So how you do you make an impact? Loud, sharp, big, impressive, flaunting of wealth? What does making an impact really mean anyway? You can make a great impact in a positive way and conversely you can make a profoundly negative impact. A stone makes an impact on a still pond and ripples out to the entire pond but it doesn’t last. Within a few moments it’s a still pond again. What really makes an impact? A lasting impact that last forever? That does good from its conception and continues on until eternity meets it? I believe it starts and finishes with relationships, relationships that run deep and true.
Holding a leadership conference is not extraordinary. It’s not sexy or unique or unusual. People hold leadership conferences all the time, in venues all over the world. Many of them teach amazing things. But many times those amazing things are forgotten within a few weeks or months.
What if the main focus of a conference was just to create an environment where people could eat, sleep, worship, laugh, pray and cry together? What if the material you were teaching was secondary to the deeper purpose of creating body life where hearts and souls were connected in the deepest imaginable way? Then I think impact would happen. Stories would be told for the rest of their lives of the experiences and the words that were shared around the meals and the reflection time. What if God spoke a word in a quiet time reflection where you spent over two hours just meditating on a scripture and it changed your focus and your ministry forever? That’s impact. That’s life. That’s what Catalyst for Africa is all about.
You won’t see us blitzing across the continent doing amazing things. You’ll see us walking hand in hand with African brothers and sisters. You’ll see us texting and skyping on a consistent basis saying, “YOU are not FORGOTTEN.” We will share our lives together. We will share that we are friends and my colleagues and together we are going to change the world.
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