Late Thursday evening, Jen and I arrived home from Orlando where we attended the largest gathering of church planting pastors in the world. It was a great conference. I can't say I loved every minute of it. Sure there were speakers there like Louie Giglio and Mark Batterson that just really inspired me. (We were in the second row about a dozen feet away). Then there were other speakers that just made me mad and I couldn't disagree with them more. It's good to be challenged sometimes. It helps us grow stronger in our own convictions.

The speaker that really blew me away was the last speaker, Francis Chan. I really wasn't expecting what he had to say... It was so deep, so profound and so moving that it's going to take me months to digest it. As we were listening to him, I really felt like I was listening to God. Like he had just heard a very strong, life changing message from God and now he was sharing it with us. It was almost the exact opposite of what everyone else was saying.

I wish I could explain it but it's way too deep to be summarized in this blog. I will tell you that it has to do with sharing in the sufferings of Christ and it has caused me to do a complete 180 from some of the thoughts I had going into that conference. A lot of things make more sense now. I hope he puts it in a book soon.

Jen learned a lot from the conference and we are both looking forward to being back with our church family tomorrow!