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This week is Church of the Resurrection’s flagship conference for pastors and church leaders, Leadership Institute. Each year it ranks among my top highlights of the year because of the opportunity to serve and meet many new people from all across the country who are passionate about improving their church leadership skills.

This is my 6th Leadership Institute and the first one at which I am not presenting. This has given me the opportunity to focus much more than ever before on the network, WiFi, and other aspects of our guests’ experience. I will post tomorrow about our recent infrastructure upgrades and how it is faring under the load. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your point of view), only once a year at Leadership Institute do we have a major network load spike. Each year we learn something new, but then we have to wait until the next year to apply the lessons and find out how much of an improvement we have achieved. So Friday, when we have all 1,700 guests on campus, will be our moment of truth.

Not presenting this year has also given me the opportunity to take photos of conference activities all over campus. Andrew Conard asked LI photographers to upload their pictures to Flickr and tag them with “LI2008.” Right now it looks like I’m the only one who has really taken him up on that. Here are a couple of my favorites so far.

Paul Baloche and band lead a clinic for worship musicians

Attendees enjoying the presentation by Midnight Oil

Correy Trupp talking about Small Group ministry

Yvonne Gentile presents in the Wesley Chapel

Conference guests outside before opening worship

Senior Pastor Adam Hamilton interviews congregant Kelly Sisney

For more, check out my full Flickr set.

I’m in Oklahoma City with Chuck Russell, Brian Slezak, and Andrew Conard to benchmark LifeChurch’s Internet Campus by observing them in action and by meeting with Terry Storch (Digerati Pastor) and Brandon Donaldson (Internet Campus Pastor).

Our day began with attending the 10:00 service (“experience” in LifeChurch parlance) at the Edmond campus where the Global Operations Center and Internet Campus offices are located.

After the 10:00 experience, Terry took us up to the Global Operations Center where we got a high-level view of what was happening at all Life Church campuses, including the Internet Campus, during the 11:30 experience.

We then went over to the Internet Campus offices to chat with Brandon Donaldson while the 11:30 experience was underway.

Terry’s boss, Bobby Gruenewald, dropped by.

We learned many interesting things and I’m sure have much more to learn when we meet again on Monday.

After hanging out with Brandon, Terry, and Bobby, we grabbed some lunch and went downtown to see the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum. In this photo you can see the 9:01 Gate with First Methodist Church in the upper right background. Being right across the street to the SE of the Murrah Building, the church was heavily damaged in the blast and played a key role in the recovery following the events of April 19, 1995.

My apologies to Jason Reynolds and David Helbig of Christ Fellowship, who hosted Chuck Russell and me back in mid-June as we benchmarked the Internet Campuses of Christ Fellowship and Flamingo Road. Due to my laptop being stolen the night we arrived (while we were enjoying the beach), I never posted a single blog entry about our trip or what we learned there. I hope to correct that soon!