However, Dr. Green came down with something between bronchitis and the full-blown flu just as he arrived in the Metro DC area to attend the National Prayer Breakfast the day before the conference. His condition worsened as the days progressed and ultimately, he was unable to speak at the conference. On Thursday night, the team began to pray and discuss how we would cover for Michael's eight talks in the event that Dr. Green wasn't miraculously healed.
The Metro DC conference was our largest conference with over 220 people in attendance on Saturday, over 70 for the clergy training day on Friday, and another 100+ at the youth outreach on Saturday night. (Scott and Miriam Seely, Trinity seminarians from Pittsburgh, PA pictured right.) By the grace of God, we also had the largest team of speakers that we'd ever had and once Plan G (God's Plan) took effect, it took everyone's flexibility and cooperation to fill Dr. Green's very large shoes!
Bishop Keith Ackerman and Carrie Boren (pictured left) each managed to merge two talks into one and still run out of time on Friday. Rosemary Green realized that since she'd heard Michael do the Friday night talk a dozen times or more, so she could probably do it this time.
On Friday afternoon, the Rev. Clancy Nixon (pictured right) made the mistake of telling me that he'd love to join our team at some point in the future, and that night I asked him to step in and do Dr. Green's workshop on "Evangelistic Preaching and Speaking" the next morning!
The Rev. Dr. Jack Gabig (pictured left) had 24-hour's notice to put together the outreach talk on Jesus: The Perfect Lover. He used videoclips and the scripture of the woman at the well to talk to teens about the amazing love of Christ. The Great Hall was transformed into a youth night club and The PowerHouse Praise Band was outstanding! Plan G had Jack speaking from John 4, Carrie Boren sharing her testimony about giving her heart to Jesus after reading the Gospel of John, and me just happening to have a case of The Gospel of John in my van to give away! One of the phrases that we've picked up from a conference participant this year is "Just go on and be yourself, God! Go on and be yourself!" This was one of those moments!
We offered 18 different workshops at this conference on all kinds of ways to share the Gospel in effective ways from drama, church planting, liturgy, prayer, apologetics, and just plain friendship. (Rosemary Green pictured right.) One of our intercessors, Irene Simmons, stepped up to do my workshop on prayer, so I could do Carrie's workshop on "More Ways Than One" so Carrie could do Dr. Green's workshop on "Handling Difficulties in Evangelistic Conversations!" Now that's creativity! God was so good to provide everything that was needed to accomplish His wonderful purposes!We brought Kevin Kallsen of AnglicanTV down from CT to videotape Dr. Green. Since the Greens have moved back to the UK, they won't be able to be on every team so we wanted to capture as much of Michael's teaching on video for future use. Instead, we got the rest of the team captured on video which will be tremendously helpful in introducing us to those who are considering having a Sharing Our Faith Conference in their neck of the woods.
To view or download any of the videoed talks from the conference, go to www.AnglicanTV.org. Please donate to AnglicanTV if you do make use of these videos. Kevin's ministry is solely supported by donations and so many of us have benefited by Kevin's camera rolling in high level meetings and places where we Anglicans could not go! Let's show him we are grateful for his ministry by supporting him financially.
Kevin videoed all day for us Friday and Friday night, then grabbed a quick bite and went to his host home for the night, where he proceeded to be sick from food poisoning throughout the night. He was set up and ready to roll the tape on Saturday morning, but he looked like a ghost! When he told me what he'd been through I couldn't believe it! He served all day and all night again and even went to All Saint's Dale City on Sunday morning where Michael finally was able to preach amidst fits of coughing. When I asked him for his receipts, he told me his mileage from CT and said to forget the reimbursement for meals - he didn't want to have any more reminders of that! Thanks, Kevin, for effort above and beyond the call of duty!
We had 15 partnering churches for this conference. These churches helped by publicizing the conferences, bringing teams of folks to the conference, offering volunteers to serve, financially supporting the effort, etc. I want to thank each of these congregations for supporting hosting a Sharing Our Faith Conference in their area. (The Rev. Luke Lucas, Assistant Rector at Epiphany, pictured right, was on the executive planning team along with me, Heather Adams of All Saints, and the Rev. Richard Zalesak of St. Francis, Richmond.)We know that God worked in all of us to show us that He is raising up a team of evangelists to continue this important work in the future and that it is the job of every Christian to lead others to Christ - not just the Billy Grahams and the Michael Greens of the world - though we are so grateful that these two men in particular have been so faith in answering God's call on their lives! They would be the first to say "We need every Christian to do his or her part in sharing the amazing Good News of Jesus Christ with others. We can't do it alone!"
I want to thank everyone who volunteered to serve at this conference. The staff and members of Church of the Epiphany were unbelievable in their attitudes, flexibility, hard work, and service to Christ in this event. Thank you, thank you, thank you to so many who were part of this team effort!
The speaker team fanned out and spoke at eight different churches on Sunday morning. The Rev. Tom Herrick(pictured left) had the joy of leading an 86-year-old man and three others to Christ at the new church plant Christ Our Savior in Mt. Vernon. Carrie and I traveled to Goochland, VA to be with the good people at St. Francis. As soon as we entered the elementary school where they meet, I felt like they would benefit from doing a Harvest Unlimited campaign, but I didn't mention it to Carrie. Harvest Unlimited is a phone calling and prayer campaign whereby you invite your surrounding neighborhoods to come to your church and join you for a meal or other event. (I'll blog more on it later!)After the service, Carrie and I met with some of their members to talk about how they could reach out and attract more people. Carrie shared about some of the successes that her parishes in Dallas have had and after about 45 minutes, she said, "Actually, the thing I think would best suit this congregation at this time is doing a Harvest Unlimited campaign!" As soon as the words were out of her mouth, the electricity in the school went out. Since we were in a windowless room, we found ourselves in complete darkness until someone found their cell phone and we used it as a flashlight to gather up our things and exit the building. I'm sure that the Evil One thought that he had just ended our meeting and squelched that idea! As we were walking out, I shared my agreement that this congregation really should do a Harvest Unlimited campaign and I don't think anyone had any doubts about it at that point!
Finally, one last story. On Tuesday afternoon, I got Carrie to the airport in the middle of icy weather about 15 minutes before her plane was due to depart. I told her that they would just put her on the next flight out as there was no way that she would make it on that plane – she didn't even have her boarding pass yet. They selected her for the whole luggage check at security, she had to take the Dulles shuttle out to her gate, the door to the boarding ramp was already closed at the gate and after they opened it for her, the door to the plane was already closed and THEY OPENED IT to let her on! If that doesn't qualify as a miracle I don't know what does. I think the reason that God orchestrated that was to show us that He is going to be opening doors that might seem to us to be impossible to open in the near future.
So, how do you have a Michael Green conference without Michael Green? Plan G! God's plan is the only plan that I ever want to participate in. It's exciting! It's fun if you keep your sense of humor and hold everything very loosely in your hands! And, the most amazing fruit will come about in His timing. I can't wait to hear the testimonies about the people of Metro DC sharing their faith and having the privilege of seeing people come to faith in Jesus, joining us as part of God's Kingdom from now to eternity!
(All photos taken by the fabulous Karen Rummel of Fairfax, VA! Thank you!)
Saturday evening's outreach event at 7 p.m. is open to the public. St. Edward's own 
