It's going to be a strange mixing of worlds this weekend as The Navigators' national staff conference is in town. Over 1,200 folks from all over the Nav world are descending on St. Louis and the Millennium Hotel, and though we don't know everybody, we know a fair amount and hope to see many of them who are in town.
For those who don't know, I spent 12 years onstaff with The Navigators in Colorado Springs. Just before we left staff and moved to St. Louis in 2005, the Navs announced that they were holding their every-four-years staff conference here. At the time, 2007 seemed so far off that, apart from putting it on my calendar, I didn't think too much about it. But it's here now, and we're glad.
The staff conference holds particular significance for me as I (then 24) was part of the ten-member team back in 1995 asked to resurrect it after a 25-year hiatus. In addition to my normal staff responsibilities at Eagle Lake then, I worked for two years with the team to put things together, finally executing the plans we'd made during the last week of June at Estes Park that year (which was also one month into a full summer camp season). It was a great conference that came off without a hitch (or at least without any noticeable ones). I'm still not sure how it all got pulled off, but somehow it did.
All that to say, I probably won't crash too many sessions or workshops, but I do plan to mill around, shake a few hands, and temporarily kidnap a couple close friends and bring them home for dinner with the fam. There's part of me that's a little insecure about being at a Nav conference without being an official Navigator anymore, but I have little doubt I'll be remembered and warmly welcomed. The Navs are good folk who took good care of us when we were with them, and we were helped very much by their ministry.
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