The morning started out with my workshop choice, Donna Peavey. Her voice was as sweet as a pecan pie and her accent as thick as honey. Aside from being truly hilarious (she reminded me of my momma) she talked about how to "destress" your ministry. She gave lots and lots of info that should that true stress can cause your body true harm. I decided during this session that I am no where near stressed. I mean I took a quiz. How could that be wrong. :) Here are a few things that I took from her session:
"One second into eternity, is this going to matter?"
"Any situation that you encounter has already been sifted through the hand of God."
The next session I attended was by Brian Haynes. It was entitled "Shift your children's ministry to connect church and home." I really enjoyed this one as well. He discussed different milestones that children face as they grow up. Here are a few things that Brian spoke on:
"We have created a generation where their faith doesn't bleed into every part of their lives. Its "compartmentalized."
Parents often feel super defeated when they are told or reminded that THEY are the main spiritual discipline and teacher in their child's live. I like to think this takes a little bit of pressure off my position of work, but instead, I now have the responsibility of making sure that my parents are prepared to take on this challenge. (Parents get ready. We are about to start working together to better prepare your children for the relationship with Christ they were designed to have.)
Different milestones of live:
1 - Parent/Baby dedication
2 - Salvation and Baptism
3 - Preparing for Adolescence
4 - Purity for Life
Next we went into the general assembly where we heard the amazing story of Michael Kelly. He spoke on John 11 all the while sharing his story of how his young son was diagnosed, at the age of 2, with leukemia. Through his heart tearing story, his main goal was to let us know how to handle situations, like his, with grace - as well as honesty. Kelly reminded us that even though it is in our nature to cast off cliche saying such as "God just wanted your son in heaven" "This is for the best" "Your child is in a much better place".. and so on and so forth. Now all of those things are extremely true, but what parents really need is for someone to be real with them. Sometimes they need a shoulder. A silent shoulder. Maybe a prayerful shoulder. None the less, a shoulder that, eventually, can remind that parent that no matter what happened, God received glory for that circumstance.
The rest of the afternoon was fulled with stories just like this. Ways that God worked in the lives of people. True, honest, sinful, convicted, people. Here are the blogs of some of the people that spoke. Enjoy..
Oh... and we ended the night with this. Thank you Gigi's Cupcakes...
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