Staff Road Trip

Sioux City to Granger, Indiana is a long way in a van especially when Interstate 80 in Chicago is closed due to hurricane related flooding.

Last Wednesday, Sunnybrook's leadership staff took a road trip in the church van to Granger Church for their "Innovate" conference. Granger is a leading church for leveraging pop culture in their ministry (while sticking to a very Biblical theology) to bring the realities of Christ to people who typically avoid the church. Interestingly enough, it wasn't their use of media, or cutting edge music that really grabbed our attention.

We believe the entire reason God brought us there was to hear one of Grangers' speaking pastors, Rob Wegner. He spoke about how Granger has gone from "throwing darts" all over the area and world to impact people, to focusing all of their efforts in one specific housing project in their area, and one location in India. It's a sustained laser focus in one local and global location and it's making a huge impact on the people in those communities. My words can't do justice to the strength in which God grabbed the staff's hearts to do the same in Sioux City and with our global missions as well.

We returned about 1:30 Saturday morning after a 3-day total of 23 hours of driving...great staff bonding. Funny part was in Chicago, stopping at some of Pastor Jeff's old stomping grounds from when he lived there...sliders at White Castle (those are terrible...and my do they stink!), donuts and coffee at Dunken Donuts, and finally ice cream at the creamery (all in about a 20 minute time period). Strange fun and now a new goal for Sunnybrook.