sassy salsa

Salsa Dancing! Cindy and Olivia Mickey, Doug and Deb Tensen, George and Judy Marshall, Neil and Barb McMahon, Dante Marcellous and Derek Sallis with salsa partners.

The Freedom Museum

Kentucky's Freedom Museum is just over the bridge of the Ohio River, a river that separated a slave state from a free state by 179 yards. Several of us went to the museum today, and toured through the atrocities of the sale of human beings for the economic gain of white man. I was struck by two things as I walked through the journey from slavery to freedom. First, the propensity for evil in our hearts and flesh. And second, the perseverance and courage that God instills in the human spirit to pursue liberty. It was such a moving experience for me of confession and repentance for the ways my fellow human beings and myself have treated other fellow human beings with such injustice. Both in the past, but even today in ways that place my gain and power over someone else's basic rights and dignity. And there was such a power in the courage and activism of the abolitionists and runaway slaves. One woman declared, "I'd rather be a corpse than a coward." That I would have that resolve and passion as a follower of Jesus to fight the good fight for people's freedom in the spiritual sense and in the very tangible ways people are in bondage in our world.

John Perkins

John Perkins, founder of the Christian Community Development Association, is a man to know. He abides deeply with Jesus, he is a prophet and visionary, and he is an evangelist to the core.

I urge you to google John Perkins and read one or more of his many books. With Justice for All and Let Justice Roll Down would be good starter books. They tell his story and the birth of CCDA.

John leads Bible Study every morning for an hour. On paper, it's a morning "option"; in actuality, he's the start of the plenary session in the morning because almost everyone arrives that hour before to hear the Word of God from John.

John Perkins will be 80 in June. He's as passionate today as he was 50 years ago about reconciliation to God through the blood of Jesus and reconciliation to one another in how we love each other.

multi-ethnic community

One of my workshops today was entitled, "Seven Principles of the New Culture", principles for sharing life in multi-ethnic community. Real, real good. I haven't checked it out yet, but the presenters were from Renew Partnerships and recommended we go to their site at
www.thenewculture.org I look forward to being able to spend some time at that site.

Thursday review

To summarize the day-

The day started off with a 3 mile run for me. I ran in two states today...Ohio and Kentucky. The bridge that connects the two states is about a five minute jog from our hotel, so we crossed the bridge, ran Kentucky for about 15 minutes, and jogged back into Ohio. Nathan, if you are reading this, we ran past the Cincinnati Bengal stadium.

Opening session was some worship time and a precious hour with JP (John Perkins) leading Bible Study. If I had to give his study a title today, it would be "back to the basics". John spoke of the crisis in the Church today as being one of a lack of discipline and discipleship. Knowing the Word of God, living out the Word in obedience, confession, and prayer as listening to God. He used 1 John 1 and 2 as the text.

Wayne Gordon gave a good word this morning using 1 Samuel 15:1-35, the text where God had asked Saul to annihilate a people and their possessions, but Saul spared Agog and the best of the spoils he did not destroy. He then tried to justify his disobedience and live as if partial obedience was to be respected. Gordon spent time talking about partial disobedience to the Word of God is disobedience straight up. And if anything is going to derail ccda, it's our disobedience to the full Word of God.

The evening session's speakers were Gabriel Saguero, senior pastor at Lamb's Church in Manhatten, and Jim Wallis, leader of Sojourners. Both were excellent. Both spoke on synergy and how we must be about this walk and work together. I'll likely bring home cd's or dvd's of many of the main sessions if you'd care to borrow and listen after our return home. The picture at the top of this post is of a group of young ballerinas called Cure City Princesses who danced this evening in the main session.

what a great group of friends

This is our group at CCDA this year:

front to back, left to right:

Ellaysa Newton, Laura Hoy, Brad Hillebrand, Barb McMahon, Marla Kraayenbrink

Derek Sallis, Blayne Jesse, Brynn Gardner, Dante Marcellous, Chassidi Ferguson, Deb Tensen

George Marshall, Shawna Stone, Judy Marshall, Randy Kraayenbrink, Erin Hagen, Doug Tensen, Neil McMahon, Kirsten Klepfer, Cindy Mickey.

The group met after tonight's session for some time together to share and pray. And play...below is a picture of a round of "1,2,3, Kung Fu Panda", a game taught by Mr. Brad Hillebrand, game master and friend to humpback whales.

Bob and Peggy Lupton

Some of our group ran into Bob and Peggy Lupton in the hotel lobby this morning. Bob is coming to CF next month to teach an institute called "Empowerment". Bob wrote an excellent book that I highly recommend called Compassion, Justice, and the Christian Life.

Bob wanted guarantee that we will get no icy or snowy weather in mid-November, as he leaves the following day from his visit with us to go to Ireland with his wife.

We'll pray for good weather, Bob, and we're excited to have you with us next month!