The aftermath

So I am back from ENGAGE. I always find it so deflating to come down the mountain after these conferences and have to turn around and go straight back to work. I want a day off just to distill and absorb - maybe next year I'll take one.

It was such a very, very good weekend. I got half way into Mark Driscoll's first talk and thought 'you know what, for once I am not going to madly scramble down notes but just sit here and listen, and order the talks'. So, I don't have any ready notes (but can't wait to get the CDs!) and right now have to write something else and put together an application for something else again, but I shall return with more of the content (after distilling and absorbing). Very briefly Mark Driscoll spoke from John 1, 4, 6 and 10 and Don Carson spoke from Matthew 11 and Psalm 40.

Mark's talks were excellent (and he continued to sock it to the "late-blooming" Aussie males - to the glee of all the women!) and Don, well, he failed to disappoint. After what I said below, when Don was being interviewed on what keeps him going in ministry his answer was that so far in his life he has had three diseases that could have taken him out, and each time, as he lay facing that possibility, he kept coming back to the hymn line "Oh let me never, never outlive my love for thee" (from O Sacred Head Sore Wounded) - his voice breaking ever so slightly as he said it. And that is why I like him.