Catalyst '09

Mike and I were able to attend the Catalyst conference in Atlanta last week. This year's theme was "On your Mark". We went with the Timm's and Christian's for four days. Catalyst is a conference for "leaders", specifically church leaders. Mike had attended last year and really loved the conference, so I was excited to see what it was all about. I really can't start to explain how great this opportunity was. There were some phenomenal speakers and awesome worship. There were great interviews with people I have always wanted to hear and just a great experience to see that many people gathered together to learn how to be most effective for the Kingdom!

Here is a brief list of some of my favorites from the conference:
1. Matt Chandler
2. Worship lead by Steve Fee
3. Perry Noble
4. Interview with Tony Dungy and author Malcolm Gladwell
5. Bible teaching from Priscilla Shrier
6. Andy Stanley, Chuck Swindol, Rob Bell, Dave Ramsey and Francis Chan.

The concourse of the facility(think the Palace) was lined with Christian para-organizations that had booths set up so you could browse during breaks. Wow, there are some amazing organizations out there doing the work of God(it helped that they were giving away freebies).

I personally came away from this conference with so much and would recommend it for anyone. I am very thankful for the opportunity to go for myself and the time away with Mike and good friends(oh yeah and the weather was great!).



The emcee's were always pulling some crazy stunt to introduce the speakers. This was one of my favorites, just before Tony Dungy spoke, they had a little league football team come up on stage with full pads/helmets on. Earlier in the day they had placed a little plastic football on each seat, remember 13,000 people. When the little league team came out they instructed us to throw the footballs at the stage. It was wild. Those little guys were ducking for cover and trying their best to pick the balls up and throw them back to the crowd. If you look close enough in the picture below you can see a couple of balls being thrown.


We had one afternoon of free time. So we decided to go to Stone Mountain. This is just what it sounds like, a park dedicated to a huge stone mountain with a big Civil War connection. So we hiked up the mountain and at the top is a little museum. You can take the skylift up, but what is the fun in that? This was a beautiful day. And the view of Atlanta from the top was pretty clear.


At one point, this truck comes down the mountain and we are stunned. This is a very steep mountain. The funny thing was the driver must have done this a couple of times because to pass the time(slow descent) he was reading a magazine.




At the bottom of the mountain was another museum and where you catch the skylift.






Can you see the Atlanta skyline in the background?

There is a carving on the mountain of three confederate army generals. I remeber one as General Lee, I forgot the other two. This is an amazing site. These pictures do not show the size at all. One of the generals heads is like 30 feet tall. We saw an actual size replica of one of the stars on the general's collars and they were about 4 feet by 4 feet. WOW!