Writing from Day 4--a full day behind, of course, because each day has been jammed with activity. Yesterday at the conference was a great day--three worship times, some really great breakout session content, and I have been blessed over the last couple of days to hang out during the conference with a very dear friend whom I have not seen in a long time.

The day began with a worship set from Travis Cotrell, who I believe leads worship from time to time for Beth Moore teaching events. His music was heavily-laced with Scripture, and he is a great worship leader. I was drawn in from the word "go." The worship set was followed by an amazing talk by Marva Dawn, who brought the other side of the coin that Leonard Sweet had flipped the previous day--while he contended that the image was going to be the dominant communication medium of the near future, Ms. Dawn encouraged us to not neglect the power of words, and of the Word.

Later in the day, we had another worship/teaching time, led by Michael W. Smith--it was just Smitty and his piano, and it was pretty cool. This was followed by teaching from Scotty Smith, pastor of Calvary Chapel in Franklin, Tennessee. (I'll confess that I was in a bit of a lunch coma at the time, so I was having a hard time tracking with him. But in my defense, I didn't get much sleep the night before, either :-)

I attended a really interesting session on a new way to create worship music charts for the worship team--I can hardly wait to begin converting our charts and using the new system.

The evening worship concert was opened by Matt Maher and his band--I had attended an acoustic guitar workshop earlier, led by Matt's guitar player--and he played a very good set. I was unaware that Matt Maher had written "Your Grace is Enough," yet another song that seems to have been made much more popular by virtue of having been recorded by Chris Tomlin.

After a brief set by newcomer Meredith Andrews (who has an impressively powerful voice), I really enjoyed the worship set led by Paul Baloche and his band. Baloche is a bit goofy on stage and times, and that is both entertaining and disarming, and I enjoyed hearing again some of his more recent worship songs--two or three of which I had heard for the first time in this very same auditorium about nine months earlier.

Good day.