Kevin and I arrived in Nashville Monday night late – felt so good to get into our room finally and get some rest.
Had breakfast this morning with my emergent roommate from last year, Gregg Hampton, his wife Cyndi and Lilly Lewin. Spent the evening with Lilly and many other friends. Jen Lemen came up and gave me a big hug, and she was chilling with DJ Chuang. I’ve run into many others as well. Dan Kimball said that he read pomomusings, which was fun – and I’ve run into a few others. And that’s really what these conventions/conferences are about. Yah, you can get resources – yah, people say that emergent is just becoming another consumer/fad/church-trend/whatever. But (while some do come to the convention for those reasons) many others come for the friendships, the connections, the networking, the conversations among old and new friends. I met 2 couples in my Critical Concerns Course who are going to be church-planting in eastern Pennsylvania (Lancaster County area) which isn’t too far from Princeton, so that was a fun contact to make, I hope we can stay in touch – they seem like wonderful people. The convention hasn’t even officially started yet, but we’re off to a great start.