Conference Update #5

After breakfast at IHOP to make Doug Kegarise happy, we attended the morning session today wherre Jeff Bogue, Pastor of the Greater Akron Grace Brethren Church spoke on the need for us to "give it all away" in order for praise to be brought to the Lord and for God to replenish us so that we can continue to invest our lives into ministry. It was a very challenging message that gave us plenty to talk about throughout the day.

After the session we headed to Clearwater Beach for the afteroon and then dinner at a great local restauant called Hops. Then it was a couple hour nap before the evening sessions where conference moderator, Jim Brown, who is also the pastor of our Goshen Grace Brethren Church spoke. Jim made a passionate presentation about the Biblical mandates in Scripture to care about and help the poor. I have nenver met anyone more passionate than Jim. This guy is amazing. At the end of the session he gave an opportunity for those at the conference to give toward allowing 600 African Orphans to attend James Gribble Christian High School. He did not tell us until after the offering what the amount needed was. The amount needed was $30,000. The offering totalled $30,050. It was truly a "God thing" and amazing to be part of. Following the session it was a stop at Steak and Shake. I will post a great picture of the four of us at the restaurant as soon as Matt sends it to me.

Tomorrow we hear Ed Lewis, Director of CE National in the morning session and then Doug and I will be attending the CE National luncheon. Tomorrow night we are doing something fairly interesting. A little under an hour away from Palm Harbor, in Lakeland, Florida, is a ministry of a man named Todd Bentley who hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world are coming to see in his nightly revivals. I have many, many "red flags" based on what I have seen, heard and read about this ministry but I also realize that everything I have seen or read is mostly little snips from different bloggers. I know that I get irritated when people make conclusions about my ministry based on little snips that they see and read on other people's blogs, so we thought it would be interesting to go see for ourselves. So Wednesday night we are going to take a road trip to Lakeland. I'll be sure to give you my honest appraisal afterwards.