Leadership Encounter 2018

Last year, our church hosted a really wonderful training/team-building weekend for small group leaders. It was the first time our church had launched an official small group ministry, so they wanted to equip the leaders well. Ryan and I attended, loved it, and learned so much.

A few months ago, one of the pastors at our church met me for coffee and told me the church planned to host this conference again, but this time they were expanding it to include leadership in general. Not just small group leaders, but Sunday School teachers, board members, and other leaders. She also asked if Ryan and I would serve as the keynote speakers for the event. (I about dropped my latte straight on the floor.)

So for the last many weeks, we've been praying, preparing, writing, creating props, practicing, and doing everything we knew to do to make sure we gave our very best to this conference. We were honored and excited to have the opportunity to share, but we were also appropriately terrified, speaking in front of people we're still just meeting for the first time. (We're still relatively new to the church.)

So! Wanna see some peeks at the weekend?

The church made this really lovely booklet with bios of all the speakers, outlines, and pages for notetaking. Here was our bio page:

Our church is really big (both in square footage and in number of people) so the event was held in the student sanctuary. (This was the main sanctuary of the church before they expanded the building a few years ago and moved into a much larger room.) The decorating committee did a great job making the room so very welcoming!

It took us two vehicles to get there, because we had a huge prop for the stage:

After we got everything set up, we used our spare time to go over our talk again and pray over the room. And drink lattes. We are better speakers when we have lattes.

We did clean up, though. I promise. :)

The evening began with some icebreaker games. (Games generally terrify me, and even I had fun, so they were good ones!) Then they served dinner and gathered everyone together for a time of worship.

The majority of our speaking time together was Friday evening. We think it went well. (It's always a challenge to imagine how you did, and we certainly do not want to toot our own horns. But no one threw anything at us, so that's a good sign, right?

One of the bonuses of this speaking event was the chance to stay in our own home! We weren't there too long...got home late and got up extra early to go back, but it was nice to be in our own bed!

We had to be back early, early, early Saturday morning to continue building our big stage prop:

They provided breakfast for everyone to start the day, and then Ryan and I spoke again briefly to wrap up our illustrations from the night before:

After we spoke, we had the privilege of sitting under the teaching of others in the church, which was a blessing for us! (We took lots of notes!)

Right before lunch, Ryan and I also spoke in breakout sessions. Ryan and his new friend, Sean, spoke to the men. I wasn't in their session to capture it for posterity, but I did get this picture of the two of them after the conference ended. Ryan really enjoyed meeting Sean and working together with him on that session!

My co-speaker for that session was my new friend, Joyce, who became a fast and dear friend as we prepped for this time.

(Ahhhhh, youth room couches.)

Here's a photo of Joyce speaking, and then if you're bored, you're welcome to play "caption this" on my pictures. WHY AM I SO AWKWARD?????

Here you go!

Number One:

 Number Two:

 Number Three:

 Number Four:

 Number Five:

 Number Six:

 Number Seven:

We all ate lunch together, learned in a few final sessions, and that concluded the conference! We are so thankful for God's grace and strength this weekend. It was our joy to serve together!