Ridgell's Originals

How can you not love the Pepperdine Lectures? Quality presentations, good classes, great praise, and lots of meet and greet. Oh yeah, the location is certainly adequate. And of course, Malibu Seafood and Dukes are must stops for the eats. Marsha got to go this year and we traveled out with Phil and Donna Ware (he's our preacher and they are really good friends). We saw lots of people we have known over the years, met with some Herald of Truth donors, and even managed to find an In and Out burger.

I always enjoy listening to the hot topics being discussed at these events (either in class or in visiting with different preachers). This year four themes stuck with me. There is still a lot of conversation about instrumental music in worship. I still hear discussion of the senior pastor, staff led model of church growth. The house church/missional church model is still being discussed. Finally, I keep hearing about the need to communicate by story: tell our story and the gospel message is the story of Jesus. Most of these issues were set in the larger context of reaching the next generation, or communicating in a post modern world.

I may react to some of these over my next few posts. It was interesting because these are the same kinds of discussions we have at Southern Hills. Men like Phil, Vann Conwell, and Gary Green are really sharp concerning the post modern mind set and so I have been in many other conversations like these.

One last thing concerning the various speakers. I did hear some people I don't usually get to listen to and two in particular struck me as really worth hearing again: Mitch Wilburn and Dan Rodriguez. If you get a chance to hear either of them, do it.