national conference

Last night we returned home from a 4-day conference up in Auckland that we attended with the rest of our church staff and most of the interns. I believe I've hinted at the fact that we're moving into a new role at the church, but I don't know that I've ever actually explained it. Since March/April we've been heading up what we've termed Family Ministries, a program that runs in conjunction with our kids ministry by providing one event for families with young kids each month. Ideally this would have been run under the leadership of the kids ministry staff, but the volunteer kids pastors have five kids of their own and just didn't have the time to do it. The more recent development is that, having served in this role for five years, they've decided that it's time for a change and will be stepping down from kids ministry at the end of November, and Bryan and I have agreed to take on this role in their stead. Over the past few years, especially having been involved with fantastic kids ministry teams at our church at home (Oak Hills Church) in Minnesota, we've felt drawn to kids ministry, and so we feel like this is a very natural (though still very challenging!) step for us.

So we flew up to Auckland on Monday for the annual National Conference for our church movement, staying with the family of a friend that we met here in Christchurch at their home on Auckland's lovely North Shore, just a 10-minute drive from the conference in the beachside suburb of Takapuna. We'd been there before, having stayed at a campground a block away from the conference center on the last night of our 34-day Cape Reinga-Auckland hike last September, and were struck by how different our circumstances were. We miss our backpacking lifestyle, but also embrace the good friends that we've found over the last year and the strong sense of local identity that we've cultivated in Christchurch. 

The Saturday before we left for the conference, while saying goodbye to our good friend Ann-Kristin at the airport, Bryan and I discovered that we weren't actually registered for the conference, each of us having thought that the other person had taken care of this crucial step. We shared a good nervous laugh but boarded our flights anyway, having no opportunity to contact anyone about the problem but knowing enough about the workings of our small (and often disorganized) movement to have a fair amount of confidence in our ability to attend anyway. To our relief, this was the case, though it was painful to see the money we could have saved had we qualified for the early-bird rate. I think my mom would say "you live and you learn" here.

I think all of us from City Church enjoyed the conference, though as a first-time attendee, I had some expectations that did not match up with the actual event. For the first time in my life, probably because I'm recognizing how much I have to learn as a new kids pastor, I was looking forward to networking with other people in similar roles, and was disappointed to find that this conference made no attempt to assist with this process - no workshops, no discussion groups, no special lunches, just eight long general sessions. Yikes! The keynote speaker was an American, Pastor Glen Berteau from Calvary Temple Worship Center in Modesto, CA. He had plenty of great things to say, though his proud declaration that he doesn't read books, just the Bible, made me squirm more than just a little. I'm not sure if he was serious about this or just emphasizing a point (that we need to know the Bible itself, not just what other people have to say about it), but it didn't exactly make me want to put him on my favorite people list.

The highlights for me were a short message preached by Jordan Smith, the movement's youth ministry guy, who spoke inspiringly about our ability to make an impact no matter how large the size of our team, which is especially relevant for us as most of the kids ministry work is done by the two of us and our fabulous (and hilariously innocent) intern, Hannah. I was also able to connect meaningfully with Sarah Thompson, who's been the kids pastor at South Life Church in Dunedin (we were at this church a few months ago for the Branded Conference) for 6 or 8 years and who is making valiant efforts to build a kidmin community nationwide. I'd stumbled upon her blog last week through a kids ministry website and had been hoping to meet her while up north. We went out for coffee and talked about check-in systems, teambuilding, and her desire to create meaningful experiences for kids throughout their Sunday morning kids program. Good stuff, and hopefully just the beginning of a fruitful relationship that someday I may actually have something to contribute to.

So that was my first experience with the ACTS Churches National Conference. I'm glad we went...and thanks to Joel and Karen for helping make that possible for us.

-Rachel