Going to America

On Saturday I'm flying out horrendously early in the morning to a town called Franklin, near Nashville, Tennessee. I'm attending the cr:eate or is it re:create conference? Anyway it's going to be amazing. Each of the three tracks, designated according to church size, is restricted to fifty participants, so the emphasis is on building relationships, collaboration and discussion in a round-table setting as opposed to the standard one-speaker-to-several-hundred-audience-members style. Well, I get enough preaching at church! So I'm hoping to develop some great friendships with some other worship leaders and looking for the opportunity to learn from people who have already been through the issues that we are facing at MCC, such as re-organisation of management, search for a new Senior Pastor, relocation to a new property and continued, sustained growth. How do others assist, support and manage their teams of volunteers? How do they find fresh creativity, and what new ideas are people trying that are working? There is so much to discover!

Re:create was set up and is run by Randy Elrod, and he's the one responsible for getting a bunch of worship guys into blogging, the most significant of which is Los Whittaker who's blogging seminar I attended at a conference last year, and who inspired me to set up this blog. Anyway check out the re:create site and all the blogs in the left sidebar (scroll down... bit further... no, keep going... nearly... yup, THERE).

I'm also planning on meeting up with a very old friend. Phil VP and I met when we were eighteen, doing kids ministry with Rich Hubbard at Spring Harvest and summer Bible camps around the UK. We started writing and recording songs together along with my best mate Chris, and had a great time messing around with recording gear in our summer holidays. Anyway, the last time I saw Phil was at his wedding to Roz in September 1998 in Knoxville, Tennessee. And that's a long time ago. Serves him right for moving to the USA. Oh, but then I moved to Egypt, so I suppose it's not entirely his fault.