2006 New Wineskins Retreat

Male & Female: Made in God’s Image (Genesis 1:27)

The 2006 New Wineskins Retreat will be held on the campus of Pepperdine University on Friday & Saturday, July 14 & 15, 2006. This year’s theme is “Male & Female: Made in God’s Image (Genesis 1:27).”

Our 2006 featured speakers include Dr. Jeanene Reese (Abilene, Texas); Sylvia Rose (Detriot, Michigan); D’Esta Love (Malibu, California); and Irie Session (Dallas, Texas). Each of these women has experience serving in various roles in the church and as Christian leaders throughout the United States. They will lead us in thoughtful and intelligent discussion on our theme.

The $150 New Wineskins Retreat conference fee includes meals and two nights lodging on the campus of Pepperdine University in Malibu, California. Attendees can register and pay by mail. Send contact information and conference fee to Emancipation Fellowship Ministries, c/o Al Jumper, 8117 W. Manchester #221; Playa Del Rey, CA 90293.

The New Wineskins Retreat is not affiliated with New Wineskins magazine. It began as predominantly African American men in 2000. The retreat provides a non-threatening environment wherein church leaders in our fellowship can experience spiritual formation as well as intellectual stimulation.

“We believe the New Wineskins Retreat is a national event that serves as a good starting point for leaders within churches of Christ to experience at a spiritual and intuitive level a small community given to the practice of authentic racial and gender harmony,” says Dr. Jerry Taylor, coordinator of the New Wineskins Retreat and assistant professor of Bible, missions & ministry at Abilene Christian University.

The mission of the New Wineskins Retreat is to provide a spiritually healthy environment for growth, refreshment and healing, while promoting a resourceful national support network for ministers and leaders, and preserving an open atmosphere conducive for honest dialogue and strategic planning.

The 2005 retreat was held at the Richland Hills Church of Christ in North Richland Hills, Texas. Over 75 church leaders attended to discuss the theme “Undoing Racism in churches of Christ and beyond.”

(repeated from posts at gal328.org and Christian Standard)

Guilt-Free Pleasures

I don't read nearly as many books as I used to read (though I am really looking forward to reading Darryl Tippens' Pilgrim Heart very soon). But I do read, pretty voraciously - through copies of old Wineskins.

So I won't be misunderstood, I'm talking about the magazine in its first incarnation before the good folks at The ZOE Group became its caretakers.

On and off for about three years, I've been keying in the articles from these archive editions so that they could be added to the New Wineskins Web site, and it has become one of my few guilt-free pleasures. The articles are like a trip on Mr. Peabody's Not-Too-Wayback Machine ... though many of the topics and thoughts are just as fresh as if they had been written for the current issue.

I've had to key in these articles because the VERY expensive OCR (optical character recognition) software I bought for my old Mac worked only a few times when I purchased it some years ago, then it refused to re-install, and then the software company's name disappeared from the web.

A few weeks ago, the renamed company made the mistake of sending me an e-mail to offer me the same software at a discounted price. After discovering that the discounted software was only the Windows version, I began the process of trying to file a service request online ... long story short: The serial number they sent me with the paid version years ago was apparently good only for the trial version, and it expired. The permanent one was never sent, but still available on a site called "www.findmyorder.com" - and if you've ever ordered software online through Digital River, yours is probably still there, too!

Today I was able to reactivate my OCR software, and breezed through more than half of one issue in one afternoon, rather than a couple of hours a night for a couple of weeks. Though I'm not laboriously keying in each word anymore, I still enjoy getting to (proof)read every article to correct the 0.1 or 0.2% error rate - and that's much faster.

So I'm hoping to accelerate the posting of archive issues for those of you who subscribe - I just added the July-August 1998 issue "A Life Beautiful" on Saturday. Look forward to the May-June 1998 issue very soon.

Feel free to indulge your own guilt-free pleasure!

Pepperdine Lectures

I'll have to leave tomorrow; leave the sunshine, cool breezes and coastal views of the Pepperdine University campus to go home and be a part of my daughter's 10th birthday celebration.

It's a fair trade.

I've never been to a lectureship before. I'm certain that I will try to again. But if it's not in God's will, hopefully it will be within it for me to remember these things for the rest of my life:

• Being there with three elder couples from my church - and one retired elder couple. Seeing many friends ... some of whom I met for the first time face-to-face (like fellow blogger John Dobbs and James Wiser); others for the first time ever.


• The companionship and encouragement of good folks like David Underwood and Keith Riley, the former of whom has long encouraged me to attend these lectures, and the latter of whom encourages me to collect some thoughts in a book. Maybe I will.


• Hearing the grandson of a dear family friend - Philippe Dauner - deliver an outstanding keynote address in the fieldhouse, with his grandmother Colette Daugherty proudly watching.


• Telling him that the mother he tried not to be like and look like was once a teenage girl I had a crush on, and the qualities he has indeed inherited from her endeared me to her then.


• Getting an excellent overview of the causes of the rift between independent Christian Churches and the Churches of Christ a century ago from both Rick Atchley and Victor Knowles (by whom I was privileged to sit on the plane from Dallas).


• Hearing Bob Russell speak about the fundamental concepts that the two church fellowships hold dear.


• Attending excellent workshops like Jeff Childers' on the different "quadrants" of spiritual perception among Christians (a kind of JoHari Window analysis) and Dwight Robarts' ponderings on preaching about politics ... all the great reasons why we shouldn't; and all the biblical reasons why we must.


• Being shocked out of my reason to receive an award from the good folks at New Wineskins at the ZOE Group devotional Wednesday morning. I was totally humbled. I will keep the gargantuan plaque as a reminder of God's grace, for it is certainly not a merited award ... especially in view of the lifelong achievements of others honored at the lectures. (I was led to believe they were flying me out here to work at the ZOE table and talk about New Wineskins since Greg couldn't come.) And I will forgive Mike Cope, Larry Bridgesmith, Eric Noah-Wilson, Greg Taylor and anyone else who recruited my wife Angi to join the conspiracy to keep this truth from me.


• A moment early this morning when a young doe paused in the parking lot to let me take her photograph ... and emerged from behind the Science Hall again at noon when I was by myself to snap a few closer ones.


• Fellowship. The theme of the lectureship, all drawn from the first epistle of John. It could not have been better chosen, nor better lived out by the hosts and participants.

I'd better go, or I won't be able to find a seat to discover what Mike Cope has to say about sex and baptism.

That ought to be memorable, too.

PostScript: Missed Mike's session; it was full by the time I got there. Victor Knowles' second session was an excellent replacement. Check out his POE Ministries site.