Pray for Dieter Zander

For those of you who are of the praying persuasion, I would ask for prayer for a friend and seminary professor, Dieter Zander. Dieter is the Pastor of Arts and Spiritual Formation at Bay Marin Church in San Rafael, CA. Last night, Dieter suffered a stroke and had emergency surgery this morning. The surgery was successful and he is in a medically-induced coma to aid the healing process. The next 24 hours are critical. He is in his mid-40s, is married to the brilliant Val and has three teenage sons. Please pray for their family.

I first encountered Dieter back in 1994 at my first Willow Creek Leadership Conference where he was the music director of their burgeoning Axis ministry. Little did I know that he would become my teacher and friend. After I moved to San Francisco, I was in a discussion group with him at a missions conference, but was too star struck to talk to him. He later re-located to the Bay Area and began teaching Worship studies as an adjunct professor when I was a student there. I ended up working quite a bit with him and over the years he's invited me to sing with him in various worship settings. He's a brilliant thinker and probably the most talented musician I've ever known in real life. Just Google him.

There will be two prayer vigils held for him tonight - one in San Francisco at 5:00 at the home of a friend and one at Bay Marin Church tonight at 7:30. If you cannot join in body please join in spirit.

UPDATE: Bay Marin has set up a blog for updates of Dieter's condition here - please use this and ONLY this for your information, as there is some misinformation floating around out there.