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What do you call it when you come back from a retreat? — an attack?

Serra Retreat Center

Well, technically, I wasn’t on a retreat. I was at the 2010 Academy of Missional Preaching (Southwest). But it was held at the Serra Retreat Center in Malibu, and there were retreat-ish aspects to it. If you needed to work on a sermon, you could go sit in a garden like the one above and think about what you were trying to say. It was a pretty harsh existence, but we must all be prepared to sacrifice for the Kingdom. :-)

Of course, it was not only about preaching, it was about missional preaching. (Missional is the idea that the church exists as an instrument used in God’s mission to the world. See John 20:21, Acts 1:8, etc.) In addition to preaching, we also got to hear various speakers including John Dally (Choosing the Kingdom) and Darrell Guder (Missional Church).

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Samuel, You’re Not So Hot

Samuel wasn’t all that hot, you know? I mean, okay, he was a prophet. He has two books of the Bible named for him. He was the last judge of Israel, and God used him to commission the first two kings of Israel. But with that kind of pedigree, you just assume Samuel must be some kind of wonderful person. And, really, he’s not. Read the rest of this entry »

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