Catalyst 09 - a quick summary

WOW. what an amazing conference these past 3 days.
I really wanted to write about Catalyst here on renown the past 2 nights, but have been completely wiped out with no energy to write.

**I am looking forward to putting my thoughts here on renown from the amazing things I learned at Catalyst this year & the stuff God is doing in me... & I'm looking forward to us interacting and processing it all together! I'll be posting for probably the next 2 weeks about my Catalyst thoughts.

But for now I think I'll just breeze through a summary of the whole conference and give you a taste of what's to come in more detail. I already did that with Catalyst Labs that were on Wednesday... you can read that summary HERE.


Andy Stanley, pastor at NPCC (the church that planted my church), kicked off the conference with a stellar talk that I can't wait to process with you. Hilarious & impacting! He ended the conference with a talk that I have already posted my takeaways on & you can read some of my takeaways on Trust vs. Suspicion HERE.

Then the pimp genius himself Malcolm Gladwell (author of The Tipping Point, Blink, and most recently Outliers) gave an extremely relevant talk. He's not the greatest communicator in the world, but great content! Then Andy came up & asked him 3 Qs that were specific to our ministry context! you'll want to make sure you read my post on that in a week or 2.

Shane Hipps gave what I thought was a great talk. It was a talk to make you think... it challenged assumptions. It was possibly prophetic in style. I was potentially very catalytic. I think about half the room thought he was a heretic. You can be the judge when i post my thoughts here later...

Then Shane's good friend, a guy you may have never heard of - Rob Bell tore it up! It was awesome (as Rob usually is). Extremely encouraging and timely for most of the 13K of us ministry leaders sitting there.

Superbowl winning future Hall of Fame Coach Tony Dungy spoke to us about some awesome leadership stuff & then Matt Chandler (always a great communicator) was so entertaining and did a PIMP walk through of "THE Story"... from Genesis to now. It was pimp. He even TWO TIMES mentioned how awesome Rob's talk was (which is interesting since the leader of Chandler's A29 network calls Bell a heretic.) Maybe Matt Chandler is above all that now? Either way, I loved his talk. & can't wait to share...

Thursday night it was a straight up worship time with Aaron Keyes & Francis Chan speaking to us and leading us in communion. awesome!
Oh, and of course the worship throughout the conference was sweet - Steve Fee & his band... leading us in a lot of the awesome songs on their new CD. Plus some other North Point worship leaders like Eddie Kirkland & Chrystina Fincher... Tons of moments that brought us so close to God & lifted Him way up!

Dave Ramsey rocked it Friday morning (as he always does). Pimp notes from that I can't wait to share with you. Priscilla Shirer spoke too in that 1st session & was pretty cool.

Chuck Swindoll received the Catalyst Lifetime Achievement Award & after a hilarious video from his sister he talked to all of us "next gen" leaders about what he learned in the last 50 years of ministry.

And then my fav guy in the whole world spoke - Louie Giglio. Awesome as always. I loved it. great stuff... all about Jesus. He's the main thing. He's the goal.

lots of other guests showed up (like Mac Powell from Third Day and Josh Hamilton) and I'll write about all that. This was just a summary to get you ready.


If you were at Catalyst '09 what was YOUR favorite moment or speaker?