Guess who met John Piper?

Uh...that would be me.

This past weekend, we went to Minneapolis to visit Bethlehem (Piper's church) and Wooddale Church (Leith Anderson's church...he's the new president of the National Association of Evangelicals).

We went to the Saturday evening service at Bethlehem and were able to say hi to Pastor John after the service. I tried to just shake his hand and not take up too much of his time, but he was very gracious and asked about what brought us to Minneapolis, etc. He enjoyed hearing about Bethany Baptist and mentioned that he quotes Pastor Ritch frequently in his sermons, too.

The first week of sabbatical was very productive. I wrote about one hundred fifty pages combined for papers on my DMin class and finished going through a seminar called "The Nehemiah Strategy." The seminar is designed to help with long-term strategic planning.

I'm looking forward to week two!