9/21/2007 11pm

This has been a packed week with some interesting potential fodder for the pajama blogger jihadists who make declarations about how the world should be from the comfy confines of their mom’s house.

Friday we had our annual summer baptismalooza. This year we had the craziest thing happen. Our crew showed up at Alki beach where Seattle was founded in 1851 to set up sound, light, and video. But, there was a baby seal that had been left on the beach by his mom. So, the baby seal sat there for many hours on the sand in the EXACT place that we were supposed to set up for our big baptism. Next thing you know the media was out covering our dilemma, animal rights activists were showing up, and according to federal law a large perimeter was set up around the seal to ensure no one got close to it. So, our set up crew prayed for a bit that the seal would leave, and when it did not they moved a few hundred yards down the beach and worked frantically to get things ready in time. To make matters worse, there was a volume limit that was to be imposed upon us during our worship set because apparently cute baby seals are also sensitive to loud noises and worship bands. But, just as we were getting ready to sound check, the baby seal went back in the water and swam back to his mom. This allowed us to have our event as planned. And, the Sovereign Seal brought a lot of media attention to our baptism which stuck around to cover the event on everything from newspapers to television and radio. The night was amazing as we had roughly 3000 people out in the park, and baptized over 220 people (we lost count) that included some folks who gave their life to Jesus on the spot.

Saturday I edited the final manuscript for Vintage Jesus which is a book coming out with Crossway in February and hung out with my wife Grace and our kids.

Sunday I preached the four and soon to be five live services at Mars Hill Church in Seattle. Monday night I preached on worship at our Resurgence conference in Seattle which went great and will be online here soon. Tuesday I flew out to Raleigh/Durham. Wednesday I had a lot of meetings with a number of pastors. Wednesday night I had the privilege of speaking to the leaders of various campus ministries at the University North Carolina Chapel Hill. Thursday we had a bootcamp for church planters in Raleigh at Vintage 21 pastored by Tyler Jones. His new facility looks great and he and his staff were fantastic. We had a few hundred people in attendance, and assessed our largest crew of potential church planters yet, 37 men. Friday I spent the day at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary and had a great time at the Convergent conference. I got to see my buddy Dr. Ed Stetzer, new buddy Dr. J.D. Greear who pastors the fast growing Summit Church that is moving into a new facility this weekend, and stumbled across a very rare species of young guyus bowtieus, also known as a white guy in his twenties wearing a bow tie. Most enjoyably, I got to meet SEBTS president Dr. Daniel Akin. He is a genuinely enjoyable and gracious man. And, what impressed me most was the quality of his sons who speak well of their dad, love Jesus, and are some great guys. He also showed me his study which is roughly the size of Rhode Island and has about 15,000 books. Tonight I had the honor of preaching to an encouraging crowd about the various streams of the emerging church and general principles for faithful Christian involvement in Scripture. They will be posting it here shortly as a podcast: http://www.sebts.edu/chapel/chapelMessages.cfm

And, today Christianity Today posted the online version of the story they did on me this month. While it lacks the pictures in the magazine, it was nice of them to give it away. For the record, the writer Collin Hansen was a great guy and in my opinion he did a fair story that you can read here.

Tomorrow we finish up the Convergent conference with a question and answer session and then its home to preach on Sunday at Mars Hill Church. It’s been a fruitful and busy few weeks and I’m looking forward to taking Monday off to get some sleep and see my wife and kids.