Spanky's Place

Today's first session, "Wholistic Ministry", was taught by Kirbyjon Caldwell, who is the senior pastor of in Houston, Texas.

His message was......Wow. Make that a double-wow. I love my church (Crosspoint Christian Church) very much, and my pastor (Steve Hammer, not only an excellent pastor, but a good friend). However, if Kirbyjon's church were within driving distance of my home, I'd have to do some serious thinking about where I was going to spend my Sunday mornings. He is that good a preacher. Thankfully, it's not.

His lesson explained what wholistic ministry is, and why it is so important. Just as wholistic medicine looks at (and treats) the whole person vs. the symptom / disease; wholistic ministry looks at (and serves) the whole person vs. just the sin / transgression. He (rightly) asks the question "If you aren't ministering to the whole person's needs; and if you aren't ministering to the whole community's needs, then are you truly ministering at all?" He used as an example the sheer idiocy of preaching about the sin of drug addiction without offering any help/support for drug addicts who are trying to quit. (Yes, there are churches where this and similar things still occur today.) His passion for his calling is very apparent; and his love and compassion for others is undeniable.

I don't have my notes with me, (they are packed in my "checked" baggage), so I'm not going to go into any more detail on his sermon (simply because I don't want to screw up or mistranslate any of his points). Suffice to say that this was the very best sermon of the week. The people of Windsor Village are very blessed to have Kirbyjon as their pastor.

I couldn't attend the second session today (due to airline schedule conflicts). It was given by Bill Hybels. If it was anything like his opening sermons then I'm willing to bet it was pretty good. We (my church) are going to order the session CDs from this conference, so I'll be able to listen to the sermon within the next couple of weeks.

All in all, this was a wonderful conference. As I said in my earlier posting, it was both very similar to, and very different from, the software conferences I usually attend. I enjoyed it very much, I feel energized, exhausted, invigorated, and drained all at the same time. Most importantly, I feel closer to God and Jesus than I have felt in a long time. Which, if you really think about it, is the most important thing of all.