Calvary Chapel Worship Leader’s Conference – 2007

UPDATE: (7/24/08)   Next year’s conference is November 10-14, 2008.

I just got home from the CCWLC.org conference yesterday at Murietta Hot Springs. The theme was “beauty of holiness.”

WOW.

I must admit that although my church sent me I was a little leary about going. The last one I went to in ‘98 or ‘99 ended up being more like “battle of the bands.” Even at a church with 300 people our worship team felt totally incapable of leading worship. I have to confess I was worried about my roommates. GOD gave me the best roommates ever! I am so blessed. REALLY, not just a cliche blessed but ya blessed.

But I digress.

Reading the mission statement on the website really sealed the deal for me: they wanted to build us up spiritually and the music part was secondary (the technical aspects).

The classes were great. I appreciated the sound class by Chaz Celaya which was comprehensive as well as Brenton Brown’s songwriting class. They really encouraged me. Also I took Bill Welch’s class on building a worship team and Chariya’s vocal class (for fun–which it was).

There were two things that blew me away:

1. The teaching.

2. A moment with Terry Clark.

The teaching was phenomenal. I really enjoyed Mike MacIntosh, Brian Broderson, Richard Cimino, and Tim Chaddick. Two speakers though, really blew me away, well three. I really was impacted by Evan Wickam’s message on being distracted–allowing yourself, rather–to be distracted by Jesus. I probably need to download the mp3 to listen again, it was so much to process. Mike Harris gave a great message as well and Zach Vestnys was amazing. How rich are we to have so many lovers of God’s Word come and encourage us. I really want to buy the mp3s.

Terry Clark lead worship in the morning on Wednesday. Every worship leader who came–came with a servant’s heart, so I don’t want to misconvey the experience with God. They were all great. But at the end of Mike Harris’ sermon he asked Terry to come up. Terry just went up to the piano, stood, and lead us in an unamplified a capella worship of three songs.

Here you are, imagine, just a worship leader in a very small church. The band is just you. And here Terry Clark has all of these resources at his disposal, so to speak, and leads us a capella. I really felt that example was a message from the Lord to encourage me that one heart loving God is enough of a “band” or “team.”

Wow.

I met people from Ontario, Livermore, Quebec, Honolulu, Petaluma, Stockton, Florida, all over the US.

Basically, my only complaint, beside the D’jembe review downstairs til 1130 pm the first night (met the brothers by the way who were worshipping last night–what sweet people) was…

… that the coffee shop isn’t open until 7:00 a.m. which was a bummer.