It’s a meme, some sort of virus I caught from John Smulo. What’re ya gonna do, eh? I figure it was probably started by somebody trying to sort out who the kinderbloggers were and who actually had a “30” to report upon. Ah, well.

Ten years ago, on a cold dark night… no, wait, that’s Sting with the Chieftains filling my brain. Ten years back, 1997. I was a committed part of a church-planting team. We had just had a very good retreat together during which Princess Diana died… which I actually mentioned on that anniversary. We were plugged in and plugging away… it was just before the disillusionment set in that would end a seven-year weariness by setting us packing from the church. “The Toronto Blessing” effects had worn down in the city and we were starting to look for the next big revival-thing. We set some really good stones into the foundation of our little church community, but they were later ripped out.

Twenty years ago, I was starting my junior year at college (I took a couple of years off before starting college). 1987. I had returned that August from Hong Kong, where I had spent the summer doing the short-term missions thing with Campus Crusade. We did a quick trip into China, and after the whole team departed, a friend and I hooked up with Open Doors and did another “trip” in. I was working on planning a huge youth event at my alma mater, which ultimately proved to set a very high bar for everything that came after it. Over the following two years, they split the portfolio I held on the committee into about four separate ones. I was getting swept up in the Vineyard movement, though I found a home among a bunch of neo-Pentecostals and charismatics as there was no Vineyard in my area. I was Vineyard on the inside, though. I had met my wife by that time, but we wouldn’t start dating for another six months or so. I had my sights set on Andrew Jones‘ job with OM (not kidding, though I didn’t know him then).

Thirty years ago, I would have been at home, considering some form of school homework which was less preferable to a hundred other things I could have thought of, most of which involved goofing off or making something. The family had moved about a mile the previous year into a new home we had built in a different neighbourhood… and hey, it was 1977. I was probably thinking about Star Wars, reading comic books, listening to the radio, that sort of thing.

Let’s see, who to tag…. I don’t know if some of these have been hit already, but, hmmm…. Robbymac, Grace, Lori, Bill and Makeesha. And Glenn Hatcher.