Catalyst West Coast

I’m finally starting to settle down after a couple days at Catalyst West Coast. It was two days of jam-packed learning, talking, hobnobbing, singing, and laughing. My brain and my soul were cooked by the end of the last session. Hate to say it, but I can’t remember a word that Nick Vujicik said (I was SO tired), and all I remember about Perry Noble was that he called seminary “cemetery” an hour before I started my first class later that day.

I can’t stop thinking about some of the stuff Francis Chan said. His talk was gut-wrenching, both for us and for him. He basically ripped his heart out of his chest for all to see. He is a BRILLIANT communicator. He compared the unstoppable church in the Book of Acts to the very stoppable churches of today. He said that he was taught to teach exegetically, but never to live exegetically. He ripped everyone else’s chests open when he told a story from his own life about the spiritual journey of his daughter. Grown men wept like little girls, and grown women wept like… well, grown women.

Kudos to LV Hanson, Brad Lomenick. Ben Arment, Jud Wilhite and Brian Wurzell for all their hard work to make this conference worth every dollar.

There were only a couple things I would consider adjusting if I was calling the shots:

1. Create a place for dialogue. There was lot of teaching, but no breakouts (except for the Origins option before the conference kicked off).

2. Free massages. OK… cheap massages. The National Youth Workers Convention brought some massage therapists to their conference a couple years ago and it was fantastic.

3. Do more with the green room. I was lucky enough to be there in person, but I can think of a few hundred people who would have LOVED to see more stuff happen on the green room website. I loved the stuff that was on there though.

I’m heading to Hume Lake for 4 days with our Student Ministry team. The 12 of us are just getting away for some rest (with a wee bit of planning and vision stuff too).