Right Now 09′ Conference Day 2 Recap

Wow! Day 2 was filled with so much, it was a long day but a good one! Just like Thursday the day started with Kari Jobe leading worship. I can honestly say I think she gets better each time.

The first session of the day started off with Francis Chan, pastor of Cornerstone Church. Francis talked about leading out of joy. He even points to a moment in his own life in which he thought about quitting the ministry because of the suffering.  Then God reminded him of 1 Peter 4:12-14, that we should rejoice in suffering and not be despaired and wanting to walk away.  Francis does a great job of reminding us “ that we shouldn’t be shocked when we suffer, we should expect it”.

He reminds us that, “we shouldn’t fall for the people are going to grumble and strike the rock trick” that the enemy is going to attack.

Next, we got to choose a breakout session, I chose one on “Making Coaching Work”. The speakers for this were Dave Auda, Pastor of developers at Mosaic, and Mac Lake from Seacoast Church. They spoke on the different ways to coach small group leaders. This was eye opening for me and I plan to expand on it more in a later post.  One of the big take aways from this was, “if we just send people to a small group without knowing the spiritual health of the small group leader. That’s just irresponsible”.

After lunch we had another breakout session. This time I chose one called “The Mentoring Project” it was given by Donald Miller, the founder. He spoke to us about the importance of needing fathers in a fatherless nation; how the lack of a father in his own life led him to start the Mentoring Project.

The afternoon main session was packed full of information. First up was Mark Batterson who spoke on God ideas. Mark points to the greatest commandment; that we are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul and mind. The mind is where Mark brings us to and lets us all know just how powerful the mind is God gave us. That one God idea is better than a 1000 good ideas. When God gives us an idea we must hold on to it, never let it go.

Matt Chandler was up next and he is one of my favorite speakers. His message was just amazing. He pulled no punches in letting us know that we must teach the gospel. That what we have seen  over the years is a back and forth tennis type match between more traditional and liberal approaches and that neither in its self is correct. The love of Christ and what he did on the cross for us is what leads us to holiness, but we cannot ignore what Christ did on the cross as a propagation of our sins. Matt preached a great message and I plan to expand on it more in a later blog, as I know I did not do it justice here.

Though that may seem like a full day we still had an evening session with Kay Warren and Francis Chan. Kay came out swinging and hit a homerun. Kay asked the question how do we move from being part of the crowd to being true followers of Christ. She quickly answers with Luke 9:23  and breaks it down in 3 steps; deny yourself, pick your cross and follow Him. She breaks all 3 down so well with great statements like, “there is no room for the kingdom of God in the kingdom of me”. When she finished, the entire room knew  we didn’t want to be ruined by the American dream,  but that we wanted Jesus to ruin us from what was normal and change them for his purpose.

It was great to start the day with Francis Chan and even better to end the day with him. This time Chan shared his heart on something I think every person in ministry needs to hear. That outside of God we can’t do it. That we need to go to the manual, the bible, on how to do things. That God wants us to work on our character and in a relationship with him. Not in knowledge like book knowledge but a genuine true loving relationship.

I know some of you may want more, don’t worry I have lots of notes and plan to expand on a lot of these over the next few weeks. Day 2 was great and I look forward to day 3.