garden of the gods

yesturday during our 3 hour dinner break, none of us were hungry so I took everyone to the Garden of the Gods. It is such a beautiful place. I have had many conversations with curtis about devo's here and great God moments. So here are some pics.

Enter Session 2 & 3

Ross Parsley and Senior Pastor Brady Boyd sat at a table and did a session together. I didn' even have time to take notes because of all the good stuff. I wrote down a couple of things from there session.
-- In order for this relationship to work you have to choose to HONOR each other. I am not sure I have heard anyone use this word in this context and it was so good.
-- In regards to concerns, TIMING & TONE is everything.
-- "Care about sunday morning as much as the senior pastor does" SO GOOD!!

As I was sitting there I was so blessed because as they talked thru different issues church's have, I was thinking how Jeff and I relate, and thought I really have it good. Even all our worship team made comments, "THAT DIDNT EVEN APPLY TO YOU HUH?". I just laughed. It was still really good. But I am definently blessed to have Jeff on my team.

Session 3.




So far this was my favorite session. They had a huge door with 2 screens on each side of it. It was called the "Revolving Door". They an 1.5 hours and had 7 speakers for 12 minutes. They cut out all the extra and just gave us the RAW best 12 minutes they had. This is such a great concept. It reminded me of our whiteboard conference.

Ross Parsley
--Teams are made up of individuals who have given up their RIGHTS in order to benefit the whole team.
--insecurity comes from comparison of the wrong things. (talking about people who get jealous of other people)
--we're not responsible for the opportunities we don't have, but the one's we DO have. O MY WORD. SO GOOD

Matthew Fallentyne
-- create a culture of trust not a circle of trust
-- do you love the people of your church, if not you shouldn't be the pastor
-- your team is able to sense authenticity

Brad Parsley
-- create a culture of evalutaion
-- life is not fair, ministry is not fair. We have to evaluate and challenge our team
--as a leader you must first, HUMBLE YOURSELF, in order to create this culture
--you must be child-like not CHILD-ISH,

Glenn Packiam pt 1
-- when bringing up conflict issues, if you bring up problems after the set its called criticism, if you do it before its healthy conflict.
-- Seperate the person from the problem
-- focus on interests not positions, THIS WAS REALLY GOOD
--invent option for mutual gain
--Have a standard or system for making decisions
--People will own a decision when they are allowed into the process

The last one I wasn't able to get. but this was my favorite.

Starting our Friday morning session right now. Looking forward to what we will learn. Today are all the break out sessions. We are all torn because there is going to be such good stuff.






refreshed,
adam

AGHHH!! (sigh of relief)

That is the feeling I have right now between getting lost on foot downtown D.C., & having an AK-47 flashed at me at the pentagon & the 1 hour car drive lost on 3 different interstates, and now I am in my bed. LOL.

Jeff and I had a great time today running around D.C. getting to see all the history of our nation. Before we left Curtis (our youth pastor) warned us not to drive into D.C. but to find the metro and only use that. Did we listen, NOPE! Should we have, YUP! When we got into D.C. we couldn't find any where to park so we pulled over and asked a traffic officer, he stared at us and said "there is not parking", we laughed, he pointed at our car and said "that was a bad choice". LOL. So we headed back out of town looking for a parking garage and a metro, which we eventually found.

We got to see the washington monument, lincoln memorial, white house, capitol, Vietnam wall of names, and so much more. A funny story is that we were at the end of our tour and decided we should go and see the pentagon. Great Idea I thought. We got out of the metro and there was literally NO WHERE to go. We walked down a side walk and saw four police officers with AK-47's and said "MAN", saw a bus stop and decided to walk around the building. We saw where the plane hit on 911 and so I thought it was a great idea to get my camera out. No later did I get my camera out, a MEAN security gaurd flashed his AK-47 and headed toward me. He said "did you take a picture" I said "NO" he said "DON'T", Jeff said "sorry we didn't know", he said "I JUST WARNED YOU". HAHAHHA LOL! I said "OK SEE YA" and we headed home. LOL.

We got to see so much stuff, it was great. Its hard to believe I am here. This has been such a great weekend I am so tired right now, we walked all over today and my feet hurt bad. There is a picture in this slide show below of an escalator we rode that had to have been like 200 feet NO JOKE!

We are heading out in the morning very early, so I am off to bed. More on actual White Board quotes starting MONDAY in a blog series I'll do called "WiBo Quotes", LOL. Really deep I know!

I can't wait to worship with you all in cheyenne sunday morning, come ready to meet with God.



Tired,
Adam

WiBo is done

what a day! My word! This had to be one of the greatest conferences I have ever attended. 8 speakers 30 minutes a piece. They were each given 30 minute time slots to share their one current passion for the church. O my, I feel like I am having a brain over load of great stuff. I don't want to post all my thoughts right now so I will reserve them for later on this weekend. All I know right now is every pastor that spoke had on a "cool t-shirt". So the joke was "we need to find the coolpastorshirts.com website".

I am posting pics of the conference below. Going to see Indiana Jones. I will add more later tnite maybe. I hope you all are ok with all the tornadoes. That's crazy.



encouraged,
adam

lets get there early!

HA. well its friday morning and what a great night sleep I got knowing that DAVID COOK won BABY. YEAH. I thought it was wrapped up in the bag for little ARCHY! I told Jeff I was mad how the judges were ripping on Cook and then he goes and wins and not only wins but slaughters by 12 million votes. yeah.

Woke up at 6 today, ate an amazing breakfast at the hotel and then headed off to the Hyatt where wibo is.



The band is sound checking for worship this morning and it sounds amazing.
Just saw Michael from Oakleaf, LOL, crazy, all these guys that we follow.

Alright I will update you all through out the day on the wibo goods.

anxious,
adam

Do we belong!

WOW! Is the words to describe what Jeff and I are getting to do. We are in D.C. for the next 3 days for a conference called Whiteboard, featuring alot of the pastors that we follow on their blogs. We flew in about 5 o clock and checked into our hotel, which is out of this world. When we arrived here they immediately upgraded our room for no apparent reason. I posted pictures below.

I am so anxious for tommorow. So much good stuff that we will be able to eat up. We walked over to the hotel where the conference is being held and all the pastors were standing right there in the lobby chatting it up, I felt like a little kid in a candy store, LOL, oohh Jeff look there is "so and so", lol. So we sat down close enough to see them and far enough away not to look like we wanted to touch them, HA. Pray for us tommorow that God will download into our hearts His continued vision for element church through what some of these guys share.

Alright here is the pics of the hotel and some random D.C. shots. I will post more tommorow.



anxious,
adam

10 hours from home

Jeff and I came to Great Falls MT which is about 10 hours north of nowhere. HA. Its a long way from home. We are at a conference here for the denomination. It was actually quite interesting sitting in on the business meetings, which I have never been a part of before due to being non denominational. However I was able to meet some really cool guys today. I was able to connect with another worship pastor here that is part of a 2 year old church plant. It was very good to connect and see that I am headed on the right track and yet also get some insight on where to go from here. Let me strongly encourage any ministry pastor to surround yourself with people and resources that understand the game. It is so valuable to be able to bounce ideas of and steal ideas from other pastors. Blogging has become a great form of communication lately. I have tried to get every worship leader to start blogging, so we can all stay together on topics and issues related. Also we post our set lists and designs here so we can share songs and such. What a great tool.

Not sure whats on the aggenda tommorow however I look forward to connecting with some other worship guys to pick their brain.

I miss my wife a ton and cant wait to see her. We are growing so much right now in our marriage and ministry together. Love her to death.

I also love HEROES. If you are not a fan I am so sorry. But tonights episode was unreal. Still like LOST better but this comes in for a close 2nd. GO WATCH IT NOW.

worshipping Him
adam