NON-CON: TESTIMONIALS

I've got a few testimonials from the first Non-Con last March and I'll slowly post some of them here over the next few days.

Here's one from "Steve"

Non-Con Testimony

Last week, my wife and I attended the first ever Non-Con in Costa Mesa. It bills itself as a one-day event for people who don’t like conferences. Folks just like me!

We arrived early at the SoulSurvivor Church, a partially renovated North Face store in one of Costa Mesa’s shopping malls. The morning session kicked off at 10, after check-in and a delicious breakfast of bagels and coffee.

Worship leader/songwriter/church planter David Ruis spoke first. As well as being an excellent musician, David is a dynamic storyteller. He related an incident that occurred on a trip to India. As he was meeting with a group of Indian pastors, he sensed God telling them to ‘remember the poor’. Needless to say, he felt very uncomfortable speaking this out, since they WERE the poor! Finally, he plucked up the courage, and was amazed as many of these humble leaders began weeping. At first, David thought he had offended them, but realized that they each knew folks who were worse off than them. These poor pastors were repenting.

David’s session - focused on the centrality of the poor in the church’s identity - left my head reeling. Good thing we had a long lunch. I needed a couple of hours to begin processing it all. As you might imagine, there were some intense conversations over the meal.

After lunch, we all took off for a variety of workshops, scattered throughout the store… um, church. My wife joined the discussion on the place of artists in church, while I squeezed into a crowded session grandly titled 'The Myth of the Emerging Church'. This was an informal conversation between a guy called Paul Martin, the former pastor of SoulSurvivor, and Spencer Burke, who runs an emerging church website called theooze.com (I was familiar with Spencer through my dad, so I wanted to hear his take on this whole alternative church movement).

Unfortunately, the workshops were only an hour, which barely left time for the ‘conversationalists’ to introduce themselves with a bit of personal history and scrape the surface of their respective points of view.

Keith Giles, the Non-Con organizer, drew us all back to the main space as he shared his experience of starting up an ‘organic’ home church. After being pastor of a traditional church, Keith left to try something new, outside of his comfort zone. Together with his family and small group of home church members, Keith regularly schedules interactive events with underprivileged folks living in local motels.

By 5:00pm I was ready to hit the feeding trough again, and once more, the Non-Conners did us proud! (I still can’t figure out how they managed to keep the cost of the event to just $40.00 – I imagine that hardly covered the cost of food).

Jackie Pullinger was our speaker for the evening session. As a young woman, Jackie went alone to work with the poorest of the poor in Hong Kong’s ‘Walled City’; a calling she is still living out. Her stories of God meeting people in the most miserable physical conditions were both heart-breaking and inspirational. Jackie speaks her mind, and her blunt and honest answers to the questions we asked often felt like body blows: “Don’t come and practice on OUR poor. Seek out the poor right in your own neighborhood.” – Ouch!

My heart and head were buzzing on the drive home. They still are. I am currently struggling with one overwhelming question: what now?