As the last series of posts show, I recently attended the Right Now Conference. This is just one of many conferences held all throughout the country frequently — gathering church leaders to hear teachers inspire or talk strategy. This particular conference, I think, was trying to have a serving component — so it’s not just that we went & learned something, but thatwe went and were inspired to serve others. It also had a lot more content specific to small group leadership than most conferences I’m aware of.
As I’ve blogged about before, I love getting fresh input and weighing ideas, so conferences are great opportunities for me. The Right Now event wasn’t perhaps my favorite conference ever (in terms of personal impact, take-aways for my job, or other factors) but it was definitely a good 3 days spent thinking about big ideas, and I’d be happy to return.
You can read posts to summarize most sessions I attended here:
- Thursday:
- Tim Ross – Are you Worth Following (no notes)
- Alan Danielson – Community Ecosystems (no notes)
- Russ Olman – Leading from your Strengths (no notes – this breakout session did not serve me at all well – it felt like a sales pitch)
- George Barna – What I Learned from the Master Leaders - Leadership Checkpoints
- Friday:
- Francis Chan – large session about quitting, suffering & more
- Francis Chan – Redefining Church (breakout session)
- Q&A with Mark Batterson (no notes)
- Matt Chandler – The Enduring Gospel (breakout session)
- Mark Batterson – God Ideas
- Matt Chandler – Getting the Gospel right
- Kay Warren – Compassion & Action
- Saturday:
- Matt Chandler – The Great Cause- the resurrection / we’re not just saved from but saved to
- Dave Auda – Using the Arts in Small Groups – (breakout session) also connecting with our spiritual pathway
- Alan Danielson – online small groups (breakout session)
- Donald Miller – Romeo & Juliet – what do you need to know to be a Christian and how we can learn something from Shakespeare
Below are my personal reactions after the event:
For Gateway, as my church congregation:
I often leave events where I interact with people from other churches with these two thoughts:
“Wow, we’re doing a lot right. I’m glad to be part of this place!”
“We’re not nearly as cool as we think we are. We’ve got a lot yet to figure out.”
I left this event with those two ideas, once again.
We really are doing a lot right. Lots of our small groups are already caring for others (maybe they haven’t adopted an entire school or city block or something, but at least they’re doing things to pay attention to their neighbors or serve around town). We’re reaching out to messy people that most churches can’t imagine working with (though, no doubt, there are plenty of messy people as part of their churches, but maybe don’t have the same level of authenticity). We have people taking steps to grow in their faith not just as educational (getting to know about God) but personal (getting to know God).
But, there’s so much we have yet to figure out. We need to think more about how we help people grow up in faith to where they’re inspired to serve others, naturally. We need to think more about how we help people in our congregation know how to effectively evangelize to their friends (and do so in ways that show just how big God’s kingdom really is!). We need to think more about how people with different spiritual pathways or different interests connect with God, and how we help facilitate that. We need to consider how to give-away more resources for the sake of the kingdom around the world. We need to work more with churches in our local community. We need to better understand how to speak “deep” yet also speak “relevant” and help people feed themselves. We need to think more about the real ramifications of “online church.” We need to help people in the Deepen-season not just know about God, but really know God and respond to His work in their lives. Etc.
For the people I lead:
For the people I lead, I am inspired to help them have community with other leaders, where they can share their real struggles. I am inspired by the realness of several speakers to talk about how they face struggles and sometimes just want to quit. I am inspired to be available for the women I’m working with when they have those feelings of burn-out, of course — but more so, to be available for them prior! I am inspired to think about how they are “trading” aspects of their personal lives in order to serve something bigger.
For myself:
I am a big idea person. I hope anyone who has read my blog gets that. :) Conferences like this have a way of not always giving me obvious next-steps within a day or two, but the things I heard will stay in my head and I’ll chew on them for weeks and months to come.
At the moment, the biggest personal idea for me is thinking, more, about the impact of the resurrection. This has been a common thought for me over the past many months, and speakers like Matt Chandler re-fueled this interest. I want to think more about this big idea and what difference it makes.
Other info about the conference:
- The Twitter hashtag #RN09 has a few conversations & quotations.
- Jayson John’s blog for notes on some sessions (including some breakouts I wasn’t at).
- Vince Parker’s blog for some daily recaps.
- Alan Danielson’s blog captures a beautiful confessional moment.
- A few of these same speakers will be coming to Verge in the Austin area in early 2010.
- Learn more about the Right Now campaign.