I didn't want to have that moment set the tone for the rest of my day! I texted my wife to explain my blunder and her and Audrey showed up, like a knight on a horse, prepared to slay the "bad day dragon"....
Reggie Joiner cranked the conference off well with an incredible look into how we are failing our children and youth in church and Christian education inside the church. I need to go back and read my notes again, because he was firing them off, one after the other.
I could tell we were all refreshed and prepared for the day after that....but what I didn't expect was the friendship that Turner and Christin had formed with another catalyst attendee...she sat with us and was like a normal part of our team! Her testimony was out of this world...literally, just one of those testimonies of complete brokenness and complete transparency! She actually stuck around the whole day with us and we were truly blessed by her presence.
We then broke into our lab sessions and didn't truly get a break until 5:30pm. The labs I visited were:
1. Knowing your identity as a church - by Leonce Crump. His main statement that resonated with me was, "how you gonna serve a community if you don't know the needs of the community around you." He encouraged church leaders to get involved in the community by asking questions, so when people in your community come to your church, you are answering the questions they are asking.
2. Missional Ministry - by Jo Saxton. I had never heard of her and didn't know what to expect. She was on spot in calling the church to look back in order to look forward. Not a looking back at what once was, but rather, at once worked that we dropped and forgot about...the early church didn't have budgets, buildings and rock star worship...they had Jesus. That was their whole marketing scheme....to make much if Him by meeting the needs of commonality in the community.
3. Hyper linked - by David Kinnaman. I was really looking forward to this one because I had read his 2 books and as one of the leaders in Barna Research group, his information was going to be current, factual and relevant. His whole premise was to say, technology has changed the world entirely...and the church sucks at embracing a powerful tool to advance the gospel....2 huge statements he made that drove home his point.
- we all used to have to buy the things, individually, that are now located right within our pockets....video cameras, picture cameras, record players/tape players/CD players, calculators, board games, telephones, tv's, VCR's, etc....are all now located on a single device. It has taken a massive amount of technology over the last 100 years and placed them all on one single unit! Wow!
- want to know the importance of technology? Look at what this generation is learning to do without that were and still are standards for us, good and bad...don't need a bank to do banking, don't need a library to read books, don't need magazines to read current issues, don't need tv sports scores, dont need a mall to go shopping, don't need church to know Jesus....see the trend?
Lastly, the evening session with Bob Goff was out of this world and yet so simple! I will save that for a post on its own. I was cheering one minute and destroyed the next! Compelling stories of what loving others actually means for us.
Tomorrow is the day the conference moves over to the actual big room at the Gwinnett arena and Kari will be joining us tomorrow, so our whole team gets the chance to learn together. Expectant for tomorrow!
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