Why I Love Conferences...

I didn't know how helpful the Summit would be last week, but ended up having a great time. Two or three of the sessions were extremely good, two or three were okay, and two or three I could have done without. But that's a pretty good conference batting average for picky me.

The best part about church conferences is the ability they give me to unplug from my current ministry and view things from a birds-eye view. Our church staff is intentionally small, which has some significant upsides (I'll blog about that separately someday). But one of the downsides is that it doesn't afford me much in-office time to sit back and think about the ministry I lead. When I do unplug, it's usually for vacation where I try to focus as little as I can on the things going on on the front lines.

Conferences let me disconnect without checking out. I can hear what other people are doing, and spend some time intentionally thinking about what I'm doing. In other words, it lets me down-shift and download new information and ideas.

This week, I'll re-post the two or three best quotes of the weekend and talk about why I found them so helpful. If you didn't read the live-blog, stay tuned and I'll try to distill it down.

Finally, as always, the Summit was a chance to spend some quality time with some of our best friends in the world - Jason and Joy. Drew and Dawn met us for dinner on Friday night, but Drew was pretty important at the Summit. He said he was the emcee... I think he was just sharking the Willow Creek people for one of their vacant teaching pastor positions.