My faith community, Gateway Church in Austin, held our annual Advance Weekend a few days ago. It was a blow out success. Over 400 of our volunteer leaders from across the city gathered to celebrate what God has done in and through our work together over the past year, and to dream and strategize the year ahead. As the Event Coordinator for the weekend, my job is largely to help the key players connect with each other, pray and plan, and then to get our of their way and let them do what they do best. We have an amazing team of artists, technicians, speakers, pray-ers and leaders at Gateway who co-create this event each year, and if they gave out Oscars for this sort of thing, I'm convinced every one of them would get one.

This year’s theme was “Empowered”...empowered to serve, empowered to grow, empowered to empower others…and for our faith community, it’s much more than just a clever word. We’re radically restructuring everything we do as a community to empower our people (not just the 400, but the 4,000 who come to Gateway each weekend) to meet real needs in communities all across Austin, and beyond. We’re looking to invade our city with a gritty, get-your-hands-dirty kind of tangible love.

I could go on and on about all that we discussed over the weekend, but videos of the sessions will be online soon, so if you’re interested I’ll let you watch it for yourself (I’ll let you know when they’re online via my Twitter feed). Mainly, I just wanted to share my excitement over what God is up to among us, and invite you to join us if you like what you see. (By the way, you can join our community even you’re not in the Austin area. We have an “internet campus” now and already have satellite groups in Norway, Australia, and several places in the States. You can check it out by clicking here.)

One other thing: In the video below, you’ll notice the bricks. Based on the story of Nehemiah’s work to rebuild the wall in Jerusalem, we used the bricks as a metaphor and symbol throughout the day to represent how each person has a unique “place on the wall”—a unique role to play in the larger story we are telling together as a faith community. A simple idea, well executed. It was powerful for all of us.

Here’s a collection of photos from the weekend. And you can read more about what some other folks have blogged about the weekend by clicking here, and here.

If you were a part of the Advance Weekend, I’d love to hear what you thought of it. Feel free to post a quick review in the comments below!