In Wendell Berry’s book, Jayber Crow, he describes life in the small river town of Port William, Kentucky. That’s far removed from Erwin’s place of birth, El Salvador, or where he currently lives, Los Angeles. However, I think Wendell Berry points to something that illustrates Erwin and why he is so unique. Berry depicts the young ministers who come to town as “those who had learned to have a very high opinion of God and a very low opinion of His works – although they could tell you that the world had been made by God Himself. What they didn’t see was that it is beautiful, and that some of…

Last year a friend passed along a new book announcement to me and asked me if I had ever heard of Austin or his new book – Take Your Best Shot. I had not…so I passed it along to Steve Haas at World Vision who wrote back that he knew Austin and his family and they were terrific. I passed that note along to Michael Hyatt at Nelson Publishing who passed my note along to Dan Gutwein, Austin’s father. So, after about the fourth pass of the ball I met Dan but tonight is the first time I’ve met Austin. My game is passing and his is shooting. So, I’m…

Eight years ago here at Phoenecian I made some opening remarks for the first time.  As you recall, that was September 2001 and we had just experienced the still incomprehensible attack on the twin towers, the Pentagon and the resistance of those brave passengers on Flight 93 led by Todd Beamer.  Someone told me I needed to say something at the very beginning of our time together that week-end.  Since then, I’ve made a few opening remarks every year.  This year I truly believed there was no need to do that.  Nothing was on my heart or mind.  I had nothing I felt called to say to you – until…

Several years ago at The Gathering conference we began to focus on young leaders of growing ministries. Over time this has become one of the most popular classes at the conference as everyone looks to this session as an encouragement, a challenge and a glimpse inside the work God is doing in a generation of globally connected and imaginative young men and women. We have hosted George Srour, the young man who as a college senior founded Building Tomorrow, a ministry building schools for orphans in Uganda. Jason Russell, one of three young film makers, who flew to Uganda to document the plight of young soldiers and created the movement…

Julius Caesar Johann Sebastian Bach Leo Tolstoy Nelson Mandela Steven Jobs Aristotle Louis Armstrong John Lennon Rudyard Kipling Cyrus the Great William Wordsworth David Bussau What do these people have in common? They were all orphans. Most often when we think of orphans we imagine a helpless child totally dependent on the kindness of strangers. All the typical pictures we see only confirm that. All the mail we receive emphasizes their vulnerability. We rarely imagine orphans as having the normal personality traits and gifts of children born to and raised by their natural families, and we often in our perfectly understandable mindset of charity and compassion fail to think of…

Francis Collins, the author of The Language of God, is a billionaire who gave it all away five years ago.  From 1993 until 2003 Francis worked with researchers in the United States, China, France, Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom in his role as the director of the National Human Genome Research Institute at the National Institutes of Health.  In those ten years the team successfully mapped and sequenced all of the human DNA and then compiled all of the information stored in what he describes as the instruction book.  If it were a book it would be over one billion words long; with 5000 volumes, each 300 pages long. …

In her book, Finding God Beyond Harvard, Kelly Monroe Kullberg describes the growth of the university campus based movement Veritas: “Veritas isn’t about religion. Its about the art of life and a new way of seeing. Veritas is truth whose nature is love and hospitality… Our approach is generally not debate but exploration… If Jesus is truth and life, we imagine every sane person wants to know.” Those words could describe what Nicky and Pippa Gumbel have demonstrated in the last 18 years through the Alpha Course. In 1986 when Nicky and Pippa came to Holy Trinity Brompton, Nicky was a practicing barrister in the City of London. He was…

I believe it was 1985 at Glen Eyrie in Colorado Springs that I first met Bill Hybels. I was sitting in on a small group of pastors of large churches from around the country for three days and, no surprise to anyone, there were a number of speeches made and even a little bit of posturing. The moderator had his work cut out for him to keep the brothers from talking right over each other. However, his biggest challenge was getting the youngest guy there to say anything. He hadn’t tuned out. He wasn’t rude. He just seemed to know something no one else knew. It turned out he did.…

An older and much wiser friend once told me to spend more time on the search for the right questions than right answers. How often that’s turned out to be true.  Even tonight I’m grateful for the influence of two men who asked a simple question over 2,500 years ago. I’m grateful for the conversation with God that followed as a result. I’m often asked about the vision of The Gathering.  Sometimes I feel uncomfortable in admitting I don’t think much about it.  I’ve never found the one minute elevator speech that explains who we are and what we do.  I wish I could for then I could stop asking…

Whatever happened to the easy days of introducing people for The Gathering. I could just stand here and say “Chuck Colson needs no introduction” or “we all know Jim Dobson” and get away with it. Everyone, including me, knew exactly what words best described them. Those days are gone for good! Groups like Switchfoot combine music, video, websites, blogs, multiple messages, layered meanings, causes that sometimes defy easy description and a heart for merging the gospel with a culture that is invariably surprised in the way it is presented. Many in their audiences would never describe themselves as Christian and are caught off guard by the way the music and…