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Jim Herrington
Thursday, June 19th
His talk is titled: "A Most Amazing and Fulfilling Journey"
Jim Herrington has been a pastor since he was 19 years old.
After serving for 10 years as the Executive Director of the largest Baptist Association of Churches in the world, authoring two books on pastoral leadership, and becoming a national conference leader for pastors and congregations, Jim left all that to start a church in Montrose. 
Disillusioned with the impact that congregations were having in the world and convinced that Christians in general had become resigned and cynical to little or no change, he and his wife began a ministry to street kids and drug addicts.
He says, "I gave up a life of significance for the most amazing, meaningful, and fulfilling journey. It's beyond anything that I ever believed was imaginable."
Jim will tell his story. He's a critic of the Church that he loves so much and believes that there is a large and growing discontent among Christians with business as usual church.
Here is one of Jim's blogs: "Surprised By Love"
I am a deeply loved person. My wife loves me. My children love me. My dad loved me. My momma and my sister love me. My brother never tells me but I know he loves me. The folks who pastor Harbor church with me love me. I have co-authored books with friends who love me. I teach preach in a variety of settings, and repeatedly I'm told and shown that I am loved.
But, today I was surprised by love. I pastor a church of wonderful, rebellious, broken, young adults. Because I'm the age of many of their parents - and because I'm deeply convinced of the things I'm convinced of - and because many of them are very immature and negative - I rarely get encouragement from them. I get respect, criticism, anger, fear. But, I rarely get encouragement.
Today I spent about an hour with Erika. She is deeply involved Harbor. She is a beautiful and talented - sometimes angry person - and by her own admission, when things get tough, she runs. Recently things have been tough at Harbor and she pulled back some. I interpreted that to mean that she didn't like something - or everything - that we were doing. That feeds my insecurity.
I'm not pastoring a traditional church. I am learning an entirely new way of doing stuff - so though I'm very confident in who I am as a person, I'm not confident at all about how we are doing what we do. Today, Erika told me that large crowds scare her. That is a totally new piece of information for me.
As I explored that with her, I said out loud - almost as an unconscious thought that I didn't intend to say out loud - "I thought you went away because you didn't like what we were doing in the church."
She replied: "Oh no, I love what we do. The stuff we've been doing over the past few weeks has really challenged me to take some risks that I have never taken. What we do is really good."
I heard, "what you do is really good." And I cried. I was embarrassed. I felt like a needy school boy wanting someone to say, "Good job." I pondered for a long time why Erika's kindness touched me so surprisingly. After all, remember where I started - I am a well loved person.
As I pondered I saw something that I hadn't seen before. The Harbor thing is an act of obedience to God for me. It stretches me out of my comfort zones 24/7. And as I struggle into that, I need encouragement, and I don't get much of that from those I serve. Having said that out loud - it's ok. I can find my encouragement in other places - and I do. But, today I found it from one of the folks that I'm trying to serve - and it felt good - really good.
Jim's talk may really challenge our concept of Christianity.
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