I’ve been blogging about the Collyde Summit – for the context, check out Post 1 and Post 2 but at the moment, I’ve been thinking about the workshops. Yesterday I wrote about Mako Fujimora, today is on Joan Ball. I first ran into Joan at the Collyde gathering in 2010 (the one affectionally known as the “Beta-Collyde”). She’s among the most interesting people you’ll meet at these types of things – generous, conversational, and energetic – it was a good thing One Village was there giving out coffee, otherwise I might not have been able to keep up with her.

Joan began her workshop by summarizing her coming to faith story as it was just 10 years ago she became a Christian. You can read her story in her book, Flirting with Faith. I like the way she shares her story – she had a lot of ups and downs – the same as everyone else. And while it’s wonderful how many people find Jesus during a difficult crisis in the valley, Joan actually goes through a different experience. As she mentioned, she was living a normal life, even a successful one by some standards, but after becoming a Christian, her life goes through a downturn.  Her family is met with financial hurdles, job loss, long periods of life-frustration and significant changes in their family dynamics. I wish she could have shared more here but at least we knew there was no prosperity gospel coming.

During her talk she stressed the need to “wrestle with the now.” Which in so many words, was a theme that Margaret Feinberg would also emphasize. She also admitted that she was intrigued by the Zombie Apocalypse (Hey who isn’t? I even included [Read more…]