EMI just let us know that Fee and his full band will be with us for an evening of worship.
Also, Comedian Ken Davis, who moved us to tears last year with his powerful challenge and talk, will be back for a time of laughter and comedy.
We will not have an official cre:ate hotel this year. Many of you have asked for less expensive alternatives than the Marriott, so we are recommending the following three hotels. Of course, you are welcome to stay anywhere you wish.
Country Inn and Suites: The best Franklin has to offer at the lowest price point, around $100 a night. Free WIFI, clean, comfortable beds and a great location. Let them know you are with recreate and they will give you a good rate.
Aloft: Brand new artsy hotel in a great location with WIFI. A little pricier but very nice!
Courtyard Marriott: Also great location, brand new, luxury but a good price. Would be probably around $160 a night. Highly recommended.
Ian will be facilitating a conversation at cre:ate '09 about liturgy, Eucharist and the human quest for coherence. As part of the discussion Ian will also be integrating musings about the life of St Francis of Assisi and how this pre-modern saint can breathe life into the postmodern Church.
BIO
An ordained Anglican priest, spiritual director, author and songwriter, Ian Morgan Cron is the founding pastor of Trinity Church in Greenwich, Conn., a non-denominational faith community known for its commitment to social justice as well as to communicating the Christian story through the arts.
Cron is a native of Greenwich and a graduate of Bowdoin College in Maine, where he earned bachelor’s degrees in English and Romance languages and also met his wife Anne. He earned a master’s in counseling at Denver Seminary and received a master in divinity from New York Theological Seminary. Ian is presently enrolled in a doctoral program at Fordham University (The Jesuit University of New York) focusing on contemplative spirituality.
After 13 years of ministry, Cron became uncomfortable with the evangelical church’s growing identification with conservative politics, its resistance to engaging in generative conversation with people of differing theological and social viewpoints, its movement away from classical spiritual practices and worship, and its often facile answers to life’s deepest questions.
At the height of his spiritual crisis, he retreated to a friend’s home on the island of Bermuda with a loaned copy of GK Chesterton’s, St. Francis of Assisi, a classic that would restore meaning and inspiration in his ministry. To Cron, St. Francis was a Christian worth emulating, a religious genius who transcended the labels of conservative, or liberal (or any other label for that matter).
To introduce others to St. Francis, whom Cron has billed the “consummate postmodern saint,” he authored Chasing Francis: A Pilgrim's Tale
An accomplished songwriter in Nashville and New York City, he has two CDs of original work, “The Land of my Father’s,” produced by Grammy Award-nominated producer Rob Mathes and “Sacred Hunger,” produced by the Grammy Award-winning producer Phil Naish.
Cron is a spiritual director and retreat leader who particularly enjoys working with artists.
In his spare time he enjoys fly-fishing, running, traveling, and hiking in the mountains of Vermont. He resides in Old Greenwich with his wife and three children.
Bio - Anne Jackson serves on staff at Cross Point Church in Nashville, Tennessee. Her articles have been published in a variety of print and online magazines, and her blog, FlowerDust is ranked as one of the top blogs in Christian Leadership with hundreds of thousands of pageviews a month. She is an advocate for Compassion International, a down-to-earth communicator, and an all around dreamer. Anne has an unwavering passion to see the Church grow, thrive, and fulfill its purpose.
MCD - Growing up the daughter of a pastor, Anne Jackson experienced firsthand the conflict, stress, and struggle church leaders often face. She vowed her life in ministry would be different.
Yet, years later, as a church leader, she was hospitalized because stress began wreaking havoc on her body. After being released from the hospital, an associate pastor asked her, "Does working at this church interfere with your communion with Christ?" The question was paramount in turning her life
around.
Thinking she wasn't alone, Anne developed a website that allowed church leaders to share their struggles. Within a few days, she was flooded with over a thousand responses from people pouring out their stories of burnout.
Using anecdotal parallels between Mad Cow Disease and leadership trends in the church, she writes not only to help us realize what church leaders are facing, but also to provide practical and positive treatment plans.
Mad Church Disease is a lively, informative, and potentially life-saving resource for anyone in ministry (vocational or volunteer) who would like to understand, prevent, or treat the epidemic of burnout in church culture.
Order Mad Church Disease HERE
Nice Mention About cre:ate '09 at the NEW Worship Together blog
To learn more about Josh go HERE
Steve Guthrie is Assistant Professor of Theology at Belmont University in Nashville. From 2000 to 2005 Dr. Guthrie was a faculty member of the University of St Andrews in St Andrews, Scotland, teaching at the Institute for Theology, Imagination and the Arts. He came to Belmont in 2005 to help launch a new major in Religion and the Arts.
Dr. Guthrie earned an undergraduate degree in Music Theory from the University of Michigan, and for several years played professionally and worked as a minister of music. One night he became disoriented on the way to a gig and stumbled into the world of academic theology. In his spare time, he enjoys weightlifting, watching the NFL Network and eating pizza (thereby vitiating any possible benefit arising from the weightlifting). Above all, he enjoys writing breezy, faintly humorous autobiographical paragraphs; always written in the third person, so that the casual reader will believe that they have been penned by some devoted chronicler of his life and work.
Dr. Guthrie is married to Julie and has four extraordinarily clever and impossibly good looking children. Recent and upcoming publications include:
· Breath and Dust: The Holy Spirit and Human Artistry. Baker Academic, 2008.
· Resonant Witness: Essays in Musical Theology, ed. with Jeremy Begbie, Eerdmans, 2008.
· “Theology and Music” in the Eerdmans-Brill Encyclopedia of Christianity, Vol. 5. Eerdmans, 2007.
· Faithful Performances: Artistry, embodiment and the enactment of Christian Identity, (ed., with Trevor Hart), Ashgate, 2007.
Register below.** IMPORTANT!! After payment, press the "Return to Seeker Solutions" button to complete form and registration!
You may choose to pay either a deposit or full registration
cre:ate 2009 Single Registration Deposit $299.
(After Nov.1) $399.
cre:ate 2009 Couples Registration
Deposit $399.
(After Nov.1) $499.
cre:ate 2009 Single Full Registration $699.
(After Nov.1) $799.
cre:ate 2009 Couples Full Registration $899.
(After Nov.1) $999.
**Please note: All Registrations payments are completely non-refundable after Dec. 1, 2008. ** If you pre-paid your $100. deposit previous to July 30, you automatically qualify for early registration prices.
