When we decided to run for the Pastors’ Conference, it wasn’t even clear who the candidate would be. We had an idea that we liked, discussed, and agreed to, but it was only after several long discussions that we arrived at the decision that my name would be at the top. As they continually pointed out to me, that meant that I would get a lot of the credit if things went well, but that if things went bad, it would be my name attached to the stink (and they’d make sure everyone knew I’d been in charge)!
I want to publicly thank the guys who helped out a couple of weeks ago in Phoenix. I sat up on stage listening to the garbled echoes bouncing off the back walls (that or several of the speakers were using unknown tongues), while these guys were running around doing all the work that needed to be done.
They are an odd group, to be sure. We did most of our communication on a private Facebook discussion, and the guys continually monkeyed with the name. An early name was in honor of my lime green suit. When Trump used the “bad hombres” thing, that name appeared as our group name. When Hillary labeled Trump supporters as a “bag of deplorables” the name changed to that. I went biblical and attempted to be complimentary and affirming. David had his “Mighty Men” and so I labeled the guys “Dave’s Mighty Men.” But these yahoos took another name for themselves that they actually seemed to like, “The Minions.” I don’t know who originated that, and I was never comfortable with it, but it was the one that was their favorite.
They are strange guys.
- My Chief of Staff – or whatever title we decided to use last, was the Rev. Dr. Todd Benkert. He spent untold hours putting together that wonderful program you saw and helping raise the money that paid the bills. One week, he would talk me off the ledge, then the next week, I would get him off the bridge. I think we both had a few sleepless nights over this thing. But though I was president, he was pretty much co-president.
- Techie Extraordinaire, Brent Hobbs shocked me. I’ve never said this to him, so no one tell him, okay? Brent said he wanted to work on the graphics for the conference and I was a little nervous. Lots of folks expected us to run a second-rate operation. I mean, we’ve all seen a lot of cheesy PowerPoint presentations, right? Brent is a pastor – what did he know about graphics? Evidently, quite a bit. Did you see the stuff on the ginormous TV (18’x80′?) behind us? The graphics on the banners and popups all around the venue? Brent did those. Yeah, he had some help, but he did it. And when they were up on screen, I never thought they were anything but professional looking. We could have spent thousands and not gotten anything better than what he did.
- Adam Blosser finally was old enough to vote in this election – I think he’s the baby of our group. But he stepped up in a big way. He ran our search for the 10 preachers (Todd and I each used a captain’s choice at the beginning – I chose Bart Barber, he chose Shane Hall) who would handle Philippians during the conference. Did a decent job, didn’t he? He also took over for me running this blog when I realized that the demands of the PC were not going to allow me time to do it. He was involved in leadership in several others ways. All of you who have constantly asked Ashley why on earth she married him, back off. He’s turning out okay after all. If he’d just change baseball teams.
The rest of the guys I am gonna mention alphabetically. They each contributed in big and small ways. Here’s the thing. Preachers can be difficult. We are all used to sitting in the main chair at our churches, then these guys show up and they are being given jobs that are not glamourous at all. Menial. Boring. Sweaty. And if there was a single moment of tension in the group between the guys, I wasn’t aware of it. I saw no ego. No jealousy. No one ever put himself forward. They embraced every job joyfully, willingly, and diligently. The hardest thing was keeping them all active (like teenagers, the trouble starts if they are not occupied), not getting them to do the work. It was a joy to work with them in Phoenix.
- Jay Adkins and his son Quint volunteered for what looked like the “glamor” position – runner for the Gettys. Little did they realize what that entailed. They were likely the busiest during the days of the conference – other than Todd and Brent, perhaps. If you see Jay, tell him you have an errand you need him to run.
- Mike Bergman, our newlywed, helped organize the prayer booth and was involved in many other ways.
- Alan Cross was one of our photographers and helped in a number of other ways. It isn’t easy to distinguish at times what each person did, because they all jumped in together.
- Scott Gordon was a jack of all trades. He was very involved in preacher selection and helped a lot with all the stuff that had to be done at the site.
- Doug Hibbard and his family helped me out by putting the name tags together and do countless other small things. Doug took a bunch of pictures for us. Always cheerful, always willing, always helpful. The only problem I had was Doug’s kids – they would not believe me when I told them to avoid the mac and cheese and leave it to me. Oh well.
- Mike Leake pushed for the scholarship program. Frankly, I had given up on that and was ready to abandon the idea. But it became one of the best things we did – 62 guys were offered $1000 scholarships to the convention this year. He also helped with our preacher search and in other ways.
One of the coolest things that happened (might not work out that well, come to think of it) is that our wives have become friends. We’ve been talking for a long time, now they have their own little Facebook group. That can be good. Or maybe not. Hmmm.
There were others who joined in, of course. My officers, Paul Smith and Toby Frost. Tony and Stephanie Jones were sort of honorary Minions (is that a compliment?) and there were others too numerous to mention. But I just wanted to take a moment and publicly thank the Minions.
But seriously, what kind of guys LIKE being called minions?
I’ll take the title of honorary minion. It was an honor just to be a very small part. You guys did a great job. We should all do this again sometime.
I was honored to be a Bad Hombre for like five minutes when Todd added me to the Facebook group by accident. :-/
I was honored to be a bad hombre Tuesday night when we got called back to the convention hall. I was ready to rumble.
Lol….that’s funny.
See anything too secret or classified, Jim?
I hear that since the PC is over – Adam Blosser has all of that type of information stored away on a server hidden in his basement bathroom – ready to whip it out on a moments notice for the next great Miller Minion Uprising!
Shhhhhhh…..I think his password is password.
the amount of anything classified we dealt with could easily fit on a 3.5″ floppy disk 😉
For the record, I have the floppy disk, as I did bring a 3.5″ USB floppy drive in case we needed it.
“minions” came from an insult thrown at us from some Facebook group. Somebody took a screenshot and sent it to us where someone had referred to “the minions over at SBC Voices”
For my part, I never said I wanted to work on graphics. I wasn’t even planning on going to the first meeting in Nashville back in October. Dave asked me, “aren’t you coming, I was hoping you’d work on coordinating the tech side of things…” So I said, sure, if you want me to, I’ll be there.
The graphics started the second day, just an hour or so before we were about to all head to the airport when someone said, “shouldn’t we nail down a theme?” Dave had just made the final call on Philippians that day or the day before, so I was looking through the text of Philippians to see what might be a catchy phase from the text that would capture the book’s theme and our conference well. A few were thrown out before I read “above every name” from Phil 2. A few people said “I like that” and I don’t remember if any more ideas were submitted or not, but the group pretty quickly settled on that as our theme.
It developed from there because that was about the time, or shortly after, that we got the Facebook and twitter accounts… and we needed artwork to use for the profile and banner photos for both of those accounts. So I started playing around with some designs to use temporarily on those accounts, figuring we would get some professional graphics people at some point, dump the temporary stuff I had made just to get us by, and came up with an early version of the above every name graphic we actually ended up using.
After I had that design the projects just kind of accumulated and things developed on their own – since I had all the vector graphic files and was kind of the contact person, it was usually easier to just make whatever was needed for the project at hand than it was to pass off the files and explain how to use them to 10 different groups we were working with. its all a blur in a lot of ways but it was a lot of fun and a once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing. I’m glad I got to be a part of it.
Don’t interrupt my narrative with facts
I don’t actually remember how it all happened.
Really, i just remember worrying that our graphics would look cheesy…then being AMAZED at how they looked in Phoenix.
Thanks, Dave. I did nothing, really, but am grateful you guys let me tag along. I did suggest really hard and repeatedly for Philippians to be the book, though. And, I’m glad it was. It was perfect, I thought.
Thanks for letting me participate and join y’all. It was an incredible blessing that I’ll never forget. Thank you!
I pushed for Colossians all the way up until Dave made the call for Philippians. I think you guys were right, Philippians was the perfect choice.
Thank you, Dave and “minions” for your friendship. I am thankful to have been a part of this project and am humbled by how God brought everything together.
Thanks for the opportunity, Dave. It was a great experience.
All Pastors’ Conferences should be done this way henceforth.
My kids will gladly eat an extra share of mac and cheese—any time, any place.
It was a great opportunity. If for no other reason than to be free to roam backstage and raid coffee. Todd and Brent did so much of the work that it was a breeze.
And I am honored to be listed amongst the minions.