Wow. The first speaker was a resident of Saint Louis, Darrin Patrick, the pastor of the local journey church.

His basic question was, “What is your biggest challenge in ministry.” He suggested the answer should be “yourself.”

It was a great talk made especially relevant by a list of statistics about pastors in theis nation and how many begin well but don’t end well. He mentioned a staggering number of pastors wives who claim that the day in their lives most destructive to their marriages was the day their husbands entered the ministry. There also many (didn’t get all the statistice) that end with moral burnout. You are tempted to say, “Well, they just fell away.” But no one falls away without walking away one step at a time. They didn’t deal with problems with their character when they had a chance.

“Ministry will kill you.”

His point was to let it. I think the idea is that, if you don’t, you will end in a worse self-destruction. To understand that these trials were for your good rather than becoming frustrated and bitter about them. His text was James 1.

Pastors, he pointed out, are just as prone to secularism, to focus all their hopes on the present world, as anyone else, and thus be prone to despair when things don’t turn out the way they expected. “We expect God to grant us an easy life because of the sacrifices we are making for his kingdom.”

Lots of convicting as well as encouraging material.

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total uses of the word “emergent”: 0