One of those was that last night, I got to attend the tail-end of the US Hillsong Conference. The Hillsong Conference is a series of three-day conferences where you get to hear speakers, do breakout sessions and worship and jam with the Hillsong worship teams. They had conferences in Australia, the UK, and the US, and I was fortunate that the US conference happened to land in LA this year! (It's usually in New York City.)
I wasn't able to attend all the conference, but they were gracious enough to be selling tickets to all the night sessions for a pretty fair price, so I went to the Saturday night one. And it was LIT!
Due to a lack of preparation I missed a large part of the first worship set, but the rest of the program made up for it. The sermon, preached by a pastor from Georgia named Jentezen Franklin, was relatively simple, but it was worth hearing. Basically, he said that if we continue to depend on ourselves and how much we deserve blessings from God, we won't get anything. The whole point of the Gospel is that Jesus and his sacrifice is the only thing that made us pure and gave us the right to receive anything from God. Several times during the sermon, he stopped preaching and directed the crowd to stop and worship for a moment. I think he really wanted the crowd to direct themselves towards God and to look to God rather than to themselves.
I got a similar sentiment from everything else that happened that night--that the point of the whole conference was for us to look to God, not to ourselves, Hillsong or any other human establishment. At one point during the night, the lead pastor of Hillsong Church, who is definitely not a singer, started singing the song that the worship team were playing. After a moment of confusion, the crowd joined him in singing the song, and we literally led ourselves in worship; the team just played the melody while we sang. Though it seemed a little awkward at the time, I actually enjoyed that moment immensely. I sensed that Hillsong were trying to bring out the worshippers in us, instead of having us look to them for a good worship experience.
I've had the privilege of attending a couple of big Christian conferences in my life, and until recently I had a little problem with them. The conferences were always great, the messages were wonderful and relevant and life-changing, and the worship would always be good; but when the conference was over, I'd come back home to my normal life, and almost forget that it all happened. Because I was looking to the preachers, to the crowd, to the conference to inspire me and to bring me something new, I found myself unable to perpetuate what they had given me for the most part. But at this conference, I sensed that everyone, including the worship team, the preachers, the staff, and the crowd were all looking to God together for inspiration.
After the sermon (and our singalong moment with the lead pastor), the worship team did another set, and it was awesome. Most of the songs were newer, but there was one song in there that had been a part of my teenage years. Singing that song along with the huge crowd and with the team was the fulfillment of a dream that had been in my heart for years, and I definitely let out my best little-girl scream when they played the first note. The worship team was incredible, and they put their hearts into the set, but there were points where I could barely hear them above the crowd. Again, we were leading worship together.
Overall, it was a great night and I'm really glad I went! Next year's conference is in New York again, but the year after that (2019) it will probably come back here. I hope to be able to go again before medical school ends. In the meantime, I get to go to Hillsong's campus in downtown LA today. God is good!
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