A Weekend for Rest and Growth
02. Oct, 2008 
2 Comments
To make a long story still long, but worth reading…
God has been really working on my own personal spiritual growth. A couple weeks ago our Team (small group) decided to go through Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline. As I started reading the book again, God really started shining some light on my soul. I have never been more consistent in my own personal worship time, but conviction upon conviction arose as I realized that I have not been actively pursuing disciplines and postures in my life to make sure that moment-by-moment I am following the King in obedience. The rule of the kingdom of God in our life was never meant to be isolated to a 30-60 minute window of time in the morning. But throughout all of life. I have been reading all the spiritual formation stuff I can get my hands on, including Dallas Willard’s The Spirit of Disciplines.
In a very providential way, right before I left work on Monday I decided to go to the Renovare web site. Renovare is the organization started by Richard Foster to aid people in their spiritual growth….all the heavy weights in this field are a part of his organization. When I got to the site, I realized that they are having a conference in Houston this weekend.
Long story finally concluded… This weekend (Thursday-Saturday) Kari and I are going to Houston for a Renovare Conference. I am pumped. We are going to get away, be by ourselves.. without kids, stay in a swank hotel (thanks expedia for screwing up on our cruise and giving us a nice credit!) and go to a conference that will spur us on to our own spiritual growth.
Pray for us that God will give us a refreshing time away, but at the same time, that we would be challenged to grow in our walks with the Lord.
I don’t know if I will post about the conference while we are there, but expect some posts next week. I will try to update twitter as we go through the conference.
Author Info
Howdy Brent. I noticed you and your wife at James Catford’s media session at the Renovare conference, and stumbled across your blog by doing a search on “blog, houston, renovare.” What did you think of the conference in general? I still have much to digest, but I agree wholeheartedly with the main theme: It’s time for a wider calling for American Christians to become disciples (Followers, as Ortberg said), and not just Users.
Also – to comment on your comment in your “About Me” section about using a PC instead of a Mac… I finally switched to Mac about a year ago. I grew up with PCs, and for 6 years, I was a systems administrator in primarily PC environments, so I’m extremely familiar with PCs and the fact is that Macs really are more stable. I use my Mac for live music when I’m leading musical worship, and you don’t want it to crash when that’s happening. Same if you’re creating a video and are in the middle of a long render.
So, there’s my justification of my being yet another worship leader who uses a Mac. I’m surprised this guy hasn’t mentioned Macs, because you’re right. Worship leaders love Macs. I happen to like mine for the right reasons.
Now, all that being said, a wider range of software is available for the PC, and PCs are more affordable, so if a crash once in a while doesn’t bother you (it didn’t bother me until it happened in a live setting once too often), then PCs are the way to go.
Chris
We had a really good time at the conference. It was perfect for where we are in life. We are chin-deep in this thing called life with busyness all around, and we have spent lots of time developing our professional lives, physical fitness, etc. But God has been calling us to develop our souls to a new and deeper level. We have been around disciplines, etc for all of our christian lives, but there is a new stirring in us to go deeper.
As far as the PC thing… you better believe that next time I buy a computer, I am going to jump head-long into the mac world.