Thoughts from Houston
A great day to reflect back upon...
- Before leaving Granger, I spent a couple of hours this morning with my peeps. We had a great conversation around the book by Reggie McNeal called The Present Future: Six Tough Questions for the Church. We had a lively discussion about the stuff we like and don't like about Reggie's thoughts. More on that later.
- We also had a photo shoot before leaving town. You should know that I hate pictures. I hate standing in front of a camera. I hate it when people say "smile" and "say cheese." But, my good friend Kem Meyer made it all very tolerable and set up a quite efficient photo shoot for our leadership team. Check ebay...I'm sure we'll have 8x10 glossy's available there soon.
- I spent several hours in a car and on a plane heading to Houston with my good friend and ministry partner, Mark Beeson.
- We ate dinner at the Cheesecake Factory with Perry Noble and Jason Moorehead from New Spring Church in Anderson, South Carolina.
- I ran into some other church leaders in the lobby of our hotel, including Kirk Nowery and Tim Avery of Injoy Stewardship Services.
- I also saw John Jackson from Carson City, Nevada. He's bringing 40 pastors from California with him to the Innovative Church Conference in two weeks. Imagine that...40 pastors from California coming out to a cornfield in Indiana to learn about innovation!
- Then, I hopped online in my hotel room only to find that my good friend Tony Morgan has once again been a highlight on Ian's website. It's been so long since Ian has written anything worth reading. Just kidding, he still hasn't.
Tomorrow I'm looking forward to spending some time with Randy Reeves, the executive pastor from Fellowship of the Woodlands Church. They are running about 20,000 people--so I figure I can learn something from him. I'll also be checking out the facilities of Lakewood Church (Joel Osteen) and Windsor Village Church (Kirbyjon Caldwell).