TRAPPSTR

Catalyst 09

Posted on 07. Oct, 2009 by Brett in Creative Communication, Leadership

Over the next couple of days I’ll be at the Catalyst conference here in Atlanta with 12,000 other young leaders. This will be my second time to attend. I went one other time in 2004.

Catalyst has exploded in the past few years and has become one of the top leadership conferences for church leaders. Speakers this year (red names = the TRAPPSTR is super-pumped about):

• Andy Stanley – Pastor Northpoint Community Church
• Chuck Swindoll  - Author, Founder of Insight for Living
• Louie Giglio – Director, Passion Conferences
• Malcolm Gladwell – Author of the Tipping Point, Outliers, etc.
• Tony Dungy – former coach of Indianapolis Colts
• Matt Chandler – Pastor, Village Church
• Rob Bell – Pastor, Mars Hill Bible Church
• Priscilla Shirer – Founder, Going Beyond Ministries
• Dave Ramsey – financial guru
• Jessica Jackley – Founder, KIVA
• Shane Hipps – Author of “Flickering Pixels”
• Josh Hamilton – MLB Player, Texas Rangers
• Reggie Joiner – Founder, the reThink Group
• Margaret Feinberg – Author
• Francis Chan  - Pastor, Cornerstone Church

Quite the lineup. I’m probably most excited about hearing Matt Chandler, Malcolm Gladwell, and Louie Giglio.

WHY YOU SHOULD FOLLOW CATALYST THIS WEEK

The Catalyst crew has courted a broad sampling of leaders from the evangelical world. Most of them are great and a few of them I have questions about (theologically), but either way, they’ve done a great job of getting lots of influential voices around the table. These folks have a good idea of what God is doing around the globe and where the church is heading.

Aside from the quality teaching, Catalyst is RIDICULOUSLY creative! No one in the evangelical world does it better. No one. They are masters of staging a jaw-dropping, 360 degree, technicolor experience that is overwhelming. The technology is over-the-top and in the past they’ve done things such as a having a 12,000 person pillow fight and an on-stage professional dodgeball game.

IF YOU WANT TO FOLLOW ALONG…

1. Come back to TRAPPSTR.com each day as I’ll be posting my thoughts.
2. Check out the official website www.catalystspace.com. Dig around some there…awesome content from previous conferences.
3. You can actually see some live content as it’s happening at www.catalystbackstage.com. Pretty cool.
4. Of course, I’ll be tweeting the whole experience. So be sure to follow along here.
5. For real-time updates from all the Twitter folks at the conference, search for the official Catalyst hashtag #cat09 here. People are already tweeting like crazy from the conference.
6. And if you’re at the conference, hit me up! Would love to hang out.

Excited to see what God’s gonna do this week! Stay tuned!

-Brett