The Onething Conference

This is not exactly a fun post.

I have long been a little suspicious of emotion. People in the grip of emotion, not thinking logically, have done many, many terrible things. I have not been personally affected by this phenomenon, but it is most assuredly common. Example: WWII on the European front. If Hitler had not been able to emotionally sway people to follow him he would not have had the resources to take over Germany’s government, and attempt to take over the world. Without emotion, there would have been no Third Reich, no Holocaust. Emotion was hijacked and used for personal gain. That would be one example of emotion used for the purpose of evil. In countless cases the terrible story of emotion clouding logic is played out through murders and abuse every day, across America and the world.

Thus, I was a bit leery of emotion, and wanted to get rid of mine. It seemed that life would be so much easier if I could just live out of my head, where I knew the right things to do, instead of wading through my emotions. For those of you who have heard the story of me growing up, I indeed usually knew the right things to do.

I was the “good kid,” the one who always did everything right. I went to Sunday School my whole life, I knew all the answers. I became very, very good at controlling myself externally. I can hide just about anything beneath a calm exterior and I’m good at lying. I think that’s one of the reasons I enjoy acting, though I’m not nearly as good at it as I thought I was.

But that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about emotion. And it would seem that a vast majority of the problems in the world would be eliminated if we weren’t such emotional creatures. I of course realized that since God created us with emotion, it must be good; I just had a real hard time seeing how.

I am, or try to be, a very logical person. I really enjoy listening to logical teaching, being able to think through processes, and debate with my friends. Each time I like to see how things connect, what implications are necessarily present, and where there is a logic fault that must be addressed.

I hate, really hate, simple emotional appeals. If you can’t convince me of something with a good, reasonable process, you can hit the road buddy. I refuse to be swayed by mere guilt trips – and in Christ I have the freedom and backing to do so.


This had not come without some sacrifices, if that’s what you call them. The by-product of me always keeping myself under such a tight rein, always controlling my external self, was that I was oftentimes unable to let emotion sweep over me. At those CIY’s and ICYC’s (Indiana Christian Youth Convention, I’m sure your state had it’s own version – TCTC, PCTC, ICTC, and KCYC to name a few), not to mention (so I’m mentioning them) the NMC’s and NACC’s (National Missionary Conventions and North American Christian Conventions, respectively) I was never able to join those people up front jumping up and down to the music, having a great time.
Yes, part of that was also my self-consciousness, constantly worrying about what other people were thinking of me. But whenever I would try to do the whole jumping thing, I just kept thinking, “Why am I doing this? This is stupid.” So I’d just go back to my chair and enjoy the drumbeats.

Oh, and I grew up in a Restoration Movement church, so I had that background too. Where we stand in our pew, sing the songs, listen to the preacher, and go home. No emotional involvement emphasized.

About a month or two ago I came to the realization that:
1) We, as human beings, are DRIVEN by emotion. That’s how God created us. It is emotion that allows us to do virtually anything we set our minds too – besides being created in God’s image. Wait, maybe that’s the same thing . . .
2) We, as fallen human beings, must bound our emotion with logic. Because what ‘feels’ right often isn’t.
3) We, as equally fallen human beings, must bind our logic with God. Jesus, specifically.
4) Thus, Jesus must inform our logic, which must inform our emotions.

But even so, I still have a lifetime of logic/emotion in my past. And while I’ve come to appreciate emotion more, I’m still very much a logical person. Newton’s Law is my own.

Summary: I like logic, and am learning to like emotion.


That was the background to what I need to write. You had to understand where I was coming from.


I was privileged to attend the Onething conference in Kansas City, Missouri, from Jan. 27 – 31. Now, anyone who has been reading my posts, Joeletters, or known me from Deeper last year ‘till now, knows that that title for a conference really, really excites me. The concept that our only point and goal in life is to know Christ more intimately each day, that we are to make Him our OneThing – that that’s what life’s about. You know how much that fires me up.

We arrived at the convention center during the 7:00 p.m. main session. It was the usual good fun loud music, people up front jumping. But a difference between the CIY’s, ICYC’s, NMC’s, and NACC’s, and this conference, quickly became apparent. The worship times were VERY emotionally driven. They took a song and played it for at least 10 minutes, using the dynamics of the song to lead us up and down emotionally – you know, louder/softer, intense/peaceful, (no key changes that I remember, which in retrospect surprises me).

They would just get caught up in the song, it seemed, and sing parts of it over and over. I started to understand how people raised on hymns must feel about these new-fangled choruses. At a certain point in each song I was emotioned out, and just stood numbly singing. Have we mentioned my ability to outwardly worship, while inwardly being approximately eighty-seven-and-one-half miles away? I’m really good at it. My voice takes over; I can harmonize, sing melody, even move my body to some small degree. All the while, my mind is completely gone.

Then we’d move on to a new song and start the process over again. And it seemed that every song was it’s own little session unto itself, from my perspective. They’d take one song, run us through the gamut of emotions (happy, sad, energetic, peaceful, pumping your fist - a simple raised hand - just swaying with the music), the entire rollercoaster. They’d usually end the song nice and gentle. Then they’d take the next song, and do the exact same thing! Start gentle, or rock hard, go up and down, in and out, repeat it about 35 times, and end.

Well, coming from my personal background of being suspicious of pure emotional appeals, as well as being a Restoration pewstander (that’s copyrighted, I made it up), as well as expecting a song to end after we had sung all of the words, that sorta ruffled my feathers. It’s all good though, I figured.

Next came the preaching time. Now I started getting angry. The more I heard, the more it seemed to me that this guy was just preaching his opinion on the Bible. He gave a few verses to support a few points, but mostly he just seemed to be an impassioned opinionator. That doesn’t sit well with me. Like the Bereans, I need to be able to track with a speaker’s logic train, as well as his or her Biblical sources, to determine if what they’re saying is compatible with God’s truth. (Acts 16:11)

And he was preaching on stuff that I wasn’t really at all familiar with, even with my 19 years in the church. He was coming from a different tradition. So here I was, listening to something that I had no real previous knowledge of, and hearing conclusions without supporting facts. It wasn’t working for me. The majority of the audience didn’t seem to have the same reservations as I did, for spontaneous applause and amen’ing would break out when he made a particularly impassioned point. (Also something my Restoration background didn’t emphasize.)

But, I figured, give the guy a chance; this is just one sermon after all. And I don’t have any problem with passion in oratory, or applause and amen’ing. Just because it doesn’t fit into my background doesn’t mean it’s wrong.

We went home, slept precious little, and got back the next day in time for the first (9:00 a.m.) main session of the day. Much to my chagrin, little had changed. The music was the same – excellent, but seemed overplayed. The sermon was by the same guy as the first night. I settled back and readied myself to give the guy another fair hearing. But again, he used a few verses and mostly orated. He was really passionate about was he was saying, but I still hadn’t really ever been introduced to the concepts before. He wasn’t giving me much to believe on, other than his word. If you’re not preaching God’s word in context, it takes a lot more for me to trust what you’re saying.

This was how the majority of the conference progressed. Emotion emotion emotion. And I kept getting angry. It got to the point where I couldn’t stand to listen to the guy speak. This all came to a head Friday night, during the evening main session. I just couldn’t take it anymore. I left my seat and walked out, trying to find some place where I could just be quiet and sit. My heart was in turmoil.

I ended up sitting on the floor up against a wall. I just kept asking God where the fault lay, and for someone to explain to me what I didn’t understand. Then it occurred to me that the next day, Saturday, the IHOP staff were inviting us to join them in a fast. I decided to fast also, simply asking God for understanding and reconciliation of all the things I didn’t understand.

That night, as we were going to bed, I started asking Micah, one of the guys I went with, some of the questions that I had. That was a real blessing from God, to start being able to understand some things. According to Micah, the speaker guy who was making me so angry because he seemed to be preaching just his opinions DID actually use references in his teaching materials. Just because of the constraints of the conference, Micah said, did he skip the references and just teach what he had been learning. That helped to hear.

The next day, Saturday, was so good. God took that fast and helped my attitude and my understanding to come 172 degrees around. I realized that in the last month or so I had lost the initial emotion that had actually come when I came to understand that there is a real God. These people were not being swayed by something wrong by allowing themselves to be caught up in the love of God. Just because it was more expressive than I was used to didn’t mean that it was incorrect. Emotional worship, in all actuality, is as perfectly acceptable as staid, liturgical worship.

I found that my focus had slipped again, not being solely devoted to Jesus. The conference reminded me that I really have only one goal. To my extreme sadness the emotional joy I had found in Jesus when I first realized that He was real had slowly evaporated, and even now I am currently still seeking to regain that single-minded devotion. But now that loss is on my mind, and something that I am asking Jesus to fix.


I would really appreciate your prayers, these past few days have been a little rough. In addition to feeling physically down from a cold/fever, I have not yet been brought back into that feeling of joy because of Jesus – and I really miss it. Basically, I’ve lost the feeling of being loved by Jesus, and it bites.



Also, whether from sleep deprivation or what, I don’t know, but my body continues to be really tired, and my mind will randomly decide, “Well, that’s enough cognitive processing for now; Shut ‘er down.” And I just walk around in a daze. If this continues next week, during my early week class, I’m gonna have a problem!