Dream Big - day 2

If I had to describe today in one would, it would have to be - emotional. When the event planners got together to plan "Tuesday" I am pretty sure they said, "hey, lets make these people just cry all day." Well, if that was the case, they were successful.

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..

http://angiesmithonline.com/

http://tinahouser.net/

http://legacyblog.org/

Oh... and we ended the night with this. Thank you Gigi's Cupcakes...

Dream Big.

This week I have been blessed with the opportunity to attend the 2011 Kids Ministry Conference in Nashville Tn. I use the word blessed because I truly can not even explain how I KNOW God is going to use this week in my life. Since this is my blog, and I get to be totally honest, I'm going to do just that. For the past few weeks I feel like I have been stressed to the max. And I feel like the word stressed is now so cliche. We say it all the time, use it as a cop out, and blame our problems on the fact that we are "stressed." So maybe I shouldn't use the word stressed. Maybe, instead, I should say that I feel like I have placed other things in front of my relationship with Christ. Therefor, my relationship with Him has struggled and as you may know as well, nothing in life can function correctly when our relationship with Him is off. So, you get my drift! Needless to say, this week came at the PERFECT time. I mean literally yesterday, after my children's worship time I left wanting to just cry. I can not visibly see what God is doing in my ministry and it so discouraging. I feel like I am doing my job for nothing. Let me just say - that was Satan. Jerk.

I am up here with my dear, sweet, amazing, friend and mentor - Linda Baxter. Mrs. Linda was my children's minister and now I get the opportunity to watch what she does and learn from her. I road up to her house on Sunday afternoon and then we drove the rest of the way here on Monday morning (We left at 6:00 am).

When we got here I was not really sure what to expect. The only thing that I knew about the week was that the Duggars were going to be here. I was immediately concerned with seating.... Let that sink in. :) haha

Since 1:00 pm I have heard speakers from all over the country. All have different backgrounds. All look drastically DIFFERENT. But their common denominator was this: their passion for children and their passion for Christ. Some of those speakers included Ed Stetzer, Jon Acuff, Tim Elmore, and Shane Garrison (just to name a few). We talked about everything from change to theology to modern day children and how they are maturing... or not.

The day was amazingly tiring, spirit filled, encouraging, enlightening, and convicting. God is good. But I am already anticipating the crazy scared feeling that is going to come when He shows me my next puzzle piece.