Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Epic Fail a Success

Back in February I mentioned the Epic Fail Conference that was due to take place this monthy. It's now been and gone, and there's a lengthy blog post reporting back on how it went from one of those, J R Briggs, who was involved in the organisation of it.

In a sense, the Epic Fail Conference was a success, which is slightly ironic. Briggs notes: I was absolutely scared to death to try this (Can you imagine the headline: “Epic Fail Pastors Conference cancelled due to low registration”? I wondered if I could ever recover from such irony). A first-time, low-budget conference on failure in a suburb of Philadelphia that is anything but a tourist destination seemed like a large enough risk – but the response took me by surprise. We thought it would be a small, regional event. But people flew in from 15 different states – some not knowing many of the details, but knowing deep down they had to attend. There was a least one participant from Australia.

Later on in the post he says: This buzz was encouraging – and yet, it grieved me deeply. It was evident that there is a void and a desperate need for pastors to talk about failure. (What would inspire someone to fly half way across the globe for this? Why would a pastor drive 1200 miles by himself to talk about failure for three days in a bar?) There should be dozens of these types of conferences for pastors across the country. No, I take that back. There should be dozens of these types of conferences for people across the country.

Rather than continuing to quote Briggs, I recommend that you read the post in full. It's insightful, and looks at issues that this blog has often commented on.

So who's going to be first to provide an Epic Fail Conference in NZ?

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Thanks for posting a link to the reflections of Epic Fail. If anyone is interested in pursuing this idea in NZ I'd be glad to help in any way possible. If so, just let me know.

J.R. Briggs
www.jrbriggs.com
jrbriggsis@gmail.com