Registration for Summit VIII opened today.  Amidst the dizzying pace of life, it suddenly struck me:  this conference is going to be amazing.  I can hardly wait.

Sure, the work of the Alliance is my day job.  And I love it.  But it is my night job, too—the things I think about when I’m “off.”  How can the church come to look more like Jesus?  Can ordinary people transform lives of destitute kids?  How do parents and mentors and caregivers best connect with children coming from hard places? 

So it’s not just my day job that elevates my heart rate for Summit VIII.  It’s the way that these questions, and countless others that really matter, will be engaged in such deep and inspiring and substantive ways this May.

It’ll be seeing and learning with and from people I admire.  Not just Francis Chan, Rick and Kay Warren, Dennis Rainey and Steven Curtis Chapman.  Them too, of course.  But also so many other speakers, presenters, and fellow attendees who may never be famous, but glow like a lightening strike, lit up with Jesus and a love for orphans.   Foster parents.  Indigenous church leaders from other countries.  Mentors.  Adoptive families large and small.  Adoptees now living a vision for transforming the communities they came from.  30-year veterans of global orphan care and newcomers full of dreams and energy.

Just about every part of me–adoptive dad and mentor, follower of Jesus and guy who wants to learn more about “pure and faultless religion”—is so deeply challenged and nourished at Summit.  I just pray I’ll be able to gift to others there at least of fraction of what I always receive.