Category Archives: Update

May 08 2010
4 Comments
Update

Pepperdine Lecture Notes to Come

We’re back in San Francisco after being on the road all day.

The Pepperdine Bible Lectures in Malibu, CA were wonderful! I will be posting notes from a few classes I attended just as I did last year. Keep checking westcoastwitness.com over the course of the next few days if you’re interested in seeing them, or simply subscribe to this blog and get new posts sent directly to your email address or favorite reader- that’s the easiest thing to do.

This was a great event – I will update fully later.

For now I’m going to continue my research into the subject of pacifism for my social ethics class at Fuller. UFC 113 is about to come on, and the fight card is lookin’ good! Must research.

Oh, and don’t forget to call your mother tomorrow and tell her you love her. It’s Mother’s Day!

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Apr 28 2010
1 Comment
Leadership, Personal Growth, Resources, Update

Pepperdine Bible Lectures

I’m planning to attend the Pepperdine Bible Lectures next week, and am bringing quite a few people with me.

In addition to my wife and two children my parents are making the trek to Malibu for the first time, as are my good friends Gary and Zoe Lambrecht, James Holston, and Nathaniel Tuliao – all first timers.

Last year was my first time to attend (regular readers may remember I posted notes online). I came away impressed with the program, and have since talked it up to quite a few people.

I’m pleased to see Jonathan Storment is a featured speaker this year, and am also pleased that Tyler Ellis has been invited to teach a class on campus ministry (I bragged on Tyler a few days ago in this post). Both are young ministers my age whom I respect and believe the church at large could learn a lot from (view the complete lecture schedule here).

I’m also looking forward to Tim Spivey’s classes on reviving and maintaining healthy growing churches. His blog series on church revitalization was excellent – I’m sure his classes on the subject will be as well.

Who else is planning to go?

If you can’t make it in 2010, you ought to put it on your calendar for 2011. This is a quality event.

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Apr 09 2010
7 Comments
Update

I shook Ralph Winter’s hand yesterday

Ralph Winter is one of the biggest names in Hollywood. He’s produced many of the Star Trek films, the X-Men trilogy, Wolverine, the Fantastic Four movies, the updated version of Planet of the Apes – the list keeps going (about 25 big budget films in all). Ralph’s films have earned over $2 billion dollars for Twentieth Century Fox in the past few years making him one of the top producers in the world. In addition, many tell me Ralph is a devoted Christian – something I didn’t know until just recently.

I got to meet Ralph and several other filmmakers at the Windrider Film Forum yesterday – a film festival sponsored by my school. Fuller faculty have made nurturing the conversation between theology and art a goal of theirs, and Windrider is one of the many ways they hope to achieve it.

The festival kicked off with a discussion between Mr. Winter and Fuller’s own Chap Clark that focused largely on the intersection between faith and art as well as contemporary films and the Christian themes found therein. After their discussion ended, the floor was opened for questions from the audience. One questioner asked Ralph (who is a voting member of the Academy) if he thought The Hurt Locker should have won best picture this year. Ralph flatly said that he’d voted for Avatar and thought it should have won, but politics were involved and that’s what gave Hurt Locker the dubya (don’t worry James Cameron – everyone knows Avatar was the real winner).

After the Q & A session with Ralph and Chap we screened this movie (which is good) and met a few of the creative minds behind it after the credits rolled.

Today marks the second day of Windrider, tomorrow its conclusion. I won’t be able to go back today, but am hoping to tomorrow (and would also like to take a few members of the college group with me).

In addition to last night being a lot of fun, it was quite the educational experience. I’m already looking forward to January when I’ll be able to have similar experiences at The Sundance Film Festival.

Why would I go to Sundance? Because it’s part of a class I’m planning to take on Theology & Film. Fuller is the largest buyer of block tickets for that festival – a little known fact that I find pretty cool!

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In other news, Airiel and I are hanging out with the college group tonight celebrating April’s birthday party. Looking forward to good food and even better company! 🙂

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