Hope

For those who love worship music and/or want to support all those hurting at VT, check out this link. You won't regret it.

How Can I Keep From Singing

Chris Tomlin from Passion '07

Mark Your Calendars

The official leak (is that an oxymoron?) on the 268 blog this morning is that Passion is coming to Boston October 12-13th (Chicago October 19-20). A Passion conference within driving distace of me - I can't wait.

So, mark your calendars now. Great preaching and worship is coming to New England.

Louie News

Going in to the Passion 07 conference I knew that Louie Giglio had announced that there wouldn't be a Passion 08 conference. At first I was disappointed (I had wanted to go and volunteer next year), but then I realized if Louie was stopping this event it must be to focus on something bigger.

Sure enough, they've now announced plans for two exciting new projects. The first is regional events in 07 and 08, including a stop in Boston! Whoo hoo. The second is a global tour of Passion events. No cities announced yet. It's a pretty exciting step and fantastic to see the commitment to going global.

Now I need to get myself together to send materials to them and try to volunteer to do photography for them at one of the regional events. Motivation in January is generally low!

Edited to add - for those of you reading along at home, the Passion sessions are back up. Check them out at www.268generation.com

Getting Slower

Well, it looks like the flu isn't really the flu and is actually fibromyalgia. This means 10+ hours of sleep a day and spending the rest of the day in a haze and hardly being able to move. Not fun. I don't normally get sick like this in January, so I'm struggling to understand the point of being unable to function when I need to do so much.

Sorry to those that went to the 268generation.org website and missed Beth Moore's talk (they are only up for 24 hours). Right now there are talks by John Piper and Louie Giglio up. I haven't heard either, but I'm hoping to catch them tonight.

Have I mentioned that I'm addicted to 24? Thanks Bryan. I needed more things to compell me to keep me sitting on my couch. It actually wasn't such bad timing since I've been sick and can't really move much.

Speaking of sick/fibromyalgia/and generally moving slower and feeling out of it, I might have to slow down on the updating of the blog. I'm barely functioning, let alone being interesting and don't have a lot of spare energy. Hopefully I can kick this thing quickly. In the meantime - pray!

Better or Better?

It's amazing how I can feel fine when I'm at my house and even start feeling guilty for staying home when I'm not really sick. Then, I go in to work and within an hour I'm at death's doorstep again. I feel awful and the afternoon has only started. How can I be so tired when all I do is sleep?

Luckily my catch up has included reading two week's worth of Dilbert cartoons. That part is easy. Actual catch up is going to be much harder. Especially if I don't get rid of this bug!

In other news, run, don't walk to the 268 Generation site to see Beth Moore's talk from yesterday morning at the Passion conference on Humility.

Don't Miss Out

The Passion 07 conference started last night. I'm particularly interested in this year's conference because of their "Do Something Now" project that includes work with many global ministries and impacting Atlanta while they are there. Each person attending brought a towel and socks for the homeless shelters in the city because Louie said that when 15,000 followers of Christ decend on a city they city should know they are there. Cool idea.

Anyhow, for those of us not able to go to the conference, they are streaming the main sessions on their website. Just go to ENTER and then Watch Passion 07 Main Sessions Here. They are up for 24 hours each (so, the one up right now is last night's session). The sessions are about 2 hours and include the worship and the talk each night. Right now I'm an hour in and the worship has been amazing.

Speaking of missing out, I'm still sick and at home missing out on everything. Well, I guess not everything. Instead of doing work I'm watching Louie preaching, so it's not all bad!

Here's an amazing interview with Louie Giglio about the Passion conference. The quote that just brings it all together:

But when you wed any expressions of worship and the teaching of God’s Word, the truth is what sets you free, not the music. Music makes you feel good, but the truth is what sets you free. When you put those two things together and you add to them a call to action, then I think you’re finding a sweet spot for what worship is.

If the call to action is not there, then we’re just soaking up a great experience, and man, give me more, more, more, more. We are consuming worship. The point of worship, though, as far as I can tell from reading the Bible cover to cover, is not for people to consume the worship, but for people to be consumed in the worship for the glory of God.

The combination of worship in music, strong theological teaching and then the call to action. Sweet! Take out any of those three and what you've got is a hollow reflection.

Ack - and mild panic

So, I'm just jumping through my usual links this morning catching up on things. I get to the 268 Blog (Louie Giglio's blog and an information center for the Passion movement events). In the new entry he mentions the "big news" that was announced in last week's podcast (which I haven't listened to yet).

There's no Passion conference next year.

Evidently there's some new direction, but there won't be the mega-conference after Christmas next year.

Now, backing up a little, it had been my plan to next year volunteer at Passion, either with prayer (which is a huge part of the conference) or communications (hopefully doing photography). This would mean flying to Atlanta after Christmas, staying in a hotel and getting submerged in the whole event. Exciting right? Given that I did the England trip this year, it wasn't really feasible to spend around $1000 to do the Passion thing as well.

However, now next year doesn't exist as an option.

I really want to have a chance to support this organization and be part of the ministry. However, financially it doesn't make any sense to do right now. Plus, taking that much time off when I've recently (two months ago) taken off three weeks would be pushing my boss's patience.

What to do. What to do. Atlanta for New Year's?