pat loughery

Some of the most positive takeaways I have from this week:

Audio from the keynotes should be posted to the vineyard usa website soooooon.

I loved the theme: Missio Dei. The overall agenda for the Vineyard in the future is an extension of your past: To join in God’s ongoing mission in the world. To see what the Trinity is doing, and partner up.

I liked the balance of keynotes.

Gordon Fee was fantastic at several things: bringing passionate spirituality and deep wisdom from biblical truth in order to call us to be authentic, servants, focused on the message of the overwhelming grace of the cross. deeper than this, fee re injected the heart of a practitioner-scholar into the leaders of the vineyard, and this is a very beneficial thing.

I liked Philip Jenkins’ expanding our worldview (literally) beyond western and American Christianity to global and future Christian expressions. He also called us to task on several items. One of them, as Bert reported this morning, was the overwhelming whiteness of our people.

I really resonated with Bert’s keynotes to open and close the conference. Today’s closing keynote had me pushing for standing O’s in several spots. My blogging software crashed on me and I lost my notes, but I’ll try to post a framework from my friends’ notes. Bert called us to be intentional about multiracial/multicultural work; validating different expressions of church; untying the church and political parties; going back into urban centers to serve the poor and disenfranchised. He called the leaders to accountability by sharing a deeply personal story of his own personal struggles and temptations in the last year.

I can say that after today, I’m comfortable and excited with the direction that we’re heading s a movement. I do have questions and concerns still, but I trust Bert’s aim and focus. How we implement it is, as usual, up to us – but I did come away from the conference feeling confident that I and our church “fit” still.

I picked up DVDs of Gordon Fee’s first keynote and both of Bert’s talks, CD audio of some other stuff. I want to listen to Julia Pickerill’s presentation again – there were some elements of this one that really bothered me, and I want to make sure that I heard the things I thought I heard before talking more in that direction.

Tri and the crew at Boise Vineyard has done an exciting project calling the church back into conservation of the environment. They broadcast a TV ad in Boise, did bumper stickers and an ad campaign around the theme of “God’s creation/A Gift/Our Responsibility”. They’re driving efforts to increase recycling, clean up wilderness areas, clean up streams, etc. It’s a very exciting project. I got to spend time with Tri at lunch today and he’s thrilled with it. He said that it’s opening some eyes in the area, and the local alternative press is warily watching to see if the church actually fulfills its goals or if it’s just another program, more talk.

On a personal note – through the week, I had 5 different occasions in which people ministering to me had prophetic insight regarding evangelism in our church and in my own life – soon, effective, and with the integrity that I’ve been seeking. I can’t wait to see what happens.