We had the local news on this morning and the weather forecaster consoled the viewing audience, "It’s going to be a cool day. Only 66."
Can you believe that?! Well, it wasn’t so bad! 🙂
The bad news for the local area weather-wise, though, is that it has now gone 127 days with no rain.
The host church (CCV) has a cafe, which provides our lunch this week, and they have a lot of seating outdoors, so we ate our lunch today outdoors; it’s an incredible setting. That was very nice, especially since we have to spend most of our time indoors.
Well, there’s way too much to process from today, but I’ll try to briefly summarize each. Today was a lot of fun! Both Ed Young and Kirbyjon Caldwell were amazing. I took a lot of great notes from both of them and will need some time to process all of it. I will especially be sharing a lot of this stuff with our "Adventure Guides"!
Ed Young, who is obviously and admittedly ADD, as well as highly creative, talked first about the "sway of the they." That’s when people say to leaders, "Well, they (or so-and-so) said …" The "they" is usually a few. And listening to the "wrong they" will always get you off task and off course.
In his second presentation, Ed talked about asking questions. Growing leaders are always asking questions. And the key is to ask the right people the right questions to get the right answers.
Kirbyjon Caldwell talked, in a visual and creative way, about getting our priorities right — Vision, Mission, Ojectives & Strategies, Structures & Systems, and People. IOW, when we get this stuff in order, good people will follow. Kirbyjon strongly emphasized having a vision for the home, asking, how can you have a vision for God’s house if you don’t have a vision for your house?
Well, there’s lots more to process, but for now, though, I’ll simply note something that was a real highlight for me, personally: Joleen and I bought a copy of Ed Young’s new book, The Creative Leader so that we could get it signed. Ed Young is the founding pastor of Fellowship Church which currently runs around 20,000 people in worship each weekend. He has a weekly TV/radio program called "Creative Connection" (one of the few good Christian programs, IMO).
Anyway, we were second in line, I think, and since Ed had talked a little about mind mapping (he’s been mind mapping for 16 years, I believe), I showed him a copy of my last MapNotes (the term I use for my sermon notes which are in mind map format). I have been mind mapping for several years and just in the last year have begun putting my sermon notes in a mind map format (they’re a lot better now than they were a year ago, but there’s always room for improvement!). He asked if he could have it, and for the name of the program I use. That was cool. (FYI, here’s the PDF of the MapNotes I gave him).
I’ll post one more thing: Ed Young did something that alone was worth the entire cost (tuition, plane tickets, car rental, hotel, food, etc.) of coming to this event! Ed was making the point that you have to be who you are; don’t try to be someone you’re not. To illustrate that, he did a great impersonation of TD Jakes. Then to drive home his point, he did an impersonation of Joel Osteen impersonating TD Jakes (Jakes’ words in Joel Osteen’s style). It was absolutely hilarious! And a point well made.
Well, there’s much to chew on as I turn in for the night. One day to go. Tomorrow we go to be impacted by Walt Kallestad and Mike Breen (and a couple others). It should be another incredible day! May God help us (like sponges) absorb all we can!