More Saddleback Worship Conference

Some more impressions from the conference:

• Great worship. The session picture below was at a worship session led by Paul Baloche. His guitarist is worship leader at Valley Creek Church that meets at the indoor central park in Woodbury. In the earlier session they had their youth worship team lead a few Hillsongs United songs and it was outstanding.
• Buddy Owens did a talk on worry that was built around a personal story that was powerful. I'll have to retell it some time.
• Went to two sessions today. One on multi-site where I learned that Saddleback started its first multi-site about two years ago with thirteen weeks notice!!!! They don't recommend it. Started with 1800 people and grew to about 400 in a few short weeks. No, not a typo. Their workshop shared more about what not to do than what to do. The other session was on how to use social media (e.g., blogs, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) in working with leaders. Extremely interesting and informative but made my head spin.
• I got to talk to Hector and Beth Dalton's pastor from Tokyo. Told him how my visit to his church was one of the highlights from our Japan trip.
• Worship pastors, on the whole, wear very interesting pants and hats and have some equally interesting haircuts. Fidel Castro hats are quite in vogue. I told one of our friends who is here and wearing one tonight that it's like me showing up dressed like Ben Laden. Just kidding, but could be true for some other Cubans.
• Ate my favorite seafood soup at one of my absolutely favorite Mexican restaurants that I always go to when I'm here. Last night we went there as well and I had a beef tongue taco and a goat meat taco. Delicious. Hadn't had goat meat since Haiti last year and miss it. Tongue was quite tender. Of course, most of know that from biting our own.