Hillsong Conference

Spent all of last week volunteering at the 2012 Hillsong conference. Was lucky enough to be rostered on MATV in the mornings and CCU during some lighter sessions at night. MATV looks after all the screens and audio from TV, outside the main arena while CCU looks after the iris (brightness and levels of black) on screen both in the arena and outside. Also got rostered on external venues in the afternoon though my venue didn't come with a camera and the Production guy was able to run the show on his own so I got to sit in sessions.

Steven Furtick was great - he talked about having faith and stepping out into what God has called us to even when we were not ready and not sure. Louie Giglio brought a very cinematic sermon as usual, though I fell asleep during his last session because I was just so tired from the conference. I definitely want to get a hold of the DVD after my finals and will probably write about the conference at the end of September when I have more time.

One of my favourite songs on the new album - Cornerstone by Hillsong.

I sat in some of the 'medical elective' sessions. I don't know who it was targetting. If it was targetting doctors then I'm not sure how useful the two sessions were. It was mainly about things like avoiding burnout and compassion fatigue but these are things that are drilled into us as medical students. I think it would have been more useful for the medical electives to have talked about ethical issues from a Christian perspective or something like that. I also sat in on sessions on social enterprise, church planting and being a team pastor. Those were very good - practical information about relational matters, the difference between leading a volunteer team and staff, looking for venues, etc. My question is: while I agree that good leadership is needed to run a strong church, who is the leader accountable to? There was a lot of talk around honouring your leader, which is a very important principle but not so much about what happens when the leader may be heading in the wrong direction. And ultimately, we have excellent leaders and pastors at Hillsong but they are still human and humans make mistakes.

My other favourite song from Hillsong Conference -.10 000 Reasons by Matt Redman.

At the moment the best thing that came out of conference for me was just being in that atmosphere, with people who love God, and spending 5 days in incredible worship sessions, and having that time to just marvel at God's grace and goodness. The more intellectual stuff will come when I get the DVD (because I didn't actually get to really listen in on the main sermons as I was volunteering).

Anyway, talk soon. Gotta go prep for med finals now. Ta.