Live Blogging the EM Pastors' Conference

10:45 am EST: Plenary session with Dr. Kevin Park, Associate for Theology for the PCUSA. He's sharing about 2 Cor 12:9, which is our conference's theme verse. Cool connection: in a way, this was Calvin's theme verse as well. He thought the sum of the Christian life was self-denial.

Question: what weaknesses of ours/mine show Christ's power?

sitting next to the great Sam Park of intervarsity fame.

1140 am: answered prayer: moving into a time of each pastor sharing testimonies of weakness...

3 PM: minor miracle - able to round everyone up for a group icture. good job conference committee!

heard a challenging word from Seattle-ite Jean Kim about wokring to end homelessness. Shes a living model of how God uses people to do His work. i was especially impressed by the fact that she's been teaching her grandkids to save their money in a piggy bank in order to provide a homeless family the deposit money they needed to move into a rental. last thanksgiving they were able to give $700!

445 PM: Professor Park speaking about consumerism, "After church, I'd like to be able to say that i take my family hiking or to the park. But instead I take them to another church. It's called Costco."

Wednesday:

1045 am - Heard a great message from Professor Eunny Lee, Old Testament scholar. Probably going to preach about this, but for now let me say that "we are not the rabbit."

Just heard an interesting statistic from Dr. Josephine Kim of Harvard's ed school: Asian-Americans are the only ethnic group more likely to grow more depressed the more often they go to church.