I got in last night from the SU national conference on the Sunshine Coast.
6 days sure feels like a long time to be away. And when wife and family all get sick I imagine it feels even longer to them!
The time was nice, enjoyable and relaxing. It was great to get to know our WA crew a bit better, nice to have an afternoon nap each day and good to catch up with Darryl Gardner from NZ (one of the conference speakers), Steve Turner of Forge Qld and my old school-mate Shaun Kelly, now living in Brisbane and figuring our pastoral ministry in the burbs.
The conference was ok. Neither earth shattering nor a waste of time. Somewhere in between. Such is the nature of events that try to span a huge range of attendees. If you look at the pic below you can see our WA staff team deep in reflection!
When at the YS conference in San Diego a few years back I remember Mike Yaconelli’s opening address that went something like this: “You don’t have to attend every session we put on!!! Feel free to come and go and make the conference valuable for you”. I took Yaconelli’s words to heart and have approached conferences like that ever since. As a result I think I only saw the inside of the building for just over half of this one. Its always a tension knowing how to balance the Yaconelli conference approach with the need to ‘do the right thing’ because if we all came and went as we pleased it’d be a messy situation.
There was some huge swell on the local beaches after cyclone Larry and it was good to spend the final day up at Noosa getting walloped by the beach break as we attempted some body surfing. The point break looked sensational, but with 50 guys on every peak it was a ‘drop in’ night mare!
The pic above of is of Mooloolaba – a pretty hairy sucky peak giving a few blokes a bit of a hiding.
As for the dormitory accommodation… well… I was in with 4 other blokes and there was plenty of snoring. I only hope I gave as good as I got!
Next week we are off to Melbourne for our 15th wedding anniversary. Its a fun trip, but we’ll be dropping in at the Forge Postcards night on Wednesday and then I’ll be doing a session onThursday morning at Mitcham Baptist to raise a bit of viagra money.