đź“Ł Inaugural GruntCon
A Spark from Scripture
This week’s reading from Hebrews ended with a line that hit me like a piano out of a third-story window: “Our God is a consuming fire.” That image has been lingering in my mind, and it’s the perfect way to talk about something new—Grunt Con.
What Is Grunt Con?
On October 25, 2025, I and a small team of co-organizers are hosting a one-day event in Albany, Oregon that I describe as, in my words, “a church service about church and service.” It’s not a lecture hall, not a rally, and not a traditional church service. It’s a day of conversation—guided homilies followed by open discussions.
The idea has been simmering for years, first in conversations with veteran monks at Prince of Peace Abbey near Camp Pendleton, then in false starts in Seattle and San Diego. But in the end, it felt right to bring it home to Albany—my church, my family, my community.
Four Plenary Conversations
The backbone of Grunt Con will be four plenary homilies, all drawn from the Gospels’ accounts of Jesus beginning his ministry:
Luke 4 – Jesus’ inaugural sermon in Nazareth
Luke 1 – Mary’s inaugural (AKA the Magnificat)
Matthew 4 – A re-framing through Isaiah 9
Mark 6 – “A prophet has no honor in his hometown”
Each session will be short, followed by a guided group discussion. The point is not to sit quietly while someone preaches at you, but to participate in a conversation that needs to happen: how faith, service, and community overlap—especially for military families.
The 🔥 Bonfire
The crowning event of the day will be something we’re calling The Bonfire.
“Bon” is Latin for good, and this fire will be about burning away the false labels and heavy burdens that others place on military families:
Hero
Baby killer
Monster
War Torn
None of these words capture the truth of who we are. At the Bonfire, participants will be invited to write down these labels and throw them into the flames. If they don’t last, maybe they were never true. What survives is up to God.
This is about balance. As Walter Brueggemann wrote in The Prophetic Imagination, we need both critique and hope. Military families know what it is to live in that tension, neither all good nor all bad, but fully human.
Survival as Resistance
Many of us carry the weight of honorable and dishonorable moments alike. Survival itself becomes a form of resistance—resistance against despair, against being defined by others, against losing our humanity.
To be in the military or a military family is to refuse to be put in a box. It is to live as both sinner and saint, to claim our stories before others use them for their own ends.
I believe veterans and military families have a prophetic gift—not just for the church, but for the whole world. We have “seen the elephant.” We know both the terror and the hope of life and death. And that gives us something to say.
Join Us
Grunt Con is about reclaiming that voice together.
đź“… When: October 25, 2025
đź“Ť Where: Albany, Oregon
Tickets are available at pewpewhq.com/gruntcon. If cost is an issue, reach out—I don’t want price to keep anyone from being part of this.
