blog » January 31, 2006/BreakForth

This past weekend was BreakForth 2006, my first BreakForth in five years (made possible by the fact that I’m doing my internship in Edmonton right now). And has it grown a lot since then. The last time I was there, it was at Sherwood Park Alliance Church. This year, it was at the Shaw Conference Centre, plus workshops in 10 other locations in downtown as well.

It was a fun conference, though I can’t say that I learned a whole lot from it. I went to workshops by Phil Keaggy and Michael Card, which were really light on content, but great to be at, listening to those great musicians. I also went to workshops by Dan Kimball and Joyce Heron. Kimball’s workshop, about the "emerging church", and designing worship gatherings, was interesting. He talked about the culture of the emerging church, and how it differs from the contemporary church. Joyce Heron’s talks were good, but they weren’t really about ministering to the marginalized, which was what they were billed as.

My brother has his summary of the conference too, which includes the main sessions and the late-night events. His comments on the main sessions is more or less similar to my own feelings.

Acquisitions: they were giving away free copies of K.P. Yohannan’s book Revolution on World Missions, so I picked up a copy. One more book to add to my reading list. I was inspired by Phil Keaggy’s guitar playing, and picked up his instructional DVD (the video was shot in 1991 — and he looks really different) and a CD (which I’m listening to right now). I also picked up the BreakForth Worship Series songbook plus updates, so I now have 250 songs to add to my binder when I get back to Waterloo. I also thought about picking up a headset mic, but decided against it.