Tim Malone.id.au

Well, I have just spent all of last week at the Soul Survivor Sydney 2007 conference!

Every single Soul conference that I’ve been to so far has been different from the last, and this one was no exception. Rather than being primarily a participant, I was this time primarily an organiser. I was on the site operations team, and my job was to manage the main tent – basically the tent/pavillion/marquee/whatever you want to call it where the two main meetings each day (morning and evening) were held.

Although it took up most of my time at the conference, it was still great fun. I usually only enjoy things if I’m learning something from it, and this certainly fit the bill – I learnt alot practically about venue & event management: everything from managing volunteers to the different types of pro audio cable ends. The volunteers on my team were fantastic – including one person who donated the use of his cameras and video switching equipment (probably worth a combined total of at least $15,000) and another who just knows exactly how to work the visual side of things (eg. lyrics, cameras, lighting) to ensure the best appropriate worship setting for those attending the meeting.

The main meetings consisted of announcements, worship through song, a talk from a different speaker each time (with names such as Jim Yost – an American missionary in Papua, Mike Pilavachi – director of Soul Survivor Global, Hugh Evans – humanitarian and previous Young Australian of the Year, and Matt Gelding – director of Soul Survivor NSW), more worship through song, and an invitation to the Holy Spirit to join the meeting. Many things happened – including people being healed, people coming to the Lord, and people making big decisions – something which I identify with well because it’s exactly what I was going through two years ago when I decided to sell my business.

The conference of course didn’t just consist of the main meetings – there were also three seminar sessions a day, where three to four seminars were available at once, presented by a number of different speakers on issues such as speaking prophecy, caring for the environment, creativity in worship, world and local missions, reading the Bible, spiritual warfare, serving, praying, leadership, youth work, intimacy with God…. and more. I only really got to one seminar (but have ordered a bunch of others on CD) which was with Maaike Starreveld from Soul Survivor Holland. She spoke honestly and openly about her experiences and the one main thing I took away from her talk was – “If you get distracted while praying or worshipping, perhaps God is trying to tell you something”. I often get distracted and try to push the distraction away – but Maaike told of times when she has been distracted whilst praying by, for example, objects such as lamps on the other side of the room. In that circumstance, God was trying to talk to her about being a light. It sounds simple – but was an oh so helpful realisation for me.

The other thing I took away from the week was a bunch of new friends and acquaintances. I met alot of people on the Soul team, especially the site operations team, and I’m sure I’ll be seeing alot more of those people in future.

I’ve created a very short video of some of the happenings – all in the main tent because that’s where I was:

At the moment I’m really looking forward to next year. Soul Survivor NSW is moving away from the conference format to mimic what Soul Survivor UK has done – and create ‘Soul in the City’. Rather than a week long conference format focussed on feeding and growing young Christians, Soul in the City (and it’s younger sibling ‘Soul in the Suburbs’) is focussed on young people serving others. Soul in the City 2008, based in Canberra (yay!), will involve five days of meeting together in the same ‘main meeting’ format, but then going out and serving the community through a wide variety of projects. I don’t have any idea yet what these projects are going to be, but they’ll likely range from things like gardening to community sporting events, and from cleaning to IT work.

Here’s a video that shows a bit about Soul in the City in London:

I can’t wait till that comes to Canberra – it’s going to be fun and challenging to help organise it, and it’s going to touch alot of people.