Staff Conference 2011

Today is the start of Staff Conference 2011 and I'm excited to be here.  Every three years InterVarsity gathers all our staff together together for training and teaching.  It's a great time to hear what God has been doing in and through our movement and to catch a vision for where we are headed.

This year some of the people we will hear from are Mary Poplin, Andy Crouch, William Tate and more. My hope is to post some of my favorite quotes and notes each day as we go along.

It'll also be fun to finally see some of the videos Matt has worked on this past year. I actually haven't seen any of them yet, but have heard a lot about them so it'll be interesting to see what actually materialized. You can actually see a teaser of one of the videos below.



Staff Conference 2011 Teaser - University of Oklahoma from InterVarsity-twentyonehundred on Vimeo.

The Calling

Watch the full episode. See more Independent Lens.

Flipping through our 10 TV channels last month, we stumbled upon a documentary called The Calling by Independent Lens. It’s an ambitious documentary that follows seven different individuals from various faith backgrounds as they pursue their calling into religious service (Muslims, Catholics, Evangelical Christians, and Jews).


I’d highly recommend watching it if you ever have four hours to spare.  It's actually worth it.

A few things I was struck by:

This was not a documentary about the differences between the various faiths. It does however focus almost exclusively on the idea of a “calling” and how each of these individuals relates to the calling on their lives. I was a bit disappointed they didn’t get into some of the differences between the faiths, but I think that would have distracted from the power of the documentary if they had done so.

The Catholic Church was portrayed in a more positive light than what I’ve become accustomed to in the media. It was refreshing to see.

I’m not entirely sure why, but I came away thinking about religious traditions and whether the Evangelical/Protestant church has thrown out to many.

2010 Reflection Questions

I've been noticing a lot of chatter recently about New Year's resolutions: people making them, how to keep them, etc. While I don't think I've ever seriously made any New Year's resolutions, it does seem like the time of year to entertain such thoughts. 

With all focus on looking ahead and making resolutions, I was slightly taken aback by a friends posting about reflecting on the past year. For some reason that struck me as an odd notion in today's culture.  We tend to be so forward thinking that it's rare to see people actively stopping to reflect. 

This friend had been introduced to a blog called Reverb 10 that posted a reflection question for each day of December.  The basic idea behind these questions is that by spending time reflecting on the past will you be prepared to best think about the future.

In glancing at the questions today, I was impressed by variety and creativity of the questions.  And although I'm jumping in kind of late in the game (since New Year's is in two days), I think I'll start 2011 out by doing some reflecting on the past.  If anything, it'll provide some fun journal prompts for January.