The BIG Meeting....

This year the Church of the Brethren is celebrating 300 years since it's beginnig. In August of 1708 in Schwarzenau, Germany, 8 people who had been studying the Bible and felt strongly that they needed to say yes to Jesus for themselves and enter the waters of baptism as adults. At the time this was a crime, punishable by death... because they were members of the state church (Lutheran) and would have already been baptized as infants.... to be re-baptized was to renounce the state church. From the Eider River where they were baptized, they immediately went into hiding and eventually found their way to America where they began what is now known, in part, as the Church of the Brethren.

This past week, the Church of the Brethren held it's Annual Conference or as some call it Big Meeting, in Richmond, VA. It was a joint conference with one of the 5 off-shoots of the original Brethren body... The Brethren Church. Attendance was over 6,000 people with nearly 900 delegates sent from congregations to conduct the business of the church.

Annual Conference is always a time of re-connecting with old friends and meeting new ones. This year as we did that, it was unsettling how old we are becoming... many of our friends from Seminary have children in college or going to college and in one case a young man, who was a teen years ago when we were students with his parents at Bethany Theological Seminary, is now on the faculty of the Seminary! That will make one feel old in a HURRY! WOW!

It was also fun to be aksed to share leadership of an insight session on Engaging Our Communities with Jesus.... I shared SOME of what God has done and is doing at Community of Joy in the last year!