Urge to kill... Rising...

I just lost 8 hours of my life that I'll never get back.

Ok. I had a day today that got me rather steamed under the collar, but I have had a few hours since I got home and also eaten and watched The Last Crusade, so my vitriol won't be so bilious, I hope...

I spent my day today attending what I thought would be a conference on leadership with a Christian angle to it all. That's fine. I'd actually declined my invitation to the CH Staff Retreat which occured on Thursday & Friday so someone else who's more into singing and such could attend it while I got some good meat & potatoes learning done today at this leadership conference.

Oh, how I regret that. Heck, if I'd known, I would have just gone and worked my shift instead.

Why am I ticked? Well, the main reason is that rather than the leadership seminar I'd envisioned above, it turns out that I was spending my day attending a good ol' Southern Baptist revival meeting, with all of the attendant rhetoric that entails.

So it essentially was teaching us how to all be good self-righteous pricks.

The sad thing was that it was paid for by and sponsored by, CH. This, on top of the 2-day staff retreat which had just taken place from Thursday until this morning. I mean, had it actually been something useful, I wouldn't have minded, but to have money which could have gone into home renovations, salaries, ANYTHING that would benefit the programs themselves go towards this... Grr...

Anyway, I was about ready to leave after the first session but I didn't. I kept hoping it'd get better. There was a round-table discussion panel that I thought would make up for the 3 hours of old man drivel being spouted at me all morning.

Wrong.

While they did have a few interesting points, it would keep getting close to verging on serious discussion and then swing right back into more self-righteous back-slapping. But when you take into account that the hostess of the day and the moderator of the panel was the lady from 100 Huntley Street, well, go figure.

Now, if the guy who spoke for 30 minutes from 5-5:30 had also spoken all morning, I might have at least felt somewhat charitable towards the day. He was the son of the guy who spoke for 3 hours in the morning but at least he was entertaining and acknowledged that not everything has a pat answer and that there are gray areas. And I must say that Henry Blackaby, the main speaker, did have a few good points and his comment that today's generation of Christians are some of the most biblically illiterate was true. But really, that's about the only thing he said that I agreed 100% on.

Anyway, it was at the Queensway Cathedral and I sat at the very back and had my MP3 player on and was trying to read a Star Wars book, just to stay awake... when i wasn't getting pissed off at the blather.

I mean, I didn't think it was possible to become physically pained by boredom, but I was... sigh.

*deep breath*

Suffice it to say, I am definately going to be stating my displeasure to my program manager and hope that there is some kind of feedback thing I can give about the day... Though I might have calmed the throbbing vein in my forehead down by then.

Now, in case you're curious as to what got me so rankled, here's a taste of the ineffable wisdom imparted today.

The main speaker posed the rhetorical question, 'How do I know when God is speaking to me?'

Now, we've been discussing this at the small group I attend after church most Sundays, and we still haven't come to a complete concensus. I mean, it IS a very personal thing, as what I interpret as God's voice may not be the same as someone else. They might experience it one way and I may experience it another way. On top of that, new Christians keep hearing older Christians stating how they have followed God's direction and voice in certain matters and may wonder exactly what that entails.

What was Herr Blackaby's response to this rhetorical question?

"If you have to ask what God's voice sounds like, maybe you're not a true Christian."

My jaw dropped. That was when I looked back in my program and saw the Southern Baptist connection and the pieces started to fall into place.

I won't even get into the altar call shenanigans :)

Anyway, that's about it for my day at 'the conference'. Time to go play some Siren to corrupt the good teachings placed there today (sigh).