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.
Second Drafts 
Do you cease being a Navigator when you no longer draw a paycheck from them? Seems to me that you’ll always be a Navigator (in both capital and lower-case “n” form).
True, I’ll always be a Navigator, paycheck or no. It’s just that I’ll be a Navigator who has been out of the loop of what’s been going on in the ministry the past couple of years who is trying to catch up with everything (for better and worse, things move a little quicker in a parachurch organization than in the PCA). “Insecure” is too strong a word.
the real question is, “how fast can you draw the wheel diagram?”
8.2 seconds, but it’s been a while.
Will you still be associated with the Navigators now that they promote Catholic Doctrine to include salvation through merit and no salvation outside of the Catholic Church? Are you aware of their navigator Catholic Discipleship Ministry by catholic Navigator Staff Director Mr. Richard Cleveland? I used to be on Nav staff myself, but now distance myself well far away.
Tod, judging from your website and the search terms (“the navigators pca”) that I presume led you to a post that’s over a year old, am I wrong to think you might be more interested in a general fight than in my particular thoughts?
As anybody who regularly reads this blog will tell you, I’m more than happy to interact over your questions. All I ask is that you give this some consideration first.
Skip my question. You are a man of thoughts, not action.