Hello all from wonderful, lovely, beautiful, fantastic Calgary, Alberta!!
This weekend I was in Edmonton, the capital city of our province, located 300 kms to the north of Calgary (for those who are not familiar with Canadian geography). The experience has given me a greater appreciation for the wonderful city that I live in. I found Edmonton's downtown, where I was, to be very smelly, and the weather was not overly pleasant...but nevertheless, it was a wonderful weekend (for the most part) and here's why.
I was in Edmonton (formerly the City of Champion's, now known as the City North of Calgary and home to Canada's worst hockey team) for the Breakforth Canada conference. Breakforth is an annual Christian ministry and worship conference held in Edmonton. This is the first time I've attended and it was a great time. There were some fantastic speakers, including Ken Davis (so very funny!!) and K.P. Yohannan (President and founder of Gospel for Asia). I attended 4 workshops by Dan Kimball, a pastor of a emerging church congregation in Santa Cruz, which were very interesting, as well as one workshop on storytelling for children. I thoroughly enjoyed all of the workshops and the majority of the speakers.
During the Saturday morning main session a fairly well-known Christian speaker and author addressed those attending. I am hesitant to mention his name, because many people will recognise it and I don't really have much good to say about him. I will say that he has written soem excellent books and much of his ministry in the past has been extremely worthwhile and beneficial for many, many people. However, during this session he gave a very strong message, setting very limited and demanding perameters for discipleship, many of which were very valid and true, however I did have a problem with his actual presentation in that it did not give much grace to the humanity of those attending. After his teaching time, he offered an opportunity for a response, inviting people who felt convicted and led to come forward. After many people had gone forward, he gave a "last opportunity to respond." Little did those of us who had not responded know what was coming next...and I doubt those who had responded had any better idea of what was to come. This man proceeded to call upon the authority of a prophet of God, and with that authority called down the judgement of God upon those of us who had not responded then and there.
This does not agree with my understanding of the nature of God and I wholeheartedly believe that the man was in fact not speaking as a prophet of God. I know God to be loving, merciful and gracious, and a call for judgement is none of these things. I also know that God is just, but He has appointed a Day of Judgement, however we have not reached that yet. I know that because of the description of that Day given in the book of Revelation. And so I believe that God has in store much, much more grace for us and that He is withholding His judgement until that Day.
Saturday evening K.P. Yohannan spoke, covering pretty much the same points as had been covered that morning, but he spoke out of love and compassion for people and a deep, deep love for Christ. He demonstrated the true grace and love of Christ in a way that I have not seen many times in a person.
After the evening session with K.P. Yohannan, some friends and I went to see Panic Squad. Panic Squad is a group of three guys who live in Vancouver and do clean improv professionally. I'd seen them before and they are simply fantastic at what they do. Very, very funny, but they keep things very clean. Improv is so much fun!! They put on a great evening and received a standing ovation at the end of it.
We left the conference early to get back to Calgary a bit early. One person in our group had his birthday on Sunday and wanted to get home because he and his wife were going out for dinner. I had also wanted to leave because I had to work that evening and wanted a bit of down time between travelling and working.
Overall, a fantastic weekend. Got to spend a lot of time with good friends and heard some great speakers, learned stuff and was inspired in my faith.
