a pastor’s conference. I had a fleeting image of guys whose idea of “casual” dress was an open collar and loafers with their slacks and jacket… I am happy in that regard to have been (at least for now) proved wrong. Here next to me a few minutes ago was one Institute staff member talking with a few friends from out of town. They were discussing the latest Star Wars movie, so I tried to ignore them since I haven’t seen it, and won’t see it until our break on Wednesday. If I wasn’t going to the movie Wednesday, and if I’d brought my basketball shoes along, they’re having an organized 3-on-3 basketball tournament on Wednesday afternoon… that could be fun. Oh well, maybe next time I come.

We had a late lunch this afternoon at a goofy diner called Ed Debevic’s. The highlight of this place is the waitstaff that is intentionally rude to the diners. Our waitress was sullen, cynical, and had us nicknamed. Grey-haired Sam was “Pops”. John, the youth pastor was “Sparky”. I’m not sure she had a nickname for me - I guess I was beyond description. Our waitress was actually pretty tame compared to the other guy who was serving. There was a booth with two younger-ish women across and down from us a bit. At one point, they must have complained or something about their rootbeer float. So, the waiter grabs it off the table, carries it three booths away, sets it down, and yells at the top of his lungs, “Well how’s this, will you enjoy your rootbeer float better when it’s over here?” They weren’t quite sure how to respond. Once the waiter had left, a guy from a neighboring booth went over and returned the float to them - they were a bit too cowed to retrieve it themselves. Later, they made the mistake of asking for extra napkins. He walked away, shaking his head. Then, in a loud voice from behind the counter, he was laughing at top volume, and holding his head in his hands. “More napkins?!? For the love! More napkins?” Then they got their napkins.

Well it’s almost 4:00 now and the stream of men coming into the student center has continued uninterrupted. Across the way, Gene Getz, who is one of our general session speakers, is greeting some friends and mingling with the crowd. The Wisconsin fan is still sitting there, hasn’t moved or spoken since I sat down. Two guys behind me are discussing the future of Moody Broadcasting. Just another day in the big city. Dinner is in two shifts, and ours starts in half an hour. Like I need it after the cheese burger from Ed’s.

Wow, the day is getting long and it’s not even 1030 yet. I’m in a wrap-up mode at work; I’m taking vacation next week, and when I get back I’m transitioning to a new project, so I don’t really want to start on anything new. I had some prototype stuff to work on, but whenever I try to code-generate for it, the program blows up. (The code generator, not my program…) So, that’s going nowhere fast. I am sooooo not motivated to get stuff done. If I wasn’t burning a week of vacation next week, I’d take this afternoon off. But I can’t just keep burning vacation willy-nilly or I won’t have any left…

After work this afternoon I’m going to install the projector that you’ve heard so much about over the past weeks. Hopefully the long-throw lens will come today so I can actually test the whole thing out. But even if it doesn’t I’ll at least get the wiring and mounting done, and adding the lens will be trivial. I can’t wait to get it working…

Seeing as this is a very random post I’ll also note here that on our afternoon off from the pastor’s conference next week I have tickets to go see Star Wars Ep 3 on a digital projection screen. The picture quality for digital projection is supposed to be awesome… the two guys I’m going with saw Ep 2 there a few years ago and are still raving about it. I had thought about going to Wrigley and trying to pick up a ticket to see the Cubs, but I probably can’t afford that… so I’ll stick with Star Wars.

Well I guess I’ll have to find some more quasi-work to justify my time here until I can leave at 1500. Who knows, I may even post here again.

No, this isn’t a home-improvement post… It’s more of a dealing-with-being-a-man-and-an-engineer post. :-)

One of the things I’ve had to learn over the past almost 7 years of marriage is to resist my instinctual impulse to “fix” everything. It’s different than at work. At work, my job is being presented with problems and designing solutions. At home, it’s not so much that way. When my wife comes to me with a problem, most of the time she doesn’t want me to design an elegant solution to her problem… most of the time she just wants me to shut up and listen, sympathize with her pain/frustration/whatever, and give her a hug. Once the emotional part is over then she’s enough of an engineer, too, that we can both work out a good solution to the problem. Still, it’s dang hard to shut my mouth sometimes.

Another one lately that has prompted this internal “you don’t have to fix it” reminder has been observing a recent brouhaha played out at least a bit over the blogs and comments of my sister, my brother, his girlfriend, and some other assorted players. The big brother and engineer part of me wants to dive right in, take sides, give lots of advice, try to fix everything up so that they’re happy again. But then I think back to my high-school years… I had undue amounts of girl-anguish, people that I really disliked, frustrations with life, and the like. But nobody needed to come fix them for me… I needed to live through them, learn from them. God used them to work in my life.

I was reading in Lamentations this morning (kinda painful to read, to be honest) and I was struck by how the prophet says God allowed all this pain and anguish of His people so that they would learn a lesson and repent. Read it again sometime. It’s a short book, but there’s a lot of painful descriptions there. Life would not have been fun for the Israelites who lived through the fulfillment of that prophecy. But then in the same little book, we get the reminder - God’s mercies are new every morning, great is His faithfulness.

So Andrew, Rebecca, Amber, if you’re reading this - I’ll give my two cents’ worth of advice right here, and be done with it. :-) Love God and pursue Him above all else. As far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men. Live life one day at a time, and remember that today is only one day of maybe 30,000 in your whole life. There’s plenty left to be lived.