Hanging out at Missionfest

Hanging out at Missionfest.

     On Friday, I attended Missionfest Manitoba with with a group of students.  The event is sponsored by over 50 churches in Winnipeg and was taking place at Grant Memorial Church.  It is an extravaganza of sorts with many organizations articulating their own understandings of Christian mission.  Friday's event was a concert featuring Matt Brouwer.  

     The place was packed.  Even though my own church wasn't a sponsor, I saw several people from my church there.  Quite a few people from CMU showed up.  As did some of my cousins.  It's times like these when the church family really does feel like a family!  I was just as surprised to see that my school was helping to sponsor the event and so of course I had to go to the pavilion and say hi!

Jesse Doell helping out at the pavilion

     Overall,though, I got the sense that the event wasn't really targeted at me.  There was a more subdued event next door for adults and if I hadn't been so enticed about the concert, I might have gone to that.  Unfortunately, I had to leave before the actual concert -- it was one of those events which has a very long lead-up to the main thing.  What I saw was a discussion with two missionaries from Guatemala where they talked about unconditionally following the lead of God.  I could have enjoyed their point if I wasn't so thrown off by their presentation, which was of the uber-charismatic variety.  The event seemed to me to be a bit like a crusade, where the faith gets over simplified for the sake of getting people going.  Still, if I didn't connect with the content of the evening, I did enjoy the fun atmosphere.