Feverishly scribbled notes

Today has been a long, great day.  I woke up naturally at 5am, thinking I would just pee & go right back to sleep.  Nay.  So, I finished The Last Battle (it always makes me so sad, though it shouldn't), then tried again.  Nope.  So I decided to embrace it and enjoy being up.  We had day one of the Willow Creek Association Global Leadership Summit (WCAGLS- wickagles) today, and I was afraid I would crash at some point, but it was just to awesome. 

The friend I came out here with has never been to the summit before, so I told her to expect that we'd learn a lot, but also end up rolling our eyes a bit.  Ah, not today.  Opening video- we both teared up a bit.  Worship?  Great.  And almost all of today's sessions were about change, crisis, dysfunctional teams, and various other things that hit home so much that we often found ourselves looking at each other with an "oh, really!  I wonder who that could apply to!" look on our faces.  There was also one high-five when Jim Collins threw out, as if it were completely obvious, "Oh, and double your outreach to young people by changing your practices, but not your core values." 

The other two times I've gone to the summit, I've gone alone, so with four of us from church there, it is really great to have others go over this stuff with, to also share the inspiration you're receiving, and take it back to church.  During the first session, I realized that I kept wishing that some of our pastors were there, but we are here.  We four women, only two on staff, none of us in real positions of power right now:  God put us in that room to receive this vision and inspiration, and he wants us; he wants me to take it back and help make it grow.  I thought of it as a holy pressure.  I'm scared and excited. 

Tomorrow- day 2.  I looked at the books of a couple of tomorrow's speakers, and I'm excited by what I see.  And the four of us are going to get together and pray for God's vision and for strength and wisdom for our role in whatever God is doing.  Pray for us, please.  Our church- God's church- needs a lot of help.