One of the great things about RightNow 09’ is that even on Day 3 you’re still wanting more and they didn’t disappoint. I personally love the fact that Kari Jobe led worship for the entire conference and she did not disappoint. When you add Amena Brown to the mix, you take things to a whole nutha level. She has such a way with words and a gift with from God that you must experience for yourself.

Now if your going to have a speaker start off day 3 with a punch, Matt Chandler is your man.  Matt is a beast (yes that’s a compliment). He is well spoken, well educated and has a passion to share the word of God.  The Resurrection was his topic of choice this morning and how people seem to misunderstand it. Matt takes us to Luke 24 and walks us through how the cross saves us from something and the resurrection saves us to something. (I can’t wait to share more of this with you next week).

The main morning session was followed by a breakout session. I decide to let the twitter world decide whose session I would go to. I narrowed it down to 2 Mark Batterson or Mac Lake. While the vote was close, my tweeps choose Mark.  Mark talked to us about a spirit led life. He recalled a trip to the Galapagos Islands and how he saw some of the most beautiful wildlife plants and animal, yet a few months later he was at the zoo and it wasn’t the same. Yeah they both had animals and wild life but the zoo just couldn’t compare to what he saw on the island. He compared this to a spirit led life; that we can walk around looking at the things without the Holy Spirit leading us, or we could let the Holy Spirit lead us and it like being on the island. I don’t think I quite did that justice but I hope you understand what I mean

For the final breakout session I choose “Question Based Discipleship” Heather Zempel was the speaker. Right from jump Heather hits with interesting facts about Jesus. Did you know that in Scripture Jesus asked 307 questions? He was only asked 183 and only directly answered 3.  She shares with us the advantages of asking question and how by asking questions we invite people to go to deeper places.

Donald Miller was the speaker at the final session which was titled “Romeo and Juliet” now your probably thinking like me; What’s this got to do with anything?  Let me just tell you Donald has a lot of thought and work into how Romeo and Juliet share the story of Christ. Now I know you might not believe this, but Mr. Miller does an excellent job of explaining this and the relational concept that we sometimes overlook in our relationship with Christ.

Right Now 09’ was an amazing conference and was executed with excellence. It is now on my “must do” list. I look forward to going into more detail about the sessions and other great things that took place during the conferences. Thank you to Brian Mosely, Marc McCartney and everyone behind the scenes that put on this amazing event.  I feel blessed to have been able to attend and blog about it.

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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.

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