It was a joy to meet so many of you at the conference. You can find links to buy downloads of all recorded sessions and information about all the resources that I am aware speakers recommended here:

Conference report

The number of delegates was slightly down on previous years but we know that many churches struggled to find the funding for so many of their children’s and family ministry workers to attend as they have in the past and there were fewer teenage volunteers than we’ve had for a few years.

We may have been down on delegates but is was great to have so many supporting organisations and other exhibitors, and opening up the Towner Hall as extra exhibition and seminar venues worked well, other than the poor acoustics – I hope that by next year the venue staff have done something to address that problem. Many of the supporting organisations offered Showcase sessions and it seems that those that offered practical ideas were particularly appreciated.

We probably represent a wider range of church traditions than any other event because the requirements for new ideas and increased expertise for those working with children is common across all denominations. About a fifth of the delegates were Anglican; a fifth Baptist; a fifth Pentecostal; a tenth Methodist; plus a mix of Salvation Army, independent, evangelical and ecumenical churches, Church of Scotland and URC. We were also delighted to welcome about 10% of our delegates from overseas – from the Channel Islands, Ireland, France, Denmark, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, Ghana, Burma and New Zealand to my knowledge.

Typical comments from those coming for the first time (about half the delegates):
‘A superb weekend - thank you all so much. We'll do our best to bring more next year. Leaving feeling empowered, motivated and blessed.’ and from regulars: ‘Thank you for a brilliant weekend and for all your hard work and brilliant organisation. I have come to this conference several years and I love it. Always inspiring and refreshing.’

Recognising that 2011 is the 400th anniversary of the publication go the King James Authorised version of the Bible, Krish Kandiah from the Evangelical spoke about the Bible in Contemporary Culture on main stage on Friday evening and got us thinking. On Saturday morning John Stephenson and Bob Hartman continued the theme, looking at Communicating God’s Big Story.

Geraldine Latty and her band returned to lead worship in our three main sessions over the weekend and as always she was fantastic.

Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning was taken up with 46 optional seminars and workshops, including several that had been suggested as additions to the programme by last year’s delegates.

Also responding to the feedback from last year’s delegates, we developed our Saturday morning Bible studies to be broader than just addressing children’s and family ministry, repeated the Feeding Your Soul and Staying the Course sessions from previous years and added an alternative, more reflective session on Saturday evening for those who preferred that to our regular, more child-focussed celebration.

Our final session on Sunday saw Alan Charter and Dave Roberts address The Shape of Things to Come, sharing some of the findings of the children’s ministry stream from the latest international Lausanne Group gathering and setting them into a context for UK churches.

I'll take this year’s feedback into account as we begin to plan for February 2012 and I look forward to seeing many of you then.

To answer a few particular comments:

To be able to offer videos of sessions would add significant costs to the event - we can film to display on the main stage screen without additional charge but if we were to record that video we'd have to pay significantly more to the hire centre and we would also have to pay additional royalties on songs sung. The issue of royalty payments is also why we don't have audio recordings of the worship in main sessions or seminars with a significant number of songs.

Some of you would have liked to attend two or more seminars that ran at the same time. If we offered repeats then we'd have to reduce the range of sessions. Some have suggested the weekend should be extended from Friday lunchtime to later on Sunday. We will think that option through.

Many people would like us to run a conference in the north of the country. If we can find an appropriate venue in a place with reasonably priced accommodation we will do that. At the moment we can't find the right place.

Sue Price, Conference Director

The dates for the 2012 conference are 3rd - 5th February

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