Friday you got to hear the beginnings of my trip down to Nashville for Story, a creative conference. So today I’m breaking down what Day 2 looked like for us! We stayed in a hotel a little drive from Cross Point church, so we got up bright and early, packed up our bags and headed out by around 7:30 am or so. We grabbed a quick breakfast at McDonalds on the way because… sadly that was tastier than the hotel breakfast.

One of the nice things about the second day was that it started with worship. The Cross Point band came out and played some worship songs for us and got us in the spirit for our first talk…

Pete Wilson
Pete Wilson is the senior past of Cross Point Church, the church this conference was held at. Over the course of 12 years, Cross Point has grow to reach more than 5,000 people at five campuses through the Nashville area and online. Pete also has written the books, Plan B: What Do You Do When God Doesn’t Show Up the Way You Thought He Would?, Empty Promises: The Truth About You, Your Desires, and the Lies You’re Believing, Let Hope in: 4 Choices That Will Change Your Life Forever
, and What Keeps You Up at Night?: How to Find Peace While Chasing Your Dreams.

I enjoyed Pete’s talk. It wasn’t really a sermon actually. He talked mostly about creativity and some of the obstacles of the creative process. There were some really great things Pete said that I wrote down because I liked them so much. The first was “Get comfortable being uncomfortable.” Truth man! The minute you start sharing parts of yourself and breaking down those walls of extreme privacy – you do feel uncomfortable. And when you create something and put it out there – you’re giving people the opportunity to tell you they don’t like it.

Another thing Pete talked about was the climb to becoming an expert. That you first are on this path of Learning – it’s like 30-45 degree slope up and then you hit what he calls the “OK Plateau.” This is where you know enough and you’re comfortable here. But in order to become an expert you have to break free from the OK Plateau and the only way to do that is to plan to fail. Basically – you’re going to make some plans for yourself and those plans – well there’s a good chance they’re going to result in you failing. But that’s okay – because the only way to start climbing again is to push yourself harder to learn.

There were a few other things Pete said that I really liked. “When you’re pursuing dreams expect difficulties. The bigger the dream, the bigger the difficulty.” This quote made me think of our journey to grow our family. I guess that’s a pretty big dream for me and Ryan. “Being an approval addict and a dream chaser are not compatible.” It’s really hard to chase your dreams when you’re worried about what everyone else is thinking. And finally, “Act on belief instead of doubt.” Don’t let worries and doubt run your life. Believe in yourself and the path God has laid out before you.

Jeremy Cowart
Jeremy Cowart is a celebrity photographer, entrepreneur and humanitarian. He was recently named “the most influential photographer on the internet.” He just released an online education platform called See University. He is also the founder of an iPhone app called OKDOTHIS and the founder of the global photography movement Help-Portrait.

Jeremy was the one speaker that I knew going into this conference I was incredibly excited to hear speak. I have been following his work on social media for quite a long time now. And while he is an exceptional photographer… he is amazing at his craft… I follow him for who he is as a person more than because of his chosen profession. I follow him because he is a kind, humble, compassionate person who repeatedly shares his heart with the world. I actually wrote to him back in May about something he had shared never expecting him to respond. And it was a while before he responded, but in August her replied and it was the perfect timing and exactly what I needed to hear… but that’s a story for another day.

His talk at the conference was beautiful! He did a “Draw Your Life” style talk because he doesn’t like public speaking. So they played this video on the screens and he narrated them. It was awesome and so incredibly inspiring!

Abigail Washburn
Abigail Washburn is an American claw-hammer and banjo singer. The way Washburn developed her style is quite complicated as it involves China, lost banjos, and the rock group Collective Soul. Although Washburn grew up singing, she had no desire to become a professional musician, and part-time gigs as a backup vocalist in reggae, gospel, and R&B bands were nothing more than fun activities. But a trip to China in 1996 changed all that. Picking up the native language faster than she imagined and falling in love with Chinese culture, the young Washburn began to change her priorities. Reconsidering the culture of her own homeland, she bought a banjo and decided to explore the rich heritage of folk and bluegrass music.

Her story was so interesting! Hearing how she came into the music world. How she was able to combine her love for China with her love of music to bring people of different nations together. I loved they way she would glide between speaking in Chinese and English. Always translating for us. She painted quite a beautiful picture and she was a joy to hear sing and play too!

Austin Kleon
Austin Kleon is a writer, artist, and the New York Times bestselling author of Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative, an illustrated manifesto for creativity in the digital age. It’s based on a list Austin drew up one day of key insights he wishes he’d known when he started out. His follow-up book Show Your Work!: 10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered is a guide to the next step – becoming known by sharing generously. Ranging from broader life lessons about work to the practicalities of Internet life, it’s an inspiring manifesto for succeeding as any kind of artist or entrepreneur in the digital age. Austin is also the author of Newspaper Blackout, a collection of poetry made by redacting newspaper articles with a permanent marker. His work has been feature on NPR’s Morning Edition, PBS Newshour, TIME, The Atlantic, Forbes, and The Wall Street Journal.

Austin’s talk was incredibly entertaining. I laughed so hard while he was speaking. He told this awesome story about how his son loves the violin and his favorite episode of Reading Rainbow is one where Lavar Burton reads Zin Zin Zin The Violin and visits the Julliard School Orchestra. In the episode is a little boy who is just so intense and Austin became obsessed with finding this boy. Long story short – through the power of the internet – they found him! His name is Vijay Gupta and he is in the Philharmonic and is also an inspirational speaker, having spoken on Ted Talk twice.

Austin just did a really phenomenal job of illustrating the power of connections, whether they are in person or virtually. He also gave us some bullet points on how to build a network. His first comment was that you don’t have to be a genius to share what you know. He also said that sharing your process is really important. Many people today are interested in seeing the process of your creations whether it’s art or a basement renovation or losing weight. If you want to keep people engaged, it’s important to share something small everyday. It doesn’t have to be anything big. Just some small tidbit to keep you in their mind. And then don’t be afraid to teach what you know. You never know who might take something you’ve started and make it into something even more amazing!

Lunch Break
At lunch on day 2, we headed to Broadway in Downtown Nashville. The team was hankering for some BBQ so we were on the lookout for a good BBQ joint. It was a Friday at noon, so downtown Nashville was quite a busy spot. We did finally find a BBQ place, Rippy’s BBQ, that had seating so we snagged some seats and ordered I grub. It was also really cool because we got to listen to some live country music while we ate. Growing up on Country and Christian music, I felt pretty at home sitting there in that restaurant.

Stephen Brewster
Stephen Brewster is the Creative Arts Pastor at Cross Point Church in Nashville. His 12 years in professional creative environments include music marketing and management, artist development, creative team leading and art directing. It is Stephen’s desire for the church to regain its position as a leader of the creative frontier.

Stephen didn’t get to talk very long but he did share some interesting things. One of the first things that isn’t surprising but very interesting was a study he shared. This test was created and then used to measure some stats on a variety of age ranges. And the study revealed that 98% of 5 year olds are creative. By the time they hit age 10 only 30% of them are creative. When they are 15 and in high school it drops down to only 12% being creative and out of 280,000 adults tested a mere 2% are creative. Stephen believes this is because we don’t foster creativity enough in children as they grow… our society values so many other things over creativity.

Another interesting point he shared was that the creative process starts with creating and then you have success. That success makes you want to stay there (in that successful state) so you just start managing that one creation because you so enjoy that feeling you don’t want to lose it by starting something that might fail. And then someone comes along and surpasses you and then you feel desperate so you start creating again. Stephen shared that he believes the ideal way to create is to skip the management phase. To create and then succeed and instead of managing get desperate to create again. That’s how you continue to propel yourself forward.

John Mark Comer
John Mark Comer is lead pastor at Bridgetown: A Jesus Church, which is part of a family of churches in Portland, OR. Prior to planting Bridgetown in 2003, Comer was the college pastor at a Calvary Chapel mega-church and played in a band signed to BEC recordings. He is currently finishing up a Master’s degree in Biblical and Theological Studies from Western Seminary. He wrote the books Loveology: God. Love. Marriage. Sex. And the Never-Ending Story of Male and Female. and My Name is Hope: Anxiety, depression, and life after melancholy.

John Mark was our final speaker and ended the speaker portion of the conference with a sermon of sorts. He spoke on the Garden of Eden and that he believes the Garden was designed to be dynamic not stagnant. It was in process not a final product. When God created the Garden of Eden… He meant for man to continue that work and build it into something beautiful and new. Another really beautiful point that he made was that we in our culture so often compartmentalize. We separate our spiritual life and our sex life and our work life and our family life and our friend life… all these things are different and kept very separate. But if you look in the Bible the word “spiritual” doesn’t exist. Because your spirituality was your whole life… there was no separation. It was part of every facet of your existence.

I forgot to mention yesterday that we had awesome music and even dancing throughout the whole conference. Above are just a few quick shots of a few bands that performed on the last day.

And then finally I wanted to end with a photo of our group. These are the lovely people we got to travel with and learn with. We headed out from Nashville around 4 pm on the 2nd and got home at around 10:30 pm that night. It was wonderful coming home and seeing Ryan after being gone a few days, but I am very grateful for all I learned.

I hope this was a little fun for you all to see… to kind of know what I learned and that even though I have a degree in photography and design – I continue to educate myself and grow in my craft!