Justice Conference

Excuse me while I nerd out for a moment.

A group of us just got back from the Justice Conference in Portland, OR. The number of amazing speakers and writers that we got to be in the same room as in the course of 24 hours was completely mind boggling.

I don't tend to be one to fawn over the famous, but, seriously? Within four hours, Shane Claiborne presented, Francis Chan presented, AND Donald Miller was present for a pre-screening of Blue Like Jazz. The only thing better would have been if JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis had happened to wander through the room as well.

Beyond even that, we heard from speakers who casually threw out phrases like, "Well, Martin used to say..."

Yes. Martin, as in MLK. They spoke about him the way that I might reference one of my friends or a few well loved professors. Hello. Talk about sitting in the room with history. Some of these people have been living and breathing this stuff for longer than my parents have been alive.

And, yet.

And, yet. They looked out across a mish-mashed crowd of four thousand from every corner of the US, and quite a few corners outside of it, and they declared that they were witnessing history. For the church to come together like this, with the sole purpose of seeking God's justice; for the white church to take the time to try to listen and learn; for such a cross section of generations to be represented; they said was history.

Only time will prove that statement, but I can say that it was well worth the time and the effort - and the fight to force myself out of bed in time to present for first hour Sunday school the next morning.

Hint: When Blue Like Jazz starts at 10:00pm, you will be arriving home very late.

We got to have cool conversations, hear cool conversations, and see people get excited about God sized things.

And, weirdly enough, I got to meet the people from World Vision ACT:S in real life.

Maybe that's just the 90's child in me. People who you know on the internet don't actually exist in real life. Do they? Haha. Clearly, yes, they do! (Almost as surreal as when I saw Shane Claiborne wander past on my way between pre-conference sessions.)