GOING TO CONGRESS

“...they were all with one accord in one place.”  (from Acts 2:1)

I know my postings this week have been kind of chronologically all over the place.  I’ve been very busy this week, AND on Friday and Saturday, Mary Ann and I are going to Congress. Now, I’ve got to explain what that means!

No, we’re NOT going to Washington, D.C.!

“Congress” is a huge evangelical Christian convention that takes place every winter at Hines Convention Center in Boston.  Personally. I think “Congress” is a terrible name, but I did not pick it!  It’s been said that if you have to keep explaining a name, it’s a bad name, and since I have to keep explaining “Congress” it’s a bad name.  Congress is run by “Vision New England”.  I also think “Vision New England” is a terrible name.  It sounds like it would be an optical company run by my optician friends Tim and Sonda McCarthy.  Until about ten years ago, “Vision New England” was “Evangelistic Association of New England”. All local evangelical Christians simply called it “E.A.N.E.”  I guess they changed the name because their old name sounded like a bunch of fundamentalists with King James Bibles jamming them down people’s throats, and that’s not what they’re about.

This year’s Congress is interesting because Vision New England has decided it’s going to be the last one (after over 25 years).  The organization is shifting its emphases from running big mega events to being much more of “hands on” working with struggling churches and ministries, etc.  (They actually do a lot of that stuff now.  They’re just going to do more of it.)  Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Mary Ann and I used to go to Congress every year.  We haven’t gone to one since 2003, and even then, we’d skipped a few years.  I am excited about some of the speakers who’ll be there.  If you’re not a born-again Christian, you’ve never heard of most of them, but Joni Eareckson Tada, Jack Hayford, Bill Hybels and others will be speaking.  There will be a HUGE exhibit hall featuring seemingly every Christian ministry, bookstore, and parachurch ministry under the sun.   There will be GREAT Christian music.  There will be running into people I probably haven’t seen in 5 or 10 years.  Mary Ann and I love eating out at the restaurants in Boston, and we’ll be doing that.  By Sunday I will be spiritually refreshed and physically exhausted.  

Well, that’s what we are doing for Friday and Saturday.  Incidentally our church paid for us to go as a present for my 20th Anniversary as pastor of First Assembly of God of Framingham.

Incidentally, be SURE you read my piece below entitled DON’T BLOW UP YOUR CARTOON CHARACTERS  OVER THIS ONE!