CPC

Children's Pastor's Conference.  CPC is an annual event, held in two locations each year.  I was blessed to be able to go there today, someone had an extra pass and so I ended up spending the day in San Diego.  I greatly enjoyed it.  I love to learn, so I love conferences.  I went to three great breakouts and two great general sessions.  At some point through the day I realized that although this was the first CPC I have actually attended, it is not the first CPC that I have been at...  I also realized that my journeys through various CPC's struck me as type of milestones in my life.  

My first CPC experience was my Sophmore year of college.  The children's team was attending.  I don't think that I really got out of the car, but I did pick up some of the staff and we hung out in old town for a while.  It was a great time.  That was the year after I had decided to go into children's ministry.  It was an important year for me in a lot of ways.

My next experience at CPC was not really at CPC - it was at the Willow Creek children's conference.  I am including this one because it was the spring of 2004.  Our church had just been through chaos.  Our staff went to willow and it was an amazing time of encouragement and being together.  A feeling of "we can move forward" was the result.  

My next experience was in 2006.  I went with my boss at the time to post a job opening.  All we did was walk into the exhibition hall and post the job opening.  It was at a time when I was beginning to question a lot of things.  Like, what am I doing?  Why am I not doing something else?  Am I supposed to be doing this?  It was the beginning of over a year long process of God moving me.

Spring of 2008.  This year, I went to CPC with my boss and his wife (Joe and Julie) we had a booth for the ministry and I heard Joe over and over again give his spiel about what we do.  I remember thinking "What we do is really cool."  Once again, I did not leave the exhibition hall (this time I didn't even walk through it) but I did have a great time handing out scary looking David and Goliaths to hundreds of children's workers.  Around that time the idea of being at this new job was becoming permanent.  I was beginning to be ok with that and living in the Temecula valley.  That was a great time of God beginning to really work in my life in an amazing way.

That brings us to today's visit.  This past year has been one of the best and hardest of my life.  Today I thoroughly enjoyed being at CPC and remembering all that God has done to get me to this place in my life.  Right now there is hope, excitement for the future, and a great expectancy to see what God is going to do in my life and through the ministry.   As I spent the day as a real attender of CPC I was overwhelmed by what God has taught me this last year as He has shown me over and over again that He has a plan for my life.  

That is my journey over the years at CPC...