God: For people who hate church!

Just got back this afternoon from Salem Massachusetts where all of us interns helped out Pastor Phil from the Gathering church put on his conference called "God: for people who hate church" the name is a little shocking, but it'll definitely make you take a second look!

I put below here the brochure click on the picture for a larger view of it. It has an excellent explanation of what it's all about!

Front of the brochure


Back of the brochure


Advertisement for Jay Bakker


It was an awesome event, we got there on friday morning and we set-up our tents and did dream interpretation and gave prophetic words to people who were walking around, then that night it kicked off at 7 with Phil Wyman and then Jim Henderson. After he spoke at 10 pm there was a late night movie shown at the church called "Frisbee - the life and death of a hippie preacher" (Check it out at http://www.lonniefrisbee.com/) it was a documentary on the late Lonnie Frisbee. I really enjoyed it, it was kind of sad maybe but I'd only previously heard little tiny bits about him, it was really good to get an overview of his life and ministry. It may have been a bit biased here and there but hey, eat the meat and spit out the bones right?

Saturday found us very busy indeed, I was very tired that morning. Ken for a roommate makes for a late night... Saturday was kicked off with Jim Henderson speaking, then there was a panel of Atheists who were interviewed. Then there was another panel discussion with Jim Henderson, Tony Jones, Ken Nelson, Jay Bakker and others. The session after that was with three pagans, Teri Kalgren (witch), Suzy Wade (ADF druid) and Krista Grillo (solitary witch).


Picture: Left-Right: Jay Bakker, Karen Ward, Tony Jones, Beth Maynard, Ken Nelson, Jim Henderson and Phil Wyman

All of the discussion panels were amazing, I learned so much about how Atheists and Pagans view Christians and about how to just love people and let the Lord work in their lives.

I don't want to talk too much about it at the moment, I may write some more reflections later. Pastor Phil did an amazing job organizing it and making it interactive, in fact if you go to http://salemgathering.blogspot.com/ he had people blog the whole time about what was going on. Basically you can read some good notes and get a good idea of what was said. On the right side of that page there are links to other people who were blogging at that time as well. I included one here below...

John Smulo - http://www.johnsmulo.com/

They recorded all the sessions and most of them should be available on a free podcast so when they come up I'll throw up a link, definitely worth listening to!

Anyways, I'll leave you to read some of the other blogs to get a better idea of what went on and I'll throw up some pictures below.

Picture: Anthony, Barry and Jessica playing some music in the street


Picture: The Vault!


Picture: Seems kind of useless to me...


Picture: Mike Wise(Texas) and Emily(Virginia)


Picture: (Bottom - Left to Right) Anton/Jessica/Jody (Top) Ladies who were ministered to wanted their picture with the team!