Rob Bradbury asked me to speak in the Kidshaper electives this year about a topic near and dear to my heart. I firmly believe that everyone has a creative spark in them, especially when it has to do with your calling in life!  And I’m not just just talking about creativity that immediately springs to mind like songwriting or script writing, but everything from problem solving to preaching to leading volunteers.

This is a brief few thoughts from what I presented at the conference.

Learning how to use your imagination

 1. We have an imperative to create
God tells us to sing a new song. God is the only one who can create from nothing. We simply re-imagine.  BUT stronger can be our desire to hold on to our previous creations – don’t ride any dead horses… dismount.

2. Unblock the Hose
I wrote about this a while ago here. But sometimes you need to figure out HOW before you figure out WHAT. Perhaps you want to create a video for your weekend services but your grand ideas supersede your technical ability. Find someone with the know-how!

3. Give Yourself Space
In my role at Church I have to create a space so I can devote my entire brain area cavity to an idea or issue – and I am confident that I have God given ability to come up with solutions not because I am especially gifted but simply because I am called!

4. Don’t Accept the First Draft
Do not expect platinum without a rewrite. Sit with your ideas for a while before acting on them.

5. Don’t Mix Meetings and Ideas
NEVER. If you are brainstorming with team, stay away from agenda and ‘to do lists’. Focus on the dreams not the doing!

6. Be Mr/Mrs Implementation
Don’t just be known as Mr. Idea.

The bottom line is all this: Effort places value on our children… so take the time and develop your imagination!

I wrote an update post for our Hillsong Collected Blog recently.

It gives a short overview of what we did this year at our annual conference and includes our Happy 25th video!

Kidsong World 2011

The Hillsong Conference has now officially spread all over the world to our Churches everywhere.

I have loved watching from afar the journey that Hillsong Kids has taken in London. I have been there twice over the years and seen the programs in action and they never fail to impress with their creativity!

Here are the highlight videos from the Kidsong just finished.

Kidsong Hightlights Part 1 from Hillsong Church London on Vimeo.

Kidsong 2011 Highlights Part 2 from Hillsong Church London on Vimeo.

Our annual Hillsong Conference is over for another year – we will have photos and videos up on the Conference website but it is in ‘promo mode’ without a specific Kidsong page getting ready for next year. So when it returns to info mode I will point you to it for sure.

Because of the Hillsong One Days we were in the Sydney Entertainment Centre (probably the lamest venue in Sydney for Kids), but we had tents… in the middle of winter! Okay, they were very nice marquees with big heaters (I want one for my house). So we were comfortably housed and our Primary school Year 2-6 kids were bused to our City Campus to spend the day in luxury.

It was a huge success on all counts, especially pulling off the crazy marquee thing and making buses a beautiful experience for all concerned!

I would like to officially acknowledge the fantastic Hillsong Kids Staff from all of our campuses for making this the safest and most enjoyable conference for kids ever! (I am basing that on data available from Paramedics and General feedback from Parents and Kids, so very scientific).

And as always the hundreds of volunteers that made it work, not only logistically but relationally, you really made it happen! (I even heard of kids crying at the end of the week because they would miss you. Brilliant!)

Here is the theme and teaching for this years conference!

KIDSONG 2011 BIG PICTURE:  Unchartered Journey

PRIMARY BIG WORD: Psalm 25:4 “Show me your ways, O Lord, teach me your paths; guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my savior and my hope is in you all day long” (NIV)

EARLY CHILDHOOD BIG WORD: John 14:1 “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God John 14:1

TUESDAY PM

BIG IDEA: LIGHTS! CAMERA! ACTION!
BIG POINT: God has an epic journey planned just for me
EC WORD OF DAY: Dreams – God has a plan for my life

PREACHING NOTES: Children will learn that God has a great future for them. An Epic journey is not always easy, not always fun, there will be challenges and lessons learned along the way but with God it will be an epic adventure!

Psalm 37:23 (NKJV) The steps of a good man are ordered by the LORD, And He delights in his way.

Jeremiah 29:11 New International Reader’s Version (NIRV) “I know the plans I have for you,” announces the Lord. “I want you to enjoy success. I do not plan to harm you. I will give you hope for the years to come.

WEDNESDAY AM & PM

BIG IDEA: OPENING SCENE!
BIG POINT: If I trust God, he will direct my journey
EC WORD OF DAY: Love – God’s love leads us

PREACHING NOTES: We can trust God with our future. We don’t know what the future holds, but we can know that one that holds our future.

Proverbs 3:5-6 New International Version (NIV) Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.

THURSDAY AM & PM

BIG IDEA:                    STICK WITH GOD!

BIG POINT:                 No matter what, never give up

EC WORD THE DAY:  Pray – I can talk to God all the time

PREACHING NOTES: An epic journey has a beginning, middle and end. What makes the story of the journey EPIC and exciting is that there are challenges to overcome along the way. Think of any movie you’ve seen – what makes it good is that the character has to overcome something to get where they need to go. And if they don’t give up in the end is VICTORY!  No matter what, don’t give up, God is with you!

Galatians 6:9 New International Version (NIV) Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.

FRIDAY AM & PM

BIG IDEA:                    CLOSING CREDITS
BIG POINT:                 With Jesus I can overcome any obstacles
EC WORD OF DAY:     Jesus – Jesus is always with me

PREACHING NOTES: With Jesus anything could happen, nothing is impossible and with Him we can overcome any obstacles. When we focus on how BIG God is, problems we thought were big, look small.

2 Timothy 1:7 New King James Version (NKJV) “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.”

Matthew 19:26 New International Reader’s Version (NIRV) “Jesus looked at them and said, “With man, that is impossible. But with God, all things are possible.”

Isaiah 41:10 New International Reader’s Version (NIRV) “So do not be afraid. I am with you. Do not be terrified. I am your God  I will make you strong and help you. My powerful right hand will take good care of you.  I always do what is right.”

This year was the 25th Anniversary of Hillsong Conference! It all started in 1986 in a school in Baulkham Hills, and this week we were at the Sydney Entertainment Centre in the Heart of Sydney!

I haven’t blogged much in the last week, but to make up for it here is a Happy Birthday video from Kidsong to Hillsong Conference! Blog posts maybe take an hour to write but this video took days, so show the love and retweet/share do your thing!

Thanks!

The Highlight video from our One Day events around Sydney is now up online.

Thanks to @BrianCHouston and @joelabell for making this possible and bringing a kids team along!

We have neared the end of May 2011, a month remembered for its apocalypse (May 21) and Hillsong One Days (in my mind anyway). In this second installment about May we continue our story where we left off. After a great weekend in Church (I remember some of it with the help of caffeine), we returned to the road for a conference in Melbourne and Adelaide. I have visited Melbourne a few times, but had never been to Adelaide so was looking forward to that! (Note: Adelaide reminded me a lot of New Zealand, which means I loved it)

Hillsong One Day: Melbourne

Monday morning even before Jesus gets up we were flying down to Melbourne for One Day number 3. This was going to be held at Hisense Arena which was by far the largest venue we were using. Again my wife Beci and our Kids Event’s coordinator Eva were with me to rock the event. Additionally in an act of inspiration, (or perhaps insanity) a bus came down from Sydney with a bunch of our leaders to support the conference owing to the size of the venue.

Side note: this is actually quite a good venue to run a kids program in. Lots of smaller conference rooms around the auditorium made for a great experience for the children. A huge parenting room (for kids 1-2 years old), and two adjoining rooms for a preschool and primary program. But the greatest blessing came from the teams we were working with in Melbourne from Crossway Baptist, Eastside Church and Careforce Church. Thanks to Magaret Spicer and her team, Rebecca Buckle and baby (still womb bound – Rebecca you are a legend!)

It was a huge night with a crowd packing the arena for the night session with Hillsong United!

Hillsong One Day: Adelaide

Then it was onto Paradise community church in Adelaide for the final hurrah! Darren Fowles (that’s not him in the picture btw) and his team were brilliant, alongside a group from Edge Church with the living legend Andrew Shepherd. It was nice to be back in a Church venue with everything setup and ready to go! And I do get a little jealous when we go to churches with permanent facilities with fancy kids rooms! Once again a packed house for the night rally but our team was able to squeeze everybody in!

It was a lot of fun seeing all these venues around Australia and has given me inspiration for what I need to implement and also appreciation for what we do have! In all our One Day events the theme was the same Under the Psalm Tree, a week of teaching from our New Curriculum SUPERNATURAL… coming soon!

Thanks to every single volunteer and Church that partnered with us to make these event brilliant for children all over Australia. I certainly pray and believe that God was glorified and kids were blessed.

All that is left for May is to hang out with our awesome Hillsong staff at our annual staff retreat this week… looking forward to it! I

Thanks!

This May has turned into a big month. A whole lot of events and conferences which efectively means I am not in the office at all in May except for weekends… Putting a lot of trust in my iPhone battery!

I have some idea now of what it takes to travel like some of our team do. I like living near our airport but not having to use its facilities very often… this month I am a regular at the security check point at Sydney Aiport!

First up was our annual:

NATIONAL ACC CONFERENCE

The month started with the National ACC conference in Brisbane. It is our pastors conference for the AoG in australia. This was a great time to just sit/receive and connect with a whole bunch of people from our movement here in Australia. We had Reinhard Bonnke and Steve Murrell speak to us and just spoke some brilliant encouragement and a lot of gold from their wealth of experience.

So we were out of the office in the lovely Gold Coast of Queensland. Probably one of my favourite places to have a conference

HILLSONG ONE DAYS

Then in the second week we began our Hillsong One Day conferences which were conceived to bring the annual Hillsong Conference to cities around Australia and celebrate the 25th birthday of the event!

There would be kids programs at each of the conferences, not a ‘Kidsong’ like we would run in Sydney, but some sort of experience for our little ones. We decided to create a parenting room for parents with kids up to 1 years old, a playgroup for two year olds (families provide carers), a preschool program (3-5 year olds) and a primary school program. Each conference would be customised to make it work within the rooms provided.

HILLSONG ONE DAY: BRISBANE

It all began in Brisbane on Monday night. We arrived with a small army of production team, Hillsong United, Events team and me overseeing our kids program along with our Hillsong Brisbane Campus team.

The truth is we didn’t know what to expect really. School is still on during the event but who knew what parents would do? Bring ‘em along or organise care for them. We had limited registrations pre-event so I was prepared for big/small, young/old. What we got was volunteers from our absolutely fantastic kids team in Brisbane turn out and give of themselves to bless the children coming along.

A far larger contingent of primary/elementary kids came along (numbers of home schooling and out of towners) and a great little group of preschoolers. I led a rally/worship experience for the little ones in the morning and at night, both preschool and primary. Thanks to the kids team at Citipointe kids staff (Sam & Karolina Gunsser) who oversee the kids and youth ministries making them one of the few ‘family ministry’ pastors I know of in Australia.

Special shout-out to Richard Leworthy our Brisbane kids pastor who pulled the whole volunteer team together and Petter Klaar and Tony Moshudis who came together to form the key team to make this event happen! Thank You SO MUCH!

HILLSONG ONE DAY: PERTH

I had never been to Perth before. Unlike the East coast of Australia where everything is within 1-2 hours, it is quite a flight and change of time zone to get to Perth. We arrived to Challenge Stadium to find a venue which proved to be ‘interesting’ to say the least. It has a fully functioning Pool and multiple Gym’s throughout which would be running during the one day event. Usually we have exclusive use of a venue we hire which makes it much easier safety wise, age group room etc. to plan a program for kids.

So we were working with that, but thank the Lord my wife Beci and our Kids Event’s coordinator Eva flew in to help oversee this one.

A lot of the success of this one day would be reliant on the teams we were working with to make it happen, and the great news was we got to work with a Brilliant team!

Sam Sheedy of Sunset Coast CLC and Harvest West Bible College, Zheng Kon from Perth CLC and Jocelyn Jayasooria from Kingdom City formed the key team for Perth and bought together the most passionate and willing to serve team! If it was not for this group of Perth-ites we would have never been able to make the conference the huge success it was. In fact the reception and expectation of the Perth people was inspiring and such a blessing for us Sydney-siders.

This event was even more of an unknown for us because we were working with people in some cases have never met before and Churches who just came to serve with a willing heart! I was over the moon with every single volunteer and so grateful to God for each of them!

It was also nice to use a venue after Justin Beiber

What we have learnt so far

• Just doing one of these events gives a great idea of what to expect and where you need to put strength in the teams.
• I feel a real passion developing for preschool praise and worship. There needs to be excellent leadership of this area modeled, demonstrated and developed right now!
• It all comes down to the team and volunteers
• I have very few frequent flyer points
• Perth has some brilliant people at brilliant churches!