Catalyst Conference Recap

It’s Monday and it’s raining like the tears of an upset bride whose dress is ripped as she gets out of the limousine to walk down the isle. In other words, it’s raining hard (lol).

I’m sitting here in the GSU library and I have just enough time to give a quick recap of some of my experiences at Catalyst this year.

First of all, I just want to give a shout out to Reggie Joiner, Matt Chandler, Scott Williams and Vincent Parker. I had the honor of chatting with them during the conference. Mad respect! I really admire what they are doing for the Kingdom.

Wednesday was quite an experience for me. I rode with my pastor, Shaun King, to the Catalyst Labs that morning and took some time out to meet a few people (ie. Charles Lee of Idea Camp, Smokie Norful and James Ward of 410 Bridge). I sat in on a few sessions throughout the day and grabbed some major points from several of the speakers. Here’s the list of speakers that I sat in on…

• Reggie Joiner
• Nancy Ortberg
• Mark Batterson
• Scott Belsky
• Matt Chandler

One thing I really love about Catalyst Labs is the open environment they provide for leaders to meet. Since this was my first year attending the labs portion of the conference, I had a great time connecting Twitter profile pics to actual people and turning tweets into actual conversations.

My favorite lab session was Matt Chandler’s talk on the importance of the Gospel. One thing I admire most about him is his relentless passion to intentionally place the Gospel at the center of every conversation and talk he gives. He talked about the “Gospel from the Ground” and the “Gospel from 30,000 ft.” I’m not going to go too much in depth with that, but if you want to know more, feel free to comment below for further notes.

As the day closed out, I received word that I was invited to sing at the Catalyst Conference the following day during the opener of one of the main sessions. Guess what the song was? Hint: The song I’ve been blasting all over my blog the past month…

“I Got A Feeling” by Black Eyed Peas