It feels like weeks have passed since last Thursday, when I set out on my brief pilgrimmage to Bowling Green.  In just five days, I saw so many wonderful people, ate so many wondeful meals, and enjoyed so many wonderful experiences... It was a great trip.  Now that I'm back in Amsterdam, I feel physically exhausted, from all the late evening conversations and accumulated jet-lag -- but emotionally, I am totally rejuvenated.  Good quality time with good quality people seems to have that effect on me.

The reunion / 25th anniversary celebrations at h2o-BG were a very interesting (and enjoyable) experience for me.  Perhaps not quite what I had expected -- but then again, I didn't really know what to expect!  It wasn't like being back in 1999 at all.  Most people have grown / matured / mellowed / changed-for-the-better in quite significant ways.  A few have gotten weirder, their idiosyncracies more pronounced and exagerated with time.  But no one has stayed exactly the same.  Even those who seemingly "haven't changed a bit" still betray subtle signs of their changes -- be it a slight graying at the temples, a deepening of the wrinkles around the eyes, a few pounds heavier or lighter, or whatever.

As narcissistic as it may sound, I can't help but wonder how everyone perceived my own return to Bowling Green.

On some levels, I felt like some kind of out-of-place foreign exchange student.  Like the French teenager who stayed with my family for a month one summer while I was in high school.  His name was Guillaume.  He came with his uniquely European clothes and hair, bearing gifts of wine, fragrances, and European delicacies.  And he left with hundreds of photographs and several pairs of Levi's jeans (which he pronounced like "Levvies").  He talked a little bit funny and didn't always completely get how things were supposed to work in the USA, but he was a likeable guy.  Just a bit unusual.  I know, of course, that none of my American friends would say it so directly, but I can't help but wonder if some kind of comparison like that might be on their minds, too (seeing how I've now got the photographs and Levvies, just unpacked from my suitcase, now that I'm back in Europe).

On other levels, I have to confess that I felt a bit like Harry Bailey from the film, "It's a Wonderful Life":  a war hero, returned from distant shores -- arriving to the party as a last-minute exclamation-point surprise.  I realize that this comparison may seem (and that I may actually be) a bit conceited, given that Harry Bailey was so handsome, charming, heroic, and all that.  But listening to the things that others were mentioning about me, it's not hard to see where the parallels come from.  "Church planter"... "in Amsterdam"... "the pastor"... For a lot of people, these words may not seem like much -- but in the circles of h2o-BG, Great Commission churches, and well Evangelical Christianity in general, these traits are highly celebrated (for better or worse).  And while a lot of different people reconvened in Bowling Green from a lot of different places, scattered far and wide, Amsterdam always made the list of places mentioned as derivatives of h2o-BG (while, say, Orlando or Seattle did not).  It's understandable, of course -- given the fact that alumni in Amsterdam give the overall movement a sense of an "international" influence -- and I do feel blessed to receive a "hero's welcome" when I return to Ohio.  A part of me certainly enjoys the attention.  But the fact of the matter is that the party was not about me.  Harry comes back to Bedford Falls to toast George, not the other way around.  So while I was a little bit uncomfortable (though simultaneously gratified) by all the Harry Bailey attention, more than anything I was just glad to simply be there with the rest of the crowd, raising our glasses and singing Auld Lang Syne with the rest of them.

More than anything, though, my experience of the 25th anniversary celebrations was like sitting in the auditorium, listening to the debut performance of Mr. Holland's Opus.  Have you ever seen the shamelessly emotionalized conclusion to the movie?  Where various graduates of Mr. Holland's school orchestra come together to form the orchestra that performs the piece of music that Mr. Holland had been tinkering with for decades but never got around to seriously composing?  I'm not sure if the comparison to the h2o-BG reunion would make me the awkward braced-teeth red-haired clarinetist who became governor or the punk James Dean wannabe who became the affable dad or what... I just know that I've been privileged to play a small part in a much greater work.A 25-year retrospective offers a unique glimpse of ministry that is not easily noticed in day-to-day life.  Everyday interactions which seem like no big deal at the time become powerful testimonies of God's power with time.  A little conversation about God's grace, a simple act of kindness, a well-timed question... Although these things seemed so insignificant at the time, it turns out that these were life-changing moments, long-remembered foundations to new lives and relationships.  Three or four people told me, on separate occasions, that they kept coming back to our church (some of them eventually choosing to follow Jesus) because I remembered their name.  Something as little as remembering a name!!!  And I only heard a small fraction of these stories of significance (the ones that were shared publicly or in personal conversation) from h2o's 25 years of ministry.  There were so many beautiful stories in that room of 400-some people -- and even that group was just a small representative sampling of those who have been impacted by the ministry of h2o through the years!  All these people and all these stories came together to create a magnificent, symphonic opus of God's glory.  Enough to make a grown man weep -- just like the dramatic conclusion to Mr. Holland's Opus.

I still don't know what to think about everything, but it felt so good to spend so much time laughing and crying and remembering over the course of the extended weekend.  I still don't know exactly how to interpret my own place in the midst of such a scene, but in the end it was just good to remember that it wasn't about me.

P.S. - For those who might be interested in downloading high-resolution versions of any of the photos included in the collage above or otherwise uploaded to my Facebook page, you can go to my Flickr site for easy access to all of the best photographs from the extended weekend in America:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/amsterdamasp