EHS Conference - Day 2

My feelings were confirmed today. A TWO day EHS Conference is definitely more impacting than ONE. Had a chance to chat more about this with Pete Scazzero today.

Areas covered today were Contemplative Spirituality and 5 Skills for Growing Into an Emotionally Mature Adult. The way the conference was presented this time around gave me a slew of ideas about how to make the material more easily presentable in a class/small group format.

It's been almost 4 years since I read the first book, The Emotionally Healthy Church. Ever since then, I've been pondering/praying about how to bring the material to the church in a format that is digestable.

When I taught the series, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality in the Fall of '05, I said then and believe now that it would be a ground-shifting series for us. It's a "way of life" kind of thing. That means that when people become a part of our church family, there has to be a way that we bring them along in that way. It's called discipleship.

When Pete's next book, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, was released last Summer, I knew it would be the "textbook" for however we teach this in the future. Where the first book is written primarily for church leaders, the recent one is written for everyone, leader or not. It goes even deeper into your life than the first book.

If you are a member of NewHeart, or considering becoming one, let me urge you to get this book (we have them available at church in the foyer) and read it. Newly released at this conference is the workbook that goes with this book. We will have them available soon.

Keep your eyes open this year for the release of a new class that I see being part of our "Building Bigger Hearts Growth Track", covering this material. That is how FOUNDATIONAL I see this material for all of our lives as we grow together into our future as a church family!

Chuck and I considered trying to do the Empire State Building right after the final session. Midafternoon was beautiful here. However, 6:00 pm EDT was a different story. About 15 degrees cooler, fully covered in clouds and a discovered forecast of rain. In Chuck's words, "next time."

We ate dinner at a nearby Chinese place and headed to our rooms to get packed for tomorrow. We plan to visit New Life Fellowship's 9:15 service. Our ride to JFK Airport picks us up at 12:00 noon and my flight leaves for LAX at 2:00, arriving at 5:05 PDT. I am very much looking forward to being with Colleen and the boys tomorrow night!

Chuck flies directly to Christiansburg, Virginia from here, where he will spend about 10 days at the Foursquare Center for Spiritual Renewal that is being developed. I blogged about that here.

For now, a good night to you, and I look forward to great reports about NewHeart tomorrow!