Catalyst Wrap-Up, Day 2

Day 2 of Catalyst was, despite the lack of Jeff Foxworthy, overall better than the first day.

The first session was Donald Miller (author of Blue Like Jazz) interviewing his pastor, Rick McKinley. I’ve read McKinley’s book Jesus in the Margins, and he was every bit as inspiring and challenging at Catalyst as he was in his book. At his church in Portland, Imago Dei Community, he talked about how he made a choice to move into being missional in the community. He said it wasn’t working until he was willing to risk the complete failure of the church – but he had decided he didn’t want to “play church” anymore. McKinley’s perspective is interesting, because he had almost no connection to church before he received Christ as an adult, so his approach is refreshing. If I was going to get involved in a “conventional” church again, it’d probably be as unconventional as Imago Dei sounds like.

The second session was Louie Giglio. Louie is the founder of Passion (a college-age worship movement), speaks at 7:22, and also heads up sixstepsrecords (home of most of the Passion artists such as Chris Tomlin, Matt Redman, etc.). Louie is always one of my favorite speakers. He said that ministry is “not about being great businessmen,” but about “empowering normal people to do supernatural things.”

In the third session, Kevin Carroll talked about the value of “play,” and the value of understanding the way children view the world, full of imagination and possibilities. Kevin Carroll calls himself a “Katalyst,” helping other companies turn creative ideas into reality.

To end the day, Donald Miller talked about where the church has come from and where it’s going. The thought that stuck with me the most was this: the problems come when the church tries to be like the world. Pre-enlightenment, the church asserted its authority via grand buildings (that looked similar to the royal castles), and holy rituals. Post-enlightenment, the church took on the position as the conveyor of truth. Today, the church takes the position of entertainment and marketing. Miller said that if you look at the metaphors used in the New Testament, though, you’ll see the metaphor of fathers and sons being reunited. Of finding things that were once lost. Rather than viewing Christianity as a product to be marketed, he said that we need to view our ministry as reuniting people with their Creator. Awesome stuff.

Overall, day two didn’t feel as oriented to “church staff” in the same way that day one felt. We were being challenged to view ministry as a spiritual phenomenon, not a business phenomenon.

The real question was this: when it came time to order tickets at a really low cost for next year, would I do it? I decided that yes, I would do it. This was a good opportunity for me to test a lot of what I have been experiencing against a lot of thought-provoking speakers, and challenge some of my thinking. I’m also very encouraged that there were a higher number of speakers this year that questioned the “status quo” in terms of simply applying sound business principles to church ministry as an avenue for success. Given that they even bothered to invite George Barna to speak in front of a lot of these pastors, church staff, and lay leaders of conventional churches, I really want to see how Catalyst continues to grow – not just in size, but in scope.