Nope, this is no photoshopped photo. This is a photo taken on July 25, 2006 at the Atlanta Emergent Cohort at the Rock Bottom Brewery. What you see is Jake Myers giving a synopsis of Shane Hipps’ book The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture, and you also see North Point Community Church pastor Andy Stanley sitting and listening to Jake. At the Atlanta Emergent Cohort. Huh…?
My connection with Andy Stanley goes back to this blog post. I had visited North Point with Sarah and Mark, and wrote a little post. It wasn’t harsh – just my thoughts. For some reason, it became one of the most-referenced and most-commented-on blog-posts I’ve ever written.
And it was enough to get Andy to jump online (it was the first blog he had ever been to) and leave a hilarious comment. So we interacted a bit on the blog, through email every couple months, and then a month ago, Andy and I got together and had coffee at Lenox Square Mall in Buckhead. We had a great conversation and I found Andy to be a very humble man, willing and eager to learn from others and incredibly supportive of young people getting into the ministry. Andy expressed some interest in learning more about Emergent and I invited him to the cohort.
And that was that. We had a great conversation – I think this is just a perfect example of two people from very different backgrounds and theological trajectories coming together through friendship, with an eagerness to know the Other more and learn from each other. I know the conversation is not over, and that’s exciting…
