Unite In Worship, day 2

It's Joel Houston!! Spin-out!  


This morning, it was Vicky Beeching leading worship. Hopefully I'll get a picture with her tomorrow during her workshop. Oh, did I mention I bought her cd yesterday which just came out -- you guessed it -- yesterday. I also bought the worshiptogether How-To songbook #1. Now I have all of them :)

In the morning I went to a workshop by Todd Phillips, who spoke about Spiritual CPR. In a nutshell, the workshop focused on the topic evangelism, and why we should do it. Often Christians skip over evangelism, doing it instead out of guilt. The old "bring a friend to church next week" deal. They'll do it, and then that's it. They feel relieved that they don't have to bring a friend every week. I can see what he's talking about, although for different reasons. I wouldn't want to bring a friend to T3C, to be honest. It's just not very seeker friendly.

But I digress. Todd described that we already know the what and the where. The great commission speaks of What we should do Where we should do it. Go out and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. But it doesn't cover the Why. Why should we evangelize, why should we do missions?

1 John 1:4 explains that it will make our joy complete. This is why we do it. Because no matter what else we do to fill in the void, like take on massive responsibilities at church, doing worship, sunday school, bible studies, welcoming, choir, pastoring, counselling, ushering, etc etc. We can do all those things, but without evangelism, our joy will never be complete.

One thing that especially hit me was that the act of evangelism is all it takes. It's not the conversion part -- that's God's doing. Once we have done our part, it's God's turn to do the rest. The act of evangelism is what makes our joy complete.

After lunch I lined up for 30 minutes so that I could get a decent seat for Hillsong United, which was leading the after lunch worship. What can I say other than it was.. moving. I was deeply moved. I find that Hillsong music, the words that they use and the instrumentals.. they awaken something inside me. I feel more aware for the Spirit's presence. I thought for sure I would lose my voice, but it turned out alright.

The speaker for the afternoon was Jason Hildebrand. He is an actor/musician, who is starring in a show called "Blue Like Jazz/Live". It's a monologue of sorts. Very interesting and funny. We got it free of course, but it is travelling from coast to coast (the show) so if you get a chance, I highly recommend it.

In the afternoon I went to a workshop led by Joel Houston (the bloke in the pic). Australians say "spin-out" instead of "crazy". Haha.. I really went there for the fun and because there was nothing else that interested me. He spoke about inspirations that came to he and Marty Sampson when writing the songs they did for the various Hillsong United cd's.

Oh by the way, Marty Sampson is not here. I made that mistake yesterday. The person I mistakenly thought was Marty was actually a guy named Jad Gillies. He's another Hillsong guitarist/singer. A very very VERY good singer, and a very very good guitarist. Well, he's a better singer than Joel, but not sure about the guitar. Probably better too.

The night session was led by Brian Doerksen. I don't think I need to introduce him..