Monday, May 05, 2008

Conspire Conference in Chicago (Part 3)

The next session after lunch was by Rick Dempsey (senior VP of character voice direction for Disney), Glen Keane (senior supervising animator at Disney) and Aaron Reynolds (children's ministry guru).

Rick talked a lot about stories and they their truth relates thru the story. Jesus told parables where an earthly story has spiritual truth w/in it.

Some great points he made were:
* Know your audience/be relevant
* Avoid talking down to your audience (Heb 5)
* Good stories have heart (Jonah) - good setting, identifiable situation

Glen Keane told his story of conversion and related it to his characters The Beast and Ariel.

Aaron tried to tie Rick and Glen's points into children's ministry directly:
1. In order to reach kids, we must know kids.
2. We must equip kids for transformation through "ruthless application" (Phil 4:8 - XBox temptaion illustration)
3. Use/tell stories w/ heart and sincerity - we MUST bring the Bible to life

It was a great first day!

More to come on day 2: TWO sessions w/ Phil Vischer and Timbuktoons!

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