Sunday, August 24, 2008

Hillsong United Conference Day 2

What an incredible day. It started with "Your Name High", led by Jad Gilles (who is an exceptional worship leader!), and a slightly different group of people on the worship team...including Matt Crocker and Dylan Thomas. It was an amazing morning worship service. I was pleasantly surprised at how long every worship set was. Like for the first morning, they played at least 5 or so songs, followed by some announcements and then more songs. Brian Houston then spoke about taking your talents, or simply things in this world, and using them for the Glory of God. He used the analogy of the donkey Jesus rode on into Jerusalem, saying how the owners thought they owned this young, unexperienced donkey (like music to the world) but when Jesus was placed onto the donkey, it became something with value, purpose, and significance. Brian was very pirate-ish and super energetic/jolly. FANTASTIC! When he finished we had a lot more worship before a half hour break. Then, Joel Houston spoke about social justice...it was very moving. I definitely felt the Lord tugging on my life to giving away more of my fincances...but all the specifics are tentative and I'll need to pray into it all. Then we had lunch break. I stayed in the auditorium to hear about Hillsong International Leadership College, which honestly sounds pretty promising and very appealing. It's only $4000 a year or less...

Next we ate chick-fil-a on site and moved on to the 2 workshop sessions.

#1 that I went to was songwriting, with Brooke Ligertwood (formerly Fraser :)) and Joel Timothy Houston - very helpful. And then I stayed for "building a healthy worship" team, during the second session, and it was awesome. I have a ton of respect for the United crew after that. Then, we waited FOREVER for the night service to start. They opened the doors about a half an hour late. When the service finally commenced, they began with The Time Has Come, as well as a lot of other songs before the message started. Awesome awesome worship. Crishan (new youth pastor of Hillsong) delivered an amazing message, which was composed of video and almost drama...it was crazy. But I didn't experience it. I freaking fell asleep towards the beginning and Josh didn't wake me up until the very end. The bright side was that I woke up to the first song of the night's worship - How He Loves. It was phenomenal. Annie, the girl singer with United, has an amazing voice, and that song just was SO powerful! From that song on, the night was a blur of dancing, joy, flailing, and WORSHIP. And it was FANTASTIC. My highlights were, 1. when Brooke Ligertwood was singing You'll Come, and on the bridge where it says "Chains be broken, lives be healed, eyes be opened, Christ is revealed" she just went off about how this was intercession and it was us releasing things in heaven, and we sang it for a LONG time, and Brooke just started jumping around and yelling at the top of her lungs...then everyone cut out but the drummer, Brandon, who just did a sort of drum solo as we sung that part over and over again, 2. immediately following that when Joel led Shout Unto God, and they completely ROCKED...and everyone was going nuts, jumping and spinning around and screaming like crazy. The presence of God. Eventually they sang "With Everything". It was awesome. But I was sad that the conference was over...until they started You Deserve again, and had many more fast paced worship songs to go crazy in worship in until Joel finally ended the conference by singing Solution. It was all amazing. And I'm excited to play on wednesday now. That whole conference, particularly that last night of worship where I just felt a connection with the band and everyone else in the room as the spirit of God fell on us, is going to be a night that I won't ever forget. It was some of the most intense and some of the most intimate worship I've ever experienced. Praise God!!! We got all 10 sessions of the conference on cd...so I'll be sharing those a lot I reckon. Especially with Rick and the other youth pastors..and then the songwriting and worship team ones with Brenton and JK. It was all really rich teaching. Hopefully I'll get a few pictures soon. And hopefully Josh will add his freaking videos to facebook...though he probably won't because he's lazy sometimes. But I'm believing God that he will! haha

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