A New Leaf - Doug

So Mandy & I just got back from the LEAD conference put on by Willow Creek this past Thursday & Friday. No, we didn’t go to Chicago to attend the conference. For those of you who don’t know Willow Creek and the Senior Pastor, Billy Hybels, run a multi-site conference every summer called the Leadership Summit. The site we went to was in Lexington, MA and it was one of 50 some sites worldwide!

As with everything Willow does, it’s done with excellence. They line up world class speakers. This was the second time Mandy & I have had the privilege to attend. The first time we went was the summer between our two years in Bethlehem. Honestly, that summer the conference was probably the single greatest conduit of God’s strength for us to return and persevere through our 2^nd year of teaching in that context.

This year, besides Bill Hybels himself, (who is always fantastic) we heard folks like David Gergen, Tim Keller, Bono, and Tony Blair. Personally I was most inspired by Wess Stafford, President of Compassion international. He spoke of growing up as a missionary kid in Africa. He spoke of how the atrocious abuse (is there any other kind?) motivated him to dedicate his life to abolishing extreme child poverty. I sat there with tears streaming down my cheeks, amazed at how God can use even the most awful circumstances to bring about His wonderful purposes.

Beyond that the Leadership Summit is cool because it helps you to see what the Church is doing on a global scale. I get bogged down in day to day ministry and forget that the church has an amazing capacity to do good when it’s working correctly. Hybels is right on when he says “the local church is the hope of the world.” It’s so encouraging to see Christians making a difference in a hurting world. For example check out this site: http://www.kiva.org/. Now maybe you’ve heard of this before, but I hadn’t. It’s a site where folks like you & I can go and give a small loan to some entrepreneur on the other side of the world and help them stand on their own two feet in a small business! I also encourage you to check out http://www.goodafrican.com where you can learn about a really cool coffee company from Uganda.

Among the other things that I was inspired/convicted of this past week was about this blog. I’ve decided that I need to budget in time to my work schedule to blog. I’m going to give the blog address out to my teens this fall. I want this to be another way for them to connect with Mandy & I. Where we’re working in a bigger church now I know it’s going to be hard for me to build relationships with every student personally. I want this to be just one small way they can feel like they learn about Mandy & I and keep up with us.

I’ll leave off this time with a picture. It’s been a while since I posted an image to the site. Our family has grown. For most of the folks who read this blog you’ve probably seen our pictures on Facebook, but nonetheless this picture is too good not share every chance I get. This was taken on a recent trip to Grand Rapids, MI. I suppose we ought to change the name of the blog to TrackDougMandyandJordan!