We have had a blast at Conclave in Chattanooga, TN.  It is one of the weekends I look forward to at the start of the new year.  This is the first year that my entire family has been able to come along.  It Snowed almost 6 inches!  This is the first time Connor actually remembered seeing snow and they had a blast making snowballs and playing.  The exhibit hall was a lot of fun for them as they have gotten a bunch of cool stuff.  Caden spun the wheel and it landed on an xbox 360!  Of course that only meant that we got put in the drawing to win, but we received a call from the exhibitors and they drew our name out!!  I don’t think I have ever won anything except the jelly of the month club.

The worship has been great with Steve Fee band.  Ergun Caner is a powerful speaker and the first night he really encouraged those who have felt beaten down in the ministry and made a comparison to Paul in Galations 6.  Ed Stetzer spoke today and focused on the ministry of reconciliation as opposed to the false gospel of moralism.

I sat in on Dr. Richard Ross’ breakout session which challenged us to gather prayer partners around teenagers and engage parents to equip them to disciple and pray for their teenagers.  He is such a humble and intelligent guy.  I am always challenged by him.  I got to hang out with Clayton King a bit who is one of those guys you just want to hang around.  He is a trip and is MCing the event.

I led a breakout session entitled Changing the Scorecard and had some sharp student ministers in attendance.  We looked at the current scorecards in the church that we measure to define success: budgets, baptisms, and butts in the seats.  We then worked on developing matrices to count results rather than assuming results were taking place because people were in attendance.  Had a great time with them.

The boys and I spent some much needed time together tonight at the swimming pool.  We had the pool to ourselves partly because everyone else was at the worship service.  I hate to miss anything at a conference like this, but it was important to my boys for me to swim with them and chunk them around the pool.  I missed a good message as Ergun Caner talked about discerning what God wants you to do in your current ministry and if he wants you to stay or go.  I guess I’ll get the CD and listen to it.

Tomorrow we wrap up the conference and hopefully we will be able to make it home.  The roads are pretty iced over.