After an 11pm flight on a full plane, a red-eye that arrived at O’Hare at 4:25am, and a short drive home, and not any where near being rested, I want to pause (before a nap) to record my last day at the NPC.
One of the highlights of the NPC was meeting readers of my blog. I had breakfast with Pastor Jim Martin, from Waco. His own blog (see sidebar) remains one of my favorite blogs — full of pastoral wisdom and sensibility. Then a chat with David and Maggie Swanson from this area; they are both hard at work at a church. And then Dana Ames, one of my most devoted readers, who gave to Kris and me a bottle of Merlot from her own county up north of San Francisco.
Lunch with Tony Jones, Tony Campolo and his wife, with Josh Hamilton, who is devoted to a plan to work hard against tyrrany — I had to excuse myself because of my own session. My session was on Embracing Grace, and it was long but lots of very good and challenging questions about how to bring a bigger gospel into the confines of local church work.
Then I met with John Frye and Curt Howell, along with a cadre of friends from Grand Rapids, for a dinner at Cheesecake Factory. After dinner we wandered over to the poolside to chat about my posts on homosexuality. Good conversation.
John Raymond called and told me to hustle over the auditorium so I could meet someone and I did — and I got to meet Michael Card. I’ve been a fan of his since the 80s and I told him my favorite song of his was the Song of Simeon, and I think he was delighted one of his older songs is still meaningful. I hope you can listen to it sometime. John Ortberg was there and he filled me in on his doings. Wish I could have stayed to listen to both.
Trip to the airport with Marko and then that red-eye flight.
It was a great trip. More to be said at the substantive level in the future.