You may have noticed, but I didn't post a recap of AI this week. Why not? Because I was in Louisville, Kentucky for a Bible conference called Together for the Gospel with six other guys from our church. So I haven't really been on the computer much this week.
We left from Tulsa on Monday morning at 8 a.m., (Okay, it was really nearer to 8:10, but probably no one cares), stopping at 10:30 for breakfast at a Kum and Go in Joplin, a pack of Hostess mini-donuts and a Diet Coke makes a very good meal, that lasts most of the day. Next stop was Springfield, where Dylan, Josh and I got some exposure to those high-end town resturaunts in Panera Bread. It was an interesting place to look around, and have some good conversations with Greg, Paul, Peter and Steven. Missouri is an absolutely beautiful state; it's kind of breathtaking, most places. So many trees, grass, rocks and hills. The road doesn't seem to cut through the land to get somewhere, it's natural, part of the landscape. You don't really drive on it to make great time, by driving on it, you have a great time. It takes awhile to drive all the way through(About six hours). And nearly everyone else missed the views because they were taking a nap. Seeing the Gateway Arch loom off in the distant skyline behind fields and pastures was really neat. We stopped for gas at a Phillips 66 just inside the Illinois border at 3 p.m., the scenery of the southern part of that state is unimpressive, at best.
Southern Indiana comes straight from the opening scene of "Hoosiers", where the caravan is heading to the game; nothing but flat farmland most of the way as far as you can see. Not much to do if you live there but farm and play basketball. It's a friendly sort of plain, though there's not many towns nearby the interstate. I can picture Phillip Gulley's characters living there very easily. Southeast Indiana is hilly and heavily wooded, something like northwest Arkansas. It feels very alone in there. Took us about two hours to get across each of those states.
We arrived at the first of our Louisville destinations, our Galt House hotel, at 8:30 p.m., it was fancy. After checking in and getting our stuff in our rooms, we then walked(WALKED) around downtown Louisville looking for a place to eat around nine o'clock. It was an adventure comparable to jaywalking through Washington, D.C. Two things, besides the fact that ten hours is quite a ways to drive in one day, stood out: We didn't pass a single toll booth once we were out of Oklahoma, and we didn't see any casinos along the road past our home border, either.
Tuesday came around quickly for us in the city that produces 80% of the U.S. bourbon supply and 90% of all disco balls manufactured(Might there be some kind of connection there?), went to Panera for breakfast(I'm a tightwad with an appetite of a sparrow, just ate a cookie) after a Starbucks run/Bible study time, where me and Greg met this black guy named Lasadhi who was sitting there reading from James 2 on his iPhone. He noticed we were both reading our Bibles, we talked for a few minutes, then he volunteered to pray for us right there, strangers he'd never seen before and probably won't again. So he did, and then he got on his bus for wherever it was he was going. That kind of thing doesn't happen here, it stood out.
Since the conference didn't start until one that afternoon, we had a whole morning to kill, so we toured the Louisville Slugger Factory and Museum, which was a really cool experience. The tour guide, Matthew, was one of those interesting people in his job, made you enjoy listening to his explanations, unlike those tour guides who are annoying and you dislike. Held a bat that was over a hundred and thirty years old, made for a guy named Pete Browning, who played for the Louisville Eclipse base ball team. Well, he liked the bat this guy at the local cabinetmaking shop crafted for him, so he asked for some more, and then a few teammates and others decided that they wanted some bats made for themselves, too. Eventually, the demand for baseball bats became so great that they decided it was more profitable to quit cabinetmaking and make sticks for ballplayers to hit a ball with. The name they adopted? Pete's Browning's nickname, the Louisville Slugger. They can churn out several thousand bats a day, all from that one building, about the size of a Wal-Mart.
All this exploring downtown on foot kind of made me feel like an extra from the Billy Ray Cyrus series on Pax about ten years ago called "Doc", it was a neat feeling. The KFC Yum! Center is a nice building, home to University of Louisville Cardinals basketball in wintertime, and nearly everything else in the other times. Not without it's faults, though; Narrow exit/entrance corridors in the heart of the arena, and only four sets of bathrooms. We got seventeen free books as part of the conference, the teaching at the first session was good, music by Bob Kauflin of Sovereign Grace Music, then messages from C.J. Mahaney of Sovereign Grace Minstries and Al Mohler, president of a seminary in the Louisville area. There were about 8,000 people there, which when you see converged into one place for no apparent reason, unlike a concert or a ballgame where there's something to focus on, is a huge lot of people to be in one place at the same time. About 90% percent of the attendees were men, about 75% of those men were pastors, with tenures at their specific churches ranging from two days to forty-five years and nine months. Some of the sermons were a little hard to figure out how to apply to average non-pastors, but they were good nonetheless. CJ spoke on how we can sometimes get discouraged, but how God's still there to help and guide us in those times. Al taught on the power of words, how we need to use them more often in our sharing of the Gospel, instead of just passively hoping that our actions will serve as a good witness. I need to work on that. Mark Dever taught on the dangers of false conversions in the church that night, it wasn't quite as applicable as the first two were. A panel discussion of them talking about preaching in general afterwards was interesting, I always enjoy hearing people talk about the behind-the-scenes details of how they do their jobs.
Wednesday's first sermon came from a black preacher from the Grand Cayman Islands named Thabiti Anyabwile, don't ask me how to pronounce it, lol. Anyway, he was pretty funny, spoke on how we've kind of lost confidence in the Gospel, and that's part of the reason we have trouble witnessing to people we come across, because we think that it's up to us to change them, when it's really the Holy Spirit working through us instead. A slight bug was going around us, Paul wasn't feeling too well most of the day, and Dylan and I both had our stomachs act up. Anyway, so I missed the first fifteen minutes of Kevin DeYoung(Author of "Just Do Something")'s sermon, which was irritating, because it turned out to be very good, about the power of the Holy Spirit, how it works in our lives. Then lunch at Smashburger(It's a hard balance to strike between eating cheap and well, and being with other people in basic fellowship around a meal. Not at all spiritual, but one of the things I took away from this trip was that it's sometimes okay to treat food not as a tool, to be devoured so that you can move on to the next thing, but as a destination, kind of, that you slow down and enjoy.)
After lunch was a series of small-group sessions, called breakouts, Josh and I have this wonderful way of getting directions crossed up and inserted backwards. We went to the wrong hotel, then searched around again until we found the right one, then once we'd gotten the right building, proceeded to take a left when we probably should have taken a right, ending up in a different breakout than what we'd signed up for, so we listened to a guy talk about the need to evangelize more to Muslims. Interesting, but hardly seemed applicable to our lives here right now. But, maybe, later on, it might come useful, we don't know what the future hold for us, but God does. After that was over, we went to an optional panel discussion on the ways to teach adult Sunday school, which was a mistake. Extremely boring, our feet hurt from using them more than normal, and the convention center it was in was HOT. We did have a neat talk about lesson planning with Steven, our youth group leader, though.
Wednesday night we listened to the blistering oratory of David Platt, author of "Radical", on the importance of missions. It's a topic that's easy to say, 'Oh, yeah, that's important. We need more missionairies to tell people about Jesus.", but you don't often realize how vital it is. I think that guy could be labeled brilliant, because he could be just a few steps away from being mad. Extremely passionate speaker, his intensity was captiivating, both of his delivery and the message; it was kind of scary, and made me glad that this guy's a preacher, and not a politician. It he had political ambitions instead of heavenly ambitions, he could very easily become a dictator, that powerful speaker.
Courtney texted me updates on American Idol during this sermon, watching it two days later, I agreed with most of her comments. Glad to have a sister like that.
Greg and Steven went to a special after-session on something to do with marriage, which was hopefully helpful and will be put into practice with their wives, me, Josh and Dylan stayed up late watching SportsCenter while waiting for them to get back.
Thursday's first sermon, coming on the heels of another bag of bagels from Panera(These guys have a slight addiction to Panera and Starbucks, I found) was from Ligon Duncan, he talked about Elijah, mainly. Yes, he was a great prophets and everything, but he'd let his priorities got all out of focus, and his ministry became an idol, more important to serve than to serve God. Elijah, and Moses, too, didn't want to see God's glory when they finally had the chance, so after they died, that was why they went to back to see Jeuss at the Transfiguration, where they finally understood all of what God had planned for them and their lives. Since He came down to Earth, the only way they could have seen that was by returning to visit Him. I NEVER would have picked up on that, it was a really interesting point to chew on. A panel discussion followed on the inerrancy of Scripture, it was really interesting to hear John Piper and all the other guys defend it. Greg met some guys from another church in Tulsa, they went to dinner with us at this bar-type place, it was a neat atmosphere, and one of them, Joey, was a character, that's for sure. We got a lot of enjoyment out of analyzing him afterwards. Characters are some of the most interesting people in the world to know, they make the world a better place.
Not at all in the same way, but John Piper is kind of a character, too. One who has a great gift for understanding and teaching Scripture, but that platform comes with an extra heaping of burdens, fears, stresses and temptations. His message was on God's delight in being Himself, which just listening to that title sounds confusing and kinda concise. Man, was that intersting, I couldn't take notes fast enough, definitely going to need to relisten to that one again. One of those rare moments when we realize how big a God we serve, and how powerful He is. You understand how small and helpless you are, and you're just overwhelmed by this crushing sense of thankfulness and gratefulness. Those times don't happen anywhere near often enough.
Thursday, Friday the 13th, began early, 4:48 a.m, one last stop at Panera for breakfast, then Greg and Peter needed their coffee fix, so a quick run by Starbucks again, and we were off just after 7 a.m.(which being on Eastern time, was just after 6 Central). Paul was visiting his sister for a few days, so it was just the six of us on the return trip. Picked up five newspapers on the way back home, it's a cheap way to learn from others in your chosen craft, and cheap entertainment, as I spent $3.25 on them. Ten hours, in the rain, is a long trip.
But, we got to talk about such varied topics as the struggle of public prayer, how many instruments and which ones should be the ideal for worship music, food, dating, planning ideas for new songs to learn as a congregation and youth group get-togethers, the weather, horror stories about hotels and Chinese food, and how someone needs to invent a portable pitcher's mound, lightweight enough to be hauled around easily, inexpensive enough to be widely available to Little League and high school coaches, strong enough to hold 200 lbs. of weight, and that it should open up like an umbrella, and then trying to figure out what kind of materials it could be crafted from.
It was a good trip, overall, we got to Tulsa about 5:15 p.m, straight into a bunch of incoming severe storms. Welcome back home, right? From there, we each went home and spent today re-acclimating ourselves into the real everyday world. glad I went, learned a lot. If you would like to watch or listen to one or more of these sermons, stop by the conference website, at t4g.org.
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