Attending the Eco Pastor's Retreat & 2019 National Gathering
By the time you read this, I will just have returned from four days in Colorado Springs where I attended the ECO National Pastor’s Conference and the ECO National Gathering. The focus of the Pastor’s Conference is in two parts: “The Health of the Pastor’s Soul” and “Leading Change”. Each is timely in its own way. Like everyone else, pastors are busy people. By the nature of our calling, we are busy caring for other’s souls. So much so, that we often neglect our own soul care. The sad truth is that pastors become so busy running the church that we lose opportunities to get some of what Eugene Peterson called “leisure of soul”. Many of us are pretty good at problem solving which is a good thing, but it can monopolize our schedule, particularly when we are helping other people and even other churches and organizations solve their problems. In his 1987 book, Working the Angles: The Shape of Pastoral Integrity, Peterson called pastors back to the basics of prayer, Scripture reading, and the practice of the of art of spiritual direction: the practice of the time honored role of “caring for souls”. On many occasions over the years, I have returned to these wise spiritual disciplines time and again.
The second topic for the Pastor’s Retreat is on the timely topic of “Leading Change”. Like it or not, change is coming upon us with ever increasing speed. Just what can or must be done in response to it? Two decades ago, church and culture futurist, Leonard Sweet wrote a compelling book entitled, Soul Tsunami: Sink or Swim In New Millennium Culture. Picture a huge wave of change engulfing the church and traditional American cultural values and sweeping them away! I had already read the book when the Methodist church in Odessa, Texas held a workshop featuring Sweet. Beth & I attended the conference and heard and even talked with Sweet. In essence he told us that we had three ways we could respond to it: 1) We can deny its existence - and drown. 2) We can fight it - and lose. Or 3) We can recognize the unprecedented opportunities it presents - and chart a course across the waters, toward reformation. That is how and why ECO was formed!
Yours and His,
Dr. Bob
