The GLS in Perth, Australia - What a Ride!

"What a Ride!" - the words from our WCA representative recounting her experience there. They overcame tremendous obstacles, and God's glory shone through.

We have just completed GLS Perth, Western Australia – not without our challenges!

First off, on day one, there was a bit of a scurry just before afternoon tea. I was wondering why the event team were not getting to their stations for the break...unaware that they were trying to coax a 6 ½ foot King Brown snake out of the prayer room!

Then, on the beginning of day two, I arrived at the venue at 7.30am to join the volunteers for breakfast, I was greeted by slightly concerned staff letting me know the power had gone off 15 minutes earlier do to high winds and downed power poles. The supplier was expecting from 2-4 hour delays. We waited. By 9am, 250 delegates had arrived and no hope of power soon. The Arts team quickly brought bongos and acoustic guitars into the foyer to build an atmosphere to relax people. At 9.30 we gathered the delegates in a very dimly emergency-lit auditorium to explain further and have a time of prayer and acoustic worship.

At that point, a pastor came to us to say he had a portable projector, speakers and generator within a 30 minute drive from the venue....would we like his equipment? Yes!!!! This man was not even booked into the conference and had just come for the day to help. Isn't it great when God knows our needs before we do! Delegates were sent to places all over the venue to use their workbooks to process the issues from the day before. Tim Keller had been hugely impacting, so they were keen to talk and share their insights. Phone calls were made, the Event Manager rang and ordered a coffee cart to come, morning tea cakes were dished out...and all seemed calm. I sat with the Producer and we re-scheduled Day Two.

Praise God, soon generator-powered system was installed and we were up and running. The rest of the day ran smoothly, we adjusted for the time loss, and the delegates were extremely pleased with the calm response from everyone involved. During the volunteer moment at the end...there was a thunderous applause for all...especially the I.T. team who I’m sure aged 5 years in the process!

This year an AOG church in Perth brought their Senior Pastor and entire team. After the Summit, a couple days later, I bumped into their Executive Pastor. We began chatting about the GLS and she mentioned the power outage on day two. I began to apologise to her and hoped it hadn’t put a damper’on the Summit for her. However, she cut me off and said how much she valued that time. She mentioned that their entire team had gone to a quiet place and had sat for the hour and a half and had formulated a brand new mission strategy...completed! She said that she can't remember ever leaving a conference with a strategy in place and the team all on board!

I am constantly overwhelmed by the way God goes before us in every aspect of our global events...a reliance on him is a ‘must’ as we work together to see leaders strengthened all over our world!