The end of the conference

I'm settled in Santa Monica now, thinking about the experience of the NAECED conference. I'll tell you what...the organizers did a top notch job in the planning of this. They were open to feedback and really, sincerely want to continue growing and building this conference into all that it can be.

Friday was a bit rushed for so many of us who had a flight to catch. That was one of the only drawbacks of having a workshop in the afternoon. I think if they had some kind of activities or banquet Friday night, many more people would have made the decision to stay another night and fly out early Saturday morning. But many were trying to save their church money by not booking that extra night (like me) and trying to get the latest flight out they could.

In the morning was a delicious breakfast at St. Mark's. Then the Annual meeting and elections. Afterwards we broke up into 3 small discussion groups. The topics were varied and let by a NAECED board member. Our group topic was what kind of future workshops and activities we would like to see at future conferences. Technology workshops were the most requested. Jenifer Gamber's this year was excellent. We tried to cover so much in that workshop, it was suggested to break it down into several different sub workshops based on topic (one workshop entirely about Facebook, one workshop entirely on making a website for your parish, one workshop on Constant Contact, etc.) I really enjoyed hearing some of the other suggestions.

Word apparently got around that I am a website designer, because I had several ladies ask me for a business card...which I luckily remembered to bring in my wallet because I was intending to use them while I was in Los Angeles. One NAECED board member also made some kind of comment about what a great workshop I could probably do on web design. That thought kind of terrifies me, quite honestly. I've never done anything like that and I'm not really sure I'm the right person for it. So I pretty much steered clear of that person for the rest of the day. haha.

After a great lunch and HOMEMADE chocolate chip and oatmeal raisin cookies...still WARM for heaven's sake....we headed up to our various rooms for the final workshop of the day. I would say about 1/3 of the people had to leave at that point to get to the airport for afternoon flights. The shuttle was coming for me at 3pm, so I knew I would have to skidaddle out of the there when the class ended at 2:30pm.

Homegrown Spiritual Formation for the Small Church was AWESOME. Sarah Moden-Alliston got us all pumped up and excited about small churches and all that we could do. We broke up into smaller groups and basically created our own calendar year based on feedback with the other members in our group. Rally Day (Opening Day) was really interesting to hear about in how others do it. What I liked most was the suggestion of having a Ministry Fair every Opening Day. So while we are set up with Sunday School registration, other groups are there getting sign ups for coffee hour, readers, healing prayers, etc. Every September people would come to expect this is the place to sign up for the thing they are involved in already...or those they intend to be involved in. This would save the person doing the scheduling for these things a tremendous amount of time not having to chase people down.

I really liked the idea of having a theme for the school year. Everything we would do would revolve around that theme. My brain is buzzing about the possibilities.

The workshop ran over and I was sooo disappointed I had to leave to get back to the hotel and catch my shuttle. I also had to miss the closing worship and farewell. From what I heard, so did many others.

I have lots of hand outs to pour over from the weekend events. I really came away inspired at all we can do at Grace. I was happy to share my ideas with others. I was happy to receive ideas from others. I hope there will be another opportunity for me to experience these kinds of workshops again. They were incredibly helpful.