Catalyst 08

I had a blast at Catalyst O8. This was my seventh year at the conference and in my opinion this year was the best overall. Here are some pics and some thoughts (I am hitting myself because I left my camera at the hotel the first day. Things I missed taking pictures of were Jon Foreman from Switchfoot, speakers from day 1).



Dave Ramsey is a ninja! He was an awesome speaker! If you haven't seen him on TV or read one of his books you should! He is a financial guru and he said that everyone should just calm down. One thing that really stuck out to me was when he said that America is under a spirit of fear and it is from Satan. His talk was one of the highlights of the day!


Lanny Donoho is a great MC! At Catalyst you can always expect he'll do something crazy. He drove a bus in, helped an elephant and a donkey come together, and made a rap video with many of the speakers. Good stuff.


Franklin Graham spoke!


Jeff Foxworthy was there!


This was one of the lunches Chad Johnson hooked my up with... this one was with Mark Batteron and Perry Noble!

Monica and I have talked for years about sponsoring a child through Compassion International...I finally did it at Catalyst. I felt like God led me to. I know that may sound weird but I felt like God said to me to be a blessing to other children while we wait for Him to bless us with our own.

One of my favorite parts about Catalyst is hanging out with life long friends that I don't get to see that often. Below is Chad Childress...my former youth pastor. He doesn't normally look like this.

This is Brian Smith. Brian won't admit it but he has grown taller since the last time I saw him. Either that or I hit 30 years old and started shrinking.


Chad Johnson is the man! He hooked me up in so many ways at Catalyst. It seems like everyone (all 12,000) at Catalyst know Chad. Not many of them can say they have known him since 7th grade. In the picture below a older woman put her arm around me and got into the picture. It was weird. The theme of Catalyst was Come Together, so I blew it off as her attempt to come together. It was awkward and weird though.


This is the re-take without the weird woman.


Andy Stanley closed out the conference. Andy is my pastor Stu's hero.


Seriously Catalyst is AWESOME! God challenged me in so many ways. My prayer is that I will be able to apply what I learned. I've got a lot of work to do. I do recommend every human being in the world to go to Catalyst next year! I can't wait for it!