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Greg Linscott is also tweeting the conference here

Mike Durning here reporting from the first night of SGI’s 10^th national conference.

The blend of people in the auditorium is interesting. Of course, there are hundreds of young adults of college age here, and I look forward to talking to a few, to discern how many of them are from which churches or colleges or which arms of Fundamentalism. More on that later, as Tim (conference director) gets us some demographic data.

Tim Jordan (Calvary Baptist, Lansdale, PA) gave the first message in this plenary session, after a powerful time of simple worship to a blend of old hymns and a few of the contemporary worship songs with profound words, like “Before the Throne of God.”

If my calculations are correct (they often aren’t), I put on the SharperIron “Publisher” hat 19 months and two weeks ago (May 15, 2008). So I missed my opportunity to write some reflections on the one-year anniversary. Since we were preparing to move the site to Drupal about that time, things were hopping. Plan B was to write some retrospection at the year-and-a-half mark (“sesiquiannual reflections”?). That time “swine flu” got in the way. Plan C was to combine these thoughts with some Christmas greetings, but—well, that’s passed now too. So welcome to Plan D: “New Year’s greetings and reflections on 19 and a half months heading ShaperIron.”

Family times

“SharperIron” has gradually become a household word at our place. With the exception of my youngest (Joel, age 8), everyone in my family now has a pretty good idea of what SI is. They’ve watched me work on it quite a bit. To the degree they’ve been interested, they’ve provided feedback. My daughter (Jenna, age 11) has been vocal about how the site looks. My wife (Marilyn, age—um, 29) has shown interest but is not yet a regular reader. That would require a much larger quantity of content that is warmer, more personal and more devotional than what we currently provide (note to self: more content that is warmer, more personal and more devotional).

My son will really get interested the day we offer some kind of game. (I’m sure he’d be delighted to see an online real-time strategy game where armies of “Fundamentalists” throw Bibles at armies of “Neo-Evangelicals.”)

But life was mostly non-SI-related in ‘09. In January, we heard that my dad was having some worrisome symptoms: some peripheral vision problems, dizziness and disorientation. First, docs looked for an inner ear problem. Nothing helpful surfaced there. Another doctor said Dad had cataracts. Wrong again.