I love this place

Don't worry, I'm not a convert.. I still love the Covenant. But this place is great-the campus, the people.. Today a Presbyterian minister from Canada gave me the tour. She has been down here several times for workshops, etc. and she and her colleague have just published an Alban Institute book.. Anyhow, she gave me the library tour, the center I've already forgotten the Dutch name for, which contains all things John Calvin, the Seminary.. the Christian Ministry Resource Center, the Institute for Christian Worship... it's quite remarkable. The library has more current periodicals than I knew existed. Honestly. It left me speechless, which is pretty impressive.

The Center for Excellence in Preaching, which is hosting this "Preacher's Oasis", has been in existence for one year now. Scott Hoezee (pronounced "Jose") is the Director. Scott and his colleagues, Mary Hulst and Randy Bytwerk, are instructing us in the mornings.They are engaging, interesting, helpful, fun, humorous and challenging. And I wish we could hear from them more. Our group is quite talktative! That said, the group tangents were also helpful, but I would have loved to hear Randy more this morning.

Much of today's conversation centered around ideas for sermons. Not actual ideas, but thinking of and developing them. We also discussed the conflicting views on Power Point and other such media (only use it if it helps make a sermon stronger, is the general opinion here..). Interesting for me to think about while Arbor is still hoping to buy a screen/projector. I look forward to that time, but today's discussion reminded me of the necessity to do it right. It's also a bit refreshing... much talk in the past two days has been both affirming and challenging.

Thursday is my "one-on-one" with Scott Hoezee... I admit I'm nervous. This one-on-one includes viewing my two videotaped sermons (eeeck!), and reviewing comments on congregational evaluations. Fortunately I'm still able to enjoy these days while waiting for the scariest part of this workshop.

So, two more days...