Tuesday to Friday at Hillsong Conference 2006

Sorry about not posting for the past few days (except for the brief update last night), but getting up at 5am to get to Olympic Park by 8am has been killing me, however, it’s definitely been worth it!
Tuesday at Conference saw the first day of actual activities for any of the programs, and Jam (the youth conference program) started off with a bang. Despite me running catching a later bus, and arriving late, the United band was well into some of the songs from the latest album by the time I walked through the doors at Baulkam Hills.
During the Worship Elective at Jam, Chad gave a basic introduction to what it is to be part of a Youth Ministry, and how to be an effective performer, it’s what you do when you’re not on stage that matters the most. I think that this key point made a difference to quite a few people who, before the conference, were expecting to be doing alot more practical like in previous years of Jam.
On Tuesday evening, at the 4:30 rally Frank Damazio spoke.

Along came Wednesday and the sun finally made an appearance with frequent rain during all of Tuesday. The Jam sessions started off with the same powerful music performance by United and Phil Dooley gave the talk. During the elective session (I’m doing worship), United producer, song writer and performer Joel Houston spoke, and said the following which certainly made a big connection with me and the way I’ll probably approach song writing in the future:
“Write songs, not to be successful, but because there???s something in your heart that you want to articulate”
Wedensday afternoon at Jam was another great afternoon with the Tribal Challenges where Tribe Power won for the 2nd consecutive day.

Thursday at Jam was Panel day for the Worship elective, where questions from the floor were taken and answered from various people from the United ministry at Hillsong. Included in the Panel were Brooke Fraser (vocal trainer), Rolf Wam Fjell (United drummer), Mia Fieldes (song writer) and JD (United vocalist). The panel gave some really informative answers and JD told a funny story of an embarrasing moment on stage in Canada during their tour in 2005.
Lunch times at Jam are filled with lots of activities, including skateboarding and rollerblading (left), live music, lots of food and of course places to look at and purchase merchandise.
I didn’t attend the night rallies on Thursday as I had to attend a ProgSoc meeting at Uni.

Friday was an inspiring day during the whole sessions at conference. During the morning session at Jam, Matthew Barnett from the Dream Centre in Los Angeles, spoke and I think gave the best and most powerful message of the whole conference for me. He basically spoke of not giving up (through the use of personal references) and keep spreading the Gospel to people in your local church. He asked each of us to receive a message from God about what we should do when we returned back to our own churches. Even Phil Dooley got a chance to play in the band, and grabbed the oppotunity to play the guitar (see photo below).

Tribal Wars are always a great event at Jam, and everyone gets behind their team and screams and yells in support! I know why my ears hurt after Jam going back to Olympic Park.

I attended both the 4:30 and 7:45 rallies today, but found the 4:30 rally to be rather a let down, so I won’t talk about that, except to say that I found Reinhard Bonnke uninspiring although many other people did.
The 7:45 rally was absoloutely amazing and went well into the later hours of the night – probably finishing around 10:45. I was lucky to find a seat right at the front of the upper circle as the venue was pretty well filled in most of the spots where people would want to sit. I’ll post a few photos that captured the event here, because I really can’t describe how amazing the experience was!
Some highlights included:

Dancing and Pyrotechnics!

Darlene Zschech being recognised for her contribution to Hillsong and the Worldwide Christian community

and the awesome Praise and Worship from Darlene, Joel, Marty and others!

The event finished with the following bible verse being displayed on the huge LCD screen:

The rally was an awesome experience, and an experience that I don’t think I’ll be able to have again for quite some time.

Overall, conference was a great time, although I didn’t like all the preaching, the experience of the event was really great and some of the stuff I heard and saw really moved me to keep up in my faith. Don’t forget that you can see all the photos that I took at my Flickr account!

-james