Well, I’m in Atlanta for Catalyst. I have a friend who pastor’s a church in the Smokies who tried to talk me into going last year but we ending up passing. This year, we were about to pass due to tighter funds at church but we felt, after a period of prayer and discussion that not only myself, but Josh who serves on the Leadership Team should both go.
We had a period of 30 days of prayer and fasting in our church to prepare and humble ourselves in preperation for the trip and what God might lay before us. We opened up a fund raiser to get the cash together and everyone chipped in. The only thing left was to go.
Josh and I loaded up yesturday morning and headed to the Smokies where we spent the night in Townsend. This morning we hooked up with some more folks and made the final few hours into Atlanta to get settled in.
Today is the pre-labs where they offer several classes that you can pick from and be instructed by different Christian leaders in different areas. Today, I caught Margret Feinberg (The Sacred Echo); John Burke (No Perfect People Allowed), and then snipets of some others including Dino Rizzo (Servolution). To be honest, they were all ok and gave me reason to pick up a couple new books but none of these were too deep.
However, it was good to get away from the norm, be in a place of church leaders, and just open yourself up to the leading of the Spirit and let your thoughts rome. I got many pages in my journal of random thoughts, impressions, and directions that I will be praying for and discerning over.
We have been having a great time with our friends from the Church of the Cove and growing deeper friendships. I have really been enjoying this today.
The crown of the day was the evening session with Matt Chandler, the pastor from the Village church in Texas. I had listened to a podcast or two from him and was looking forward to the evening. First the worship of Aaron Keyes was great! Then Matt’s message for us was humbling, challanging, and powerful. I suggest you try some of his podcasts which you can do through iTunes.
That’s it for now. I am tired and ready for some sleep. More later……
So is this conference an emerging/Emergent thing?
Not really though there is plenty of representation from all types of Christian churches here from Emergent, emerging, traditional, pentecostal and the like. It’s a general church leadership conference but more younger church or contemporary church related.