Blogging from Isn’t She Beautiful Part 5

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Here is just a few pics from the night.

Well I’m not exactly there anymore. We had a great time at the conference all nine of us that went. Mostly it was the time we spent together which I can say I appreciated the most. At the same time, my idealogical assumptions of mega-churches were completely challenged. They redefine all sorts of things of what I always thought to be wrong with big church models (especially across the border). So thank-you Mars Hill and Rob Bell for putting on a great conference. Rob Bell spoke at least six hours a day, so I’m sure he’s tired. The staff and leadership there were amazing to us and were only helpful.

The conference in general really challenged a lot of what I thought about conferences. When we do The Evolving Church I spend a lot of time doing designs and branding, where at Mars Hill they are very intentional to do the opposite. Our schedule was a photocopied document of text, I don’t think they really spent any money on advertising and they sent us into the city to eat food.

They brought in around $150, 000 in ticket sales for the conference and used $40,000 to run the conference (I may be sketchy on those numbers, but it’s close enough). The rest of the money went to build a water system in Rawanda, and into micro loans (like I talked about here) in Grand Rapids and around the world. What an amazing thing to do with the money. It’s an inspiration for all of us that run conferences to use what God provides to further the Kingdom and not hoard it to ourselves.

The end of the conference was mostly prayer, communion and worship, so I don’t have any notes from it and so that would about summarize Isn’t She Beautiful. If I’m missing anything, or you have posted something yourself on your experience or more, better quality notes, e-mail me and let me know so I can link to you.