Today I’m wearing all brown–sweater, pants, shoes. But to my horror I see that I’m wearing blue socks. They sure looked brown when I picked them out of the drawer in the dark. I guess that’s what lights are for.

Today I am 50. Half a century. I hereby claim the right to be unrepentantly crotchety and cranky.

Also 50 years ago, the Hungarian Revolution broke out. So in Hungary, they are celebrating my birthday with fireworks and other raucous behavior. The Soviets crushed the revolution 12 days later. Yet I, safe in my Indiana crib, lived to fight another day.

Last Saturday the hotel sent me a 4:30 a.m. wakeup call so I could get to the Phoenix rental car terminal, return my rental car, take the shuttle to the airport, check my bag, wade through security, and make my 8:00 flight. Which turned out to be way more than enough time. A 5:00 wake-up call would have done it.

On the flight from Phoenix to Chicago, a guy was talking on his cell phone as our plane taxied onto the runway. A passenger a few rows up turned around and told him to turn it off–“It’s dangerous,” he said. He hung up and said he was turning off the phone. But as the plane began rising from the runwway, become airborne, I looked back (he was just behind me, across the aisle), and he was leaning down in his seat talking on the phone again. He thought if people couldn’t see him, they wouldn’t hear him. Wrong.

“Hey, turn it off!” I instructed sternly. Another passenger told him the same thing. He kept talking. “Don’t mess around!” I said, sternlier. “The other passenger said the exact same thing. And the guy finally hung up. Jerk.

Last Thursday and Friday I attended the MinistryCOM conference in Phoenix, Ariz. I hadn’t heard about this organization until I received an email about it. It’s designed for church communications professionals, which is my gig in life. This was their second annual convention. I’ll plan to attend every year.

Most of the attendees came from large, large churches which actually need someone to work fulltime in communications. Some had entire communications departments. This takes in a bunch of areas: marketing, graphics, the internet, public relations, information technology. The focus was more strategy than techie.

The level of competence, creativity, and commitment (three C’s! I should write sermons!) was extraordinary. I gained something from every keynote session and every seminar (most conferences throw in at least a few losers).

We met at Christ’s Church of the Valley, a 10,000-person church in Peoria, on the northwest side of the Phoenix metro area. My goodness, what a sprawling campus! The property at CCV, as it’s known, featured many buildings; this being Arizona, you don’t need hallways and enclosed walkways. The church holds four services each weekend–two on Saturday, two on Sunday. They promote them as “identical services.” Off of the sanctuary was a bookstore, a nice coffeehouse (with wireless access), and a scramble-system food court. Scores of tables sat outside, most under umbrellas or open-sided enclosures. Southwestern architecture is my favorite, and this church uses it beautifully.

When MinistryCOM attendees identified themselves, they usually gave the size of their church, not in a pecking order kind of way, but for context. I concluded that churches below 2000 round off to the nearest 100 (nobody said, “We have 1750 people”), churches above 2000 round off to the nearest 500 (so there’s no 5300, just 5500), and somewhere around 7000 or so, they begin rounding off to the nearest 1000. My size of church rounds off to the nearest 5 (do I say we have 120 people, or 125?). I didn’t meet anyone in a church with less than 1000 people, but my experience, in our denomination, is that they round off to the nearest 50.

I learned a lot, and I’ll inflict it upon my blog in the days ahead.