Each day, we led our morning and evening worship times, with Monday evening being a bluegrass set (in honor of being in east Tennessee). On top of that, I also had the cool opportunity to teach/co-teach 5 sessions worth of workshops. I co-taught a 3-session workshop on the book of Revelation with an old friend who is a campus ministry up in Pennsylvania, and I taught a 2-session workshop on troubling texts found in the book of Romans. The biggest obstacle for the week was trying to do whatever I could to keep from losing my voice. Trust me, at times it proved a little difficult, haha!
A few things I took away from this year:
- I was reminded (yet again) that God is faithful and will show up/do something powerful whenever you do what He asks you to do and you fully trust Him. Our scheduled speaker had to back out a week and a half prior to our conference beginning due to the discovery of a very aggressive form of cancer that required immediate testing/treatment. I had been praying and planning our worship sets since the better part of February of this year, so this obviously would cause ANYONE who is an enneagram classified type-1 significant stress. Nonetheless, I was blown away at just how PERFECT the song selections meshed with the teachings each evening.
- I really enjoy teaching. I was borderline a nervous wreck for parts of my workshops. Yet I had students and ministers alike come up to me at the end of the sessions telling me just how much they learned, enjoyed, and were challenged from the material and presentation. You could say this is a continuation from the first takeaway in that I should trust that as long as I'm faithful and do what God calls me to do, I shouldn't worry too much because He's always going to show up and do His thing. =)
- I love being creative and planning corporate worship services. They may cause me stress in every aspect of the process, but in the end I always breathe a sigh of relief and gratitude at: a) the opportunity God's given me to do it; b) the willingness of others to follow my leading and make abstract ideas into reality; and c) lead/see people to truly worship their God with full abandon and be reminded of His love and truth.
Overall, while exhausting, I would say that I miss this conference. In a way, I also hope that those who attended feel the same way. I hope that when everyone who was there looks back to what we did and experienced together, we all are filled with a deep sense of fondness and excitement, not the kind that only sits and reminisces, but the kind that will move us forward into what we're being called to do.
God showed up. God was praised. We were all challenged, encouraged, and motivated to return to our areas and respond to Jesus' call to 'Go.' So let's go!
18 Jesus came up and said to them, “All authority (all power of absolute rule) in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations [help the people to learn of Me, believe in Me, and obey My words], baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe everything that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always [remaining with you perpetually—regardless of circumstance, and on every occasion], even to the end of the age.”
Matthew 28.18-20 (The Amplified Bible)
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