The Sticks Day 1

Today was just awesome!  I'm down in Ohio with the entire staff of our church for The Sticks, a conference for pastors and leaders who are ministering in small and medium size towns.  So far I'm just loving this!  

I have a ton of things that I would love to blog about this conference... but I think the jet lag from last week's vacation is catching up on me :-)  So here are a few very quick highlights.

  • The worship music was AWESOME!  I'm definitely a loud music kind of guy at this team just rocked!  Loved it.
  • Mark Batterson was excellent!  His talk really set the stage for the day.
  • Charles Hill was great.  I LOVED his points on being afraid of people and stepping ahead of God and how those two things can cripple our ministry.
  • I was a tad disappointed with the workshop sessions... I was hoping the guys up at front would be more of mediators and get people into the conversation... Instead it's more of a Q&A and they do most of the talking... maybe that was the original intention... but I didn't get that sense from everything that I read about the conference.  Oh well.  It's still an AWESOME conference so far.
Looking forward to day 2 tomorrow... but now I can barely keep my eyes open and we have a 7 hour drive home after a full day tomorrow... so I better get to sleep!

Comments

Robin said…
I just love the fact that there even IS a Sticks conference. Most of the big conferences are by big churches and there's lots of good stuff, but a lot that doesn't apply or would be done differently in small churches and communities.
12:18 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Practical Atheist

Image
Over the past few weeks our church has been doing a preaching series called Practical Atheist. This is based on the book The Christian Atheist by Pastor Craig Groeschel. I've been blown away by how God has worked in the hearts of so many people over the past few weeks. Mind you, I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Pastor Craig's ministry has had such a huge influence on my personal walk with Jesus so just is just a continuation of that blessing. This week we're probably going to hit the hardest topic for me to preach on, I Believe in God but I Pursue Happiness at All Costs. I'm going to be using Jesus' parable of the sower and look at how our pursuit of happiness causes us to miss out on truly how God wants from our lives. This topic hits me right between the eyes as I'm being open and honest with God about what allow to be entertainment or how I go about trying to be happy. Do I allow myself to be entertained by sin? Do I pursue the world's view
Read more

Revitalized Pastors and Leaders

Image
On March 15, 2023, the Barna Research Group released the "The Resilient Pastor Initiative". Its goal was to explore and share the state of pastors in America in the post-COVID climate we find ourselves in. According to the data, the state of pastors may not be as good as it appears from behind the pulpit. From 2015 to 2022 Barna notes the following where pastors responded "Excellent" in a number of categories: Spiritual well-being dropped from 37% to 14% Physical well-being fell from 24% to 9% Mental and emotional health plummeted from 39% to 11% The overall quality of life dipped from 42% to 18% The level of respect they felt from the community tanked from 22% to 10% Level of ‘true friends’ dropped by 50% from 34% to 17% The data also showed that this drop in wellness was more prevalent in younger pastors! Older pastors are riding it out to retirement. Now, before anyone from my church begins to panic, I'm OK. As shared in a blog post from January 2023 entitled
Read more

Captain America Rocks!!

Image
I gotta admit... sometimes I'm pretty clueless as to what is going on around me. I never buy the newest technology, and I never catch the cool TV show as it premieres. Sometimes it takes a big news flash to open my eyes to some cool stuff right in front of me... and this is definitely the case with the Captain America comic series! It took killing Cap to get to pick up an issue. And boy am I ever glad I did! I've never read anything with Captain America before. It wasn't until reading Civil War that Cap even came on my radar. I guess it's just the Canadian in me that just assumed that the character wouldn't be relatable if I wasn't American, or if I wasn't a war story nut. Civil War changed my perspective of the character. Sure, he's all American. But he's all that is great about the US. His morals, his values, his respect for others. His love of liberty and equality for all. His role in Marvel's Civil War was great and really gave me an
Read more