As I kick off a new week and I’m gonna take my first stab at trying to digest all that I saw and heard last week at Catalyst West Coast.  One of the things that I have really enjoyed the last couple years at Catalyst West is that they have brought in a Christian comedian for one of the sessions.  It is a great break from the heaviness of the rest of the speakers for the most part and it is very welcomed.  This year they brought in a guy named Michael Jr.  The dude was hysterical!  But more than that he is doing something that I have never seen before.  He is taking his comedy on the road less traveled.  It’s a pretty incredible ministry that he is doing and I wanted to share it with you all this week.  Watch this trailer and then go check out his site Comedy: The Road Less Traveled!

My brain is so fried after Catalyst West, I gotta take it easy today.  I have so many notes and things to think through.  I have several new songs to get, learn and teach.  So many people I have connected with and now need to follow up with and get to know.  It was only a couple days but I feel like it was weeks.  Very good weeks, but still long.

So instead I just wanna give you a couple links to check out that I am excited to hit up myself!  Check this out!

Wow. Days like yesterday are so hard to work through. So much learning and information and…wow. When we learn from amazing leaders like Andy Stanley, Louie Giglio, Dino Rizzo, and Mark Driscoll it’s difficult to comprehend it all. Then toss in Aaron Keyes, Carlos Whittaker, the Sheltons and Chris Tomlin doing music it pretty much caps off the day. Then I got to meet a ton of friends that I have never met before but know so much about. AND I got to spend it all with KK and Jessi!

It was a good day. Hopefully today is the same. There is so much to think and pray through. There will be plenty of blogs to come I am sure!

It’s hard to believe that Jessi is four weeks old today.  That is insane.  (We are celebrating by going to Catalyst West Coast and getting our spiritual learning on.)  Seriously, it seems like just last week we brought her home from the hospital and we spent the next two weeks trying to figure out how to convince her to stop screaming and go to sleep.  Yeah, we are still working on that one.

It’s crazy to see her growing and developing so quickly.  She came out holding her head up on her own quite a bit, but now she does it all the time.  Now when we try to burp her she tries to crawl up us!  Even Jack is warming up to her.  He still sniffs her every chance he gets, but he has also been caught curling up next to her.  It seems like every day she is making more and more cute little noises.  Before long she is gonna be chasing the dog around, pulling his hair and giggling the whole way…at least I hope so since that means she won’t be screaming and crying the whole time!

Well, happy four weeks, Jessi Girl.  Soon enough I am gonna be trying to convince you that boys are gross!

One of the coolest things about the Catalyst conferences is that it is really intended for church leaders.  I like that it isn’t for just Baptists or the Non-Denominational denomination.  It’s for everyone.  I like that it is about helping others become better leaders and not “this is how you should do your church”.  That conversation always seems to lead to argument about who’s church does things better.

If you have been here much very recently, you know I have been working through all the things that I heard at Catalyst West Coast.  When you get to hear from leaders that God is using to affect the world in the way these guys are there is a lot to learn and think about.  Today I wanna think about something that Erwin McManus said about spiritual leadership.  Live heroic.  Spiritual leadership is detonating the obstacles in front of others so they can live their dreams.  As leaders we aren’t all called to have a vision to get people to join.  Many of us are called to help wake up the God given dreams in others!

For me this fits in with one of my favorite things about God.  I love that we are all different.  Not just our styles of church but our personalities and everything in between.  That includes our visions for ministry as well.  I love that I don’t have to have the vision to get everyone involved in prayer walks or anointing each other with oil.  Those visions are God given to other people!  For me the vision is leading people in worship through music, helping and equipping other worship leaders, and helping young couples.  A lot of the vision I believe God has called me to isn’t starting a new church but to help others find and wake up their God given visions.

I love it!  I love blowing stuff up!  I love watching stuff blow up!  Therefore having a vision to help blow up the obstacles in front of other people’s God given visions is awesome!  What is the vision that God has called you to?

I really love mind-blowing things that make me think.  Not just think like what is the square root of 864 times the by product of x + 7y all divided by 3.  That’s just dumb thinking.  But I do like things that I have to figure out.  I like riddles or puzzles or predicaments.  I like to work on my car because I don’t have a clue.  I like to try to surf because I really don’t know what I am doing.  Catalyst (as I’m sure you can tell so far if you have read here recently) is one of those things that makes me think.  Not just thoughts like wondering how they could spend so much money on a conference like that and have so many bad sound issues (not Mariners Church by the way…they weren’t responsible), but the kind of thinking that makes you sit back and go wow.  That changes all kinds of things for me and the way I live!  Well today I wanna give you another one of those thoughts.  It really could have piggybacked on the last post about living knowing God can use you to change the world, but I just couldn’t do it.  If you are really taking stuff like this in, you have to give it some time to sink in before you start throwing more mind-blowing ideas on top of it!

One of the speakers at the Catalyst West Coast conference was Erwin McManus.  I don’t know much about this guy except that judging from the talk that he gave, their church is very artsy and creative.  Go for it man!  I have more than one thought from his talk, but I just wanna hit one now.  Are you ready?  Are you sure?  If this is news to you, it can completely blow your mind!  Think on this for a minute.

God dreamed you up!

Four words.  God dreamed you up.  Think about the magnitude of that!  He didn’t get bored one day and say well, ummm…oh right I was goofing around yesterday and left some dust and breath in the fridge and when I went back later, poof, Brook was in there.  I guess he’ll do.  NO!  He didn’t say that.  He dreamed you up!  He came up with every little detail about you!  Remember all those imaginary friends you had when you were little?  All the insane details that you made up about them?  God did that for EVERY SINGLE THING ABOUT YOU!  Wow.  Not one single person in this world is ordinary.  There aren’t doppelgängers (that I know of).  There aren’t any more of you.  There are no more Kara-Kaes.  There are no more Taylor Faughts (trust me, I know because every high school and college sports team has looked).  There are no more Tom Greens.  There are no more Barak Obamas.  Each one of the octuplets there are no more of.  There are no more ___________ (put your name here…except for Kara-Kae, Taylor Faught, Tom Green, Barak Obama and the octuplets because I already did yours…and no I doubt Tom Green or Barak Obama read my blog…but it would be pretty cool if they did so if you know them point them this way!).

No one is ordinary!  Not one ordinary baby comes into this world.  Maybe you are like me and you look at the things going on around you and think how that could never be you because you aren’t that good.  Maybe you think that no one could love you because you aren’t someone else.  You are just you.  It’s all bull crap!  You are you and only you!  That’s pretty freakin’ awesome!  There’s no reason you need to try to be someone else!  Just be you!  God made you that way on purpose! (Enough with the exclamation marks already!)

Ok, I’m gonna calm down right now because I think Alex (my computer…yes my wife names random things) is hurting a little in the keyboard area because I am really typing hard hoping to make my point.  But please.  Next time you get down on yourself or your self-esteem is low, remember that God dreamed you up!  He didn’t trip over you and say yeah ok.  He didn’t pull you out of a hat.  Are you liking all my images here?  Ok.  I’m done.  God loves you.  God came up with you.  Those little goofy things you do that you think are weird?  God loves them!  They were His idea first.  (See there I go again.)

God dreamed you up.  Amazing.

Recently I had the (illegal) opportunity to go to the Catalyst West Coast Conference and hear several prominent church leaders speak to a crowd of church leaders.  I love this stuff!  It was so amazing.  I think the best thing is that it isn’t about who is speaking but what God is saying through them!  After the conference had ended, I read back through my notes and just thought, “Wow. How am I going to wrap my head around all these amazing thoughts?”  So I am turning to writing.  No I don’t utilize a journal (assuming we don’t count this as one) so I’m gonna blog.  Maybe it will be statements.  Maybe it will be questions.  How exactly it will all come out I don’t know, but I do know that God used that conference and the speakers and singers to smack me (and many others) upside the head.

Unfortunately I didn’t get to hear everything from the first day.  I missed a couple of the speakers that I’m told were amazing.  But that’s not the point of all this.  I did get to see some great speakers.  One was Nick Vujicic.  Don’t ask because I have no idea how to pronounce that name.  If you haven’t ever heard of the guy, go check out his web site.  I linked it for you.  He was born with no arms, no legs and a little flipper.  Crazy.

I actually got to hear him speak a few years back and another conference so it was cool to see him again.  But really one thing he said hit me pretty hard.  (I’m gonna used quotes and I’m pretty sure this is exactly what he said but I was typing it into my iPhone so I might have missed a bit but the point is the same.)

“I would be dishonoring God if I didn’t live my life believing that God could use me to change the world.”

Wow.  Seriously.  How many days do we wake up and just go through the motions?  How many times do we get frustrated looking in the mirror and think to ourselves that we aren’t good enough?  Nothing could ever come of us.  Maybe that was something you heard growing up.  Maybe you still hear that.  But the truth is great!  We are not only doing ourselves a disservice but also those around us and God when we don’t think we are good enough for God to use us to change the world!  I’m guilty of this too!  I’m not talking “oh yeah God is all-powerful and can use anything, blah, blah, blah” that we tend to just throw around.  Think about that statement for a second.  God is ALL-powerful!  If we don’t live our lives knowing that God can use us to completely change the world, we will completely miss out!  If we sit around waiting on the world to change, then what an amazing life we will miss out on that God wants us to be a part of.  Changing the world!

That’s not just a small thing.  That is epic!  Changing the world!  We could be part of that if only we would truly believe that God is big enough to use little ol’ me to rock the world!  I don’t know how that will play out.  Maybe it is changing the world in the city I live in.  Maybe it is changing the world in my family.  Or for my (future) kids.  Or my country.  Or really the world!

I don’t wanna wake up on the wrong side of the changing the world bed anymore.  That’s my prayer.  God give me the strength to believe and know that no matter what anyone says or what I tell myself, You want to use me to change the world!

Ok, so maybe Catalyst isn’t really a concert but it will work for this (especially since I’m in charge and write whatever I want!).  This past week Catalyst had their first west coast conference this year and it was amazing!  I only wish that my wife could have joined me and that we could have been there for the whole thing!  I had to be a little sinner and sneak in for the second have of day 2 and then was blessed because someone had to leave early and they gave me their pass for day 3.  The line up was amazing and I will have several blogs following just on the bits and pieces that I got from listening!  Here is the list of what I got to hear.

Speakers

• Jud Wilhite
• Ravi Zacharias
• Brian Houston
• Nick Vuljicic
• Erwin McManus
• Andy Stanley
• Rick Warren
• Craig Groeschel
• Francis Chan
• Perry Noble

Bands

• Fee
• Hillsong United
• Aaron Keyes

Comedians

• Tripp And Tyler
• Tim Hawkins
• Anjelah Johnson

Unfortunately I only was there for a day and a half and missed a ton!  Maybe we will get to go next year.  I definitely recommend it!

Highlights Of The Show – I use the term show very loosely because it definitely wasn’t a show, but I’m keeping with my series.  Anyway, the highlights for me were Fee rocking out, Hillsong United playing With Everything (my current favorite worship tune), Tim Hawkins was hilarious, and listening to Craig, Francis and Perry!