Life Here and There

So why the delay between my Day 3 post and this one? Well, I had to leave Radicalis early on Friday to catch a flight. I found out in Orange County that my connecting flight in Atlanta had already been cancelled (becuase of the forecast of snow). No biggie – my wife booked me a room in Atlanta. The next day? Mayhem. My second flight out was cancelled and my third flight out I missed because I was standing in line for seven hours to get a boarding pass.

Did I complain? Nope. And I’m not complaining now. I got to know a few cool folks standing around me. I had time to think about the six hours when Jesus hung on the cross (which makes standing in an airport cake) and the fact that I really deserve hell anyway which also makes standing in line a pleasure. (When I shared this latter lesson with a lady behind me, she looked at me like I was totally nuts.) So finally, some takeaways…

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Yesterday we heard from Pastor Rick, from Mark Driscoll and from Ed Stetzer in the general session. It was a powerful morning!

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Today was pretty awesome in a variety of ways. I woke up in southern California, had some quiet time and then hopped on a van with Andy Stanley and Jeff Henderson and headed over to Saddleback. Once there I heard three tremendous messages by Rick Warren, Andy, and Perry Noble. Here are some of the notes I wrote…

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Last year we bought a Nintento Wii and then later, a Wii Fit thingie designed to utterly humiliate me! It sighs when I step on the scale, mocks me for not showing up in xx# of days, and loves to point out how many Yoga moves I can’t do because… I’m inflexible!

But in leadership, I’m quite the opposite. I love and respond to flexibility. What I mean by that is, I love the freedom of trying things and failing, and knowing that failure is ultimately okay. I remember Rick Warren once saying that for everything Saddleback Church had succeeded in doing, there were twenty experiments at which they had failed.

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Wow, the media has really enjoyed this particular debacle. The gay rights movement is up in arms over Barack Obama’s choice of Rick Warren to pray the invocation at his inauguration in January. This results primarily from Rick’s endorsement of Proposition 8, which is essentially a protection of the definition of marriage as between one man and one woman for the state of California.

I don’t envy Rick for being thrown into such a firestorm. He’s been been accused of spreading hate and of being a homophobe. I see it as kind of a defining moment in American culture over the issues of homosexuality and tolerance. If any American Pastor has made an attempt to nurture fair and balanced discussion on social and political issues, it’s Rick Warren. Call him what you will, he desires to dialog with people on both sides of the aisle. He released this statement regarding the whole affair:

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