The Difference a Year Makes

From ReVerb to Together - The Difference a Year Makes
(Originally written for Catalyst at the request of one of the Catalyst Staff)
My trip to the Catalyst Conference in October of 2007 was basically about business.  I was in my second year as an executive with a Christian media company, and I figured that I could probably have a meeting or two, spend some time networking in the foyer, and maybe catch a few parts of some of the speakers sessions.  I didn’t have any high expectations.

I walked up to a coffee table run by a group doing reconciliation ministry through Rwandan coffee.  As a volunteer unpacked their story, God spoke to me for what would be the first of many times that week.  He said “you need to work with this ministry”.  I thanked her for the coffee, and left wondering what that would mean.

The first person I had an appointment with suggested we go catch Andy Stanley’s opening session.  We headed to the front row of section 110, right next to the speaker’s entry. The intro video for REVERB (the theme for 2007) began, and all the screens in the arena flashed the statement “one person can make a difference” followed by the question “What will you do?”  I had no way of knowing it then, but this theme would resonate in my head and my soul until it caused a change to take place.

Andy Stanley called me “the most powerful person in the room”, and told me how God wanted to put “extraordinary influence” in my hands.  He asked how I would leverage that influence for the sake of others.  There may have been 11,999 other people in the arena, but I know he was talking to me.  I returned to the same seat after the break, and Francis Chan said that if I’d only believe what God says about me, there was no limit in what God would do through me.  More importantly, he asked if I was in love with my Jesus, and if I was doing the task he had set apart for me to do.  I called my wife and told her something indescribable was going on, enough to make me oddly sick to my stomach.  I told her I couldn’t explain it, but knew God was up to something.  She promised to pray.   I went to the hotel.  I went to bed.

Craig Groeschel told me the next morning that his 6 children were praying that God would disturb me.  Little did he know that God had already answered their prayers in advance. Shane Claiborne talked about being a different kind of Christian, and my eyes filled with tears.  I knew God meant me.  There was Sunday Adelijah, Erwin McManus, and others.  God used each one of them over those two days to speak to me at my very core. I ended up listening to every speaker, recognizing my only appointment was a God appointment.  Finally, Rick Warren asked what we would do with what God had placed in our hands. I began to inventory exactly what that was. He spoke of influence once again, and the responsibility that comes with it.  He spoke of his trips to Africa, and my eyes filled with tears yet another time.

My wife and I had just returned from our first trip to Africa only three weeks prior to Catalyst, and the memories were still fresh on my heart.  In 2005, God called my wife and I to start a nonprofit to work with and support ministry projects and development in Africa.  We founded the nonprofit, but a few months later, I was offered a position with a company to work in Christian media.  We put our nonprofit on hold, and I took the position.  A trip to Africa had been in our plans as well, but I canceled it twice over the next two years because it created schedule conflicts with my “real” work.  I guess God felt Catalyst was a good time to realign my priorities.

I returned from Catalyst and I knew God had done something, but I wasn’t sure what.  I remembered the coffee people.  I remembered the messages.  I even looked through my notes and watched the DVD’s I bought.  Its only in looking back today, however, that I can fully see what Catalyst 2007 meant.

As I write this, I am sitting in my home office with my wife.  We just booked our flights to come (together) to Catalyst 2008.  I am no longer an executive with a media company, though they are still doing quite well.  I resigned from that post in June, leaving my comfortable salary, benefits, and stock options to return to the calling God placed in my heart three years ago.  We have put our house on the market and will soon be moving our family of four into an RV. (thanks to Shane Claiborne for that idea!) We’ll be starting a traveling ministry for the project we call Share5, kicked off October 31st by 3 week multi-state tour as the ministry partner for Christian Rock band Wavorly!

This year at Catalyst (where the theme is appropriately "Together"), you will find us serving coffee from the table of our now good friends and ministry partners - Land of a Thousand Hills Coffee.  Turns out we’ve been able to fund some microfinance loans for a few of their growers.  There is a meeting on this year’s agenda as well with a couple other nonprofits whose leaders just happened to be either attending or speaking at Catalyst.  The introductions have literally been happening over just the last few days as we realized everyone would be in Atlanta.  Our plan is to discuss how we could combine our Share5 concepts, Land of a Thousand Hills’ coffee growers, specially designed bicycles from another nonprofit, and microfinance processes from yet a fourth to create an efficient, manageable and sustainable ministry solution none of us could have done on our own.  We’ll be coming together to talk about working together.

One year from Reverb to Together.  God spoke to one person, me, in 2007. Now, a year later, I find myself in a position of influence, bringing ministries together to help address problems we can’t solve on our own.  You think the Holy Spirit is leading us this year?  I look forward to being together.  Save me a seat at the front of section 110, right next to the speaker’s entry.  I seem to recall that God’s anointing is extra heavy in that spot.

Chad Houck
Director, Co-Founder
WorldWins International/ Share5