Catalyst Conference - Day 2

I think that the highlight of today is Andy Stanley’s session - which happened to be the last session of the day. Here are some thoughts from his session:

God created systems (the Solar system, the human body, etc.)

God uses systems for His kingdom.

We need to learn to use systems to accomplish the goals that we want to accomplish in our ministries. For instance:

We complain that people in our churches don’t bring their friends to church, so we exhort them all the more to bring their friends, but everything else that we do in our “system” is counter that goal. Andy suggests that we create systems that encourage & create environments to create the behavior that we want.

I have more notes on this in my conference notebook, but the notebook is in my bag (that’s checked on the plane), so I may post some more thoughts on this later...

Catalyst Conference - Day 1

Whew! What a day. With a lineup of speakers like Andy Stanley, Patrick Lencioni, Francis Chan, Erwin McManus, Shane Claiborne and others this is truly a “power-packed” conference.

That doesn’t include the contacts that Peto and I made with various schools, ministry leaders, organizations, etc. that we hope & believe will prove profitable for the growth of the local church in Europe.

Here are just a few snippets of some of the things that today’s speakers said:

ANDY STANLEY: “ What do you do when it dawns on you that you’re the most powerful person in the room?” Followed by a brief exposition of John 13 where Jesus washed the feet of the disciples. In that passage, the disciples are stunned by Jesus’ humility. “Has anyone ever been stunned by your humility?”

ERWIN MCMANUS: “What troubles me is how Christians are unable to discern between authentic & inauthentic.” Erwin is Salvadoran & grew up eating steak well-done/char-broiled (basically burnt). It was good to him until he was “forced” to eat a medium-rare steak - for the first time in his life. As the steak melted onto his tongue, he realized that a medium-rare steak is a beautiful thing. He realized that he had trained himself to love the worst. “Have we trained ourselves to love the ugly and thereby miss the beautiful?”
CRAIG GROSCHEL: “ Is the way I am doing the work of God destroying the work of God in me?” Do we pray “Disturb me!” to the Lord? “I was a full-time pastor and a part-time follower of Christ!”
I really liked the flavor of the teaching that ministry should be an outgrowth of the character & life of the believer, not something that we just DO.
One other thing that Craig challenged us to do was to pray, “Disturb me!” Let’s get out of our comfort zones!

Audio greeting from Catalyst Conference 2007

Here’s an audio greeting from Peto and me while at the Catalyst Conference.

This one’s in English:
Catalyst 2007 Greeting


This one’s in Slovak:
Catalyst 2007 Pozdrav

Dash Day Conference

What a cool day. Hanging out with youth workers who want to really reach & challenge young people of this generation, visiting the NEW World of Coke (with very cool things like a 4-D Theater that includes 3-D glasses, sprays of water in the face, simulation-type-kind-of-seats, and a very special tool in the seat back that pokes you at just the right time!), and then having a great dinner at the Sheraton Buckhead and capping off the evening with a time of worship & prayer at 5 different stations for a variety of purposes (praying for specific youth, their parents, youth workers and much more).

But the “capper“ was a testimony immediately following dinner. A youth worker at a church in the southern part of the USA told the story of accidentally leaving his 18-month old daughter in the car in the middle of the day for about 1.5 - 2 hours. The short version is that she of course died and what he shared was a heart-wrenching story of unshakeable love & forgiveness from his wife and the varied reactions of people around the country - some who even attempted to break into their house to attack him for his ”abuse.“

His humility, pain, suffering, love, acceptance of forgiveness, struggle with self-hatred & forgiveness and so much more was absolutely unbelievable.

I cannot even begin to imagine being able to forgive myself for being responsible for my child’s death.

Surprises & blessings

Well, the flight over from Vienna to Washington/Dulles was pretty uneventful. The only downer was the guy sitting next to me. His body odor and breath were so bad, that I almost gagged a couple of times. That was the (unpleasant) surprise.

The blessing just happened. As Emily & I were backtracking (from making a wrong turn towards our respective gates - the wrong turn was caused by the sudden emergence of a Starbuck’s Coffee shop as we exited from Customs) and heading the right direction to our gates, we passed a fellow that looked a LOT like the new president of Greater Europe Mission - Henry Deneen.

I turned, looked and said, “Henry?!” He stopped dead in his tracks and chatted with us. He was coming from Toronto and is headed over to Cologne for some GEM meetings. What a blessing to run into someone whom we’ve already grown to love and appreciate.

I don’t really believe in coincidences. We made a wrong turn, bought a cup of Starbuck’s and just happened” to run into him. The way he was going and the way we were going were not parallels in any fashion. We ran into him in an almost perpendicular fashion, so the timing had to be perfect.

God is good, isn’t He?

Glitch leadership

That’s my fancy term for how we handle the glitches of leading in a given situation.

Let me give an example: yesterday (Sunday) at our morning worship service in our church in Banska Bystrica, Slovakia, we had a serious glitch. The youth worship team was leading the worship (which they do once a month now - and a mighty fine job they do!), when the worship leader realized during the 2nd song that no one other than the worship team was singing. Glancing back at the screen behind him, he realized that the words were not being projected. He asked what the problem was and was quickly informed by the 2 guys trying desperately to get the computer up & running that it was an older computer and not the one typically used for the morning worship service.

There was a moment of uncomfortable silence after which I jumped up to fill in the lag time with announcements. As I stepped onto the platform, I commented that I had enough announcements to create a second sermon. The comment brought laughter, lightened the moment and enabled me to regain the attention of the congregation.

I proceeded to give the “dry” announcements - my term for giving information that could just as easily be projected on the screen, put up on a bulletin board as a poster or handed out as a flyer, but that is the way that announcements are still done here in Slovakia.

I asked the video technicians if they were ready to roll and received a frustrated & vigorous shaking of the heads. A shout from the back of the auditorium rang out, “Let’s just sing some hymns that we all know.”

Not wanting to cast aside our worship team (young & fragile in some ways!), I commented that I still had some announcements that needed to be made and after another brief comedic moment, I invited a guest to come up and introduce his ministry (a university movement of using Bible studies as an outreach to college students - very cool!), which he did.

Following that, I invited Emily & Michelle to the front to say good-bye to their church body. They did and they enjoyed the warm response which they were given.

My final announcement was just enough for our technicians to get the words up on the screen and we continued with our worship service.

And you know what?

God showed up. His presence was obvious & almost tangible to the human physical senses. It was wonderful.

My point of this musing? Just this, maybe God is not as fired-up about perfection as we are. We see glitches as hindering God’s work. Maybe it’s exactly what He wants in a given situation - a little chaos sends us rapidly to our knees begging for help, wisdom & direction.

Hmm, maybe we should be praying NOT for smoother services, but simply for God to show up in any way HE pleases and chooses.

Not perfection, but excellence - there’s a huge difference!

Traveling to Atlanta, GA.

I’m sitting in Starbuck’s Coffee in the Vienna, Austria, airport waiting for my flight. Linda dropped me off with Emily & Michelle at about 4:30am. We checked in (Michelle is going to San Jose, CA., Emily is going to Dallas, TX., and I’m going to Atlanta, GA.). Emily & I are on the same flight from here to Washington/Dulles and then we go our separate ways.

What’s funny is that as we entered the terminal area (after our passport & boarding pass checks), we headed straight to Starbuck’s! The funny part was the giddiness that overcame us as we spotted the familiar green/black/white circular sign indicating that yummy coffee & delicious muffins awaited our growling stomachs.

I’ve been blessed by many friends who have sent us Starbuck’s coffees for the past couple of years so I haven’t missed the coffee itself (my favorite is Italian Roast, but French Roast is a top-notch choice as well). (another aside here - did you know that the darker the roast is the less caffeine there is?) What I miss are the big, comfy chairs, the cool/funky music and just the overall atmosphere. Coffee shops in Europe are nice, but they aren’t made for long-term parking - they’re more like in and out in a jiffy. Not that that’s bad - it’s just different.

I think that there is also the feeling of a little something from “home” (which for a military brat and missionary is a very fluid term!).