Hope of the Church Retreat

After my trip to New Orleans, I met up with my family and spent some time at the beach. We had a great, relaxing time and then went to Montreat a Presbyterian Retreat/Conference Center in the North Carolina Mountains. What a wonderful place! We'd never been before but most of our southern Presby friends love it and we are now devotees also.

The occasion was a Conference entitled The Hope Of the Church: Celebrating our Common Ground. I should mention that this conference was planned long before General Assembly happened but that it was probably good that the one followed the other. Some of it was processing things that happened there, especially the PUP report thing but also declining membership, the trinity and so on.

There were lots of Presbyterian big-wigs, former moderators, writers and seminary folks as well as pastors, elders, and well, me. Excellent speakers. I have to say that a lot of that "granduer" was lost on me because, I am a pew-sitter. Hubby would say things like "He wrote Thus and So" but those were also lost on me. It just meant that people could use the biggest vocabulary and jargon they wanted to, because they were talking to people who understood them. Why can't church people speak in English, honestly? After the first day I had a page of notes that mostly boiled down to "what does this mean?". I learned a lot, truly. Did you know that koinonia really means Fellowship? This one guy from California must have used the word 15 times in his 10 minute presentation. You learn something new everyday!

One part of the conference was a panel discussion of attendees who were under-40 to talk about what they thought was the direction and future of the Presbyterian church. After hearing the great-high-muckety-mucks speak on the same topic it was great to hear these folks, who are the future of the church, give primarily positive presentations!

My immediate future includes mega-amounts of laundry, some sleep, my first day back at work and the first real day of Summer Reading Club programs tomorrow. There are no dull days!