District Conferences

Ben is away at a district pastoral conference. He'll be getting home today. We had initially planned on all of us going to the convention, sort of a mini-vacation for me and the kids while he would be busy at the conference. We went to the last one together and it worked out all right except that we had to expose the kids to contemporary worship and overhead projectors in the service. Luckily the kids had previously been immunized with a healthy dose of Church to tell the difference. When we walked up to the church that was hosting the convention, one of those more modern looking churches, Evelyn thought we were walking into a mall! But I think that was the look they were going for. Anyways, the kids and I skipped attending any of the conference and got to tool around the city. We found the mall - the real mall - and a Hobby Lobby. It was quite a relaxing time.

So along comes this convention and the topic is worship with subtopics of dramatic storytelling, children's sermons, use of technology, such as projectors, in the service, "rethinking the practical aspects of planning and doing liturgy" and various other signs of the times. We decided that he would just go by himself this time since you don't bring your family into a war zone. I could tell that he was already stressed about the conference and he would get no relief in a small hotel room with two little kids plying for his attention. He called me last night and said things were not so bad as he thought they were going to be. However he did say there was a critical difference between the convention speaker and himself, the former having a less confessional viewpoint. And of course the opening service was mangled, but what else would you expect?

Oh, well. I still would have liked to go. It beats staying at home in the country with no car and two bored kids and cold, rainy weather.