Mid-Winter Theological Conference

I just returned from 3 days in Essex, Montana, where I attended a continuing education event. The speaker was Dr. Mark Allan Powell, and the topic was Christ and Culture Revisited. I won't bore you with the details, but it was pretty interesting. Dr. Powell is a NT professor at Trinity Seminary in Ohio, and as I've read one of his books and enjoyed it, I was eager to hear him speak. He's an entertaining lecturer, which helped make the 2-3 hour sessions on really uncomfortable chairs much more enjoyable. A pastor friend of mine (DMK) and I drove up together, and were in charge of picking up the speaker. He's a very nice man, but let me just say that I am absolutely terrible at small talk. Put me in a car with a published seminary professor and I'm even more tongue-tied. Thank goodness DMK is so much better at the social graces than I!

The location is one of the main reason to go to this event, though. Essex is located near the edge of Glacier National Park, so the drive up there is absolutely beautiful. The event was held in the Izaak Walton inn, which is an historic train station. The passenger train actually still stops there twice a day, and I keep thinking it would be fun to ride the train to the event one of these years. As an historical inn there are no TV's anywhere in the building, the rooms have no phones, and there is absolutely no cell service in the area. Amazingly, there is wireless if you bring your laptop, but they prefer you don't use it in the lobby, to protect the ambience of the place. My parents say that when they used to go to Essex there were only communal bathrooms, but I'm thankful that each room now has it's own bathroom, so you don't have to know more about your fellow pastors than you necessarily want to...

Anyway, the setting is lovely, and it's a great spot for cross-country skiiing. I went for a walk instead of skiing during our free time yesterday, and it was just beatiful. Plus, it snowed about a foot yesterday, so that was fun. This is what Montana is supposed to look like in the winter, in my opinion:

Of course, digging your car out of this lovely white stuff is a whole different story.

At any rate, it was a really nice three days. I was able to reconnect with some pastors I hadn't seen in awhile, and I might even have made a couple of new friends among my colleagues. And since I don't have to preach this weekend, I was able to sit back, relax, and enjoy the time.