A Week Of Learning

Yesterday I started my final Grad School class. Actually, I may need to take one more independent study course depending on what I decide to do for my final project. Anyway, the focus of the class is on natural systems theory which is extremely interesting and equally confusing! After day one (each class is four, nine hour, days), I'm not sure I have a very good grip on the topic. Of course this would not be the case if I would have done more of my reading ahead of time.

I leave class a little early on Thursday because the good folks on the Junior High and High School teams at Willow Creek have agreed to let a few of us from our Junior High and High School teams spend the weekend with them. We're going there with the sole purpose to get an up close and personal look at how they do just about everything they do. I'm most excited about spending some time with their Junior High Pastor, Scott Rubin, who, over the past few years, has become a really good friend. I've always said that he's a natural leader learning the junior high ropes and I'm a natural junior high pastor learning the leadership ropes which makes for a good 'iron sharpening iron' relationship. I've asked Scott to help me lead eight hours worth of junior high training at the GROUP/SYM conference in February so we're going to spend some time brainstorming that this weekend.