Making The Most of Your Convention Notes

The convention always seems to end the same way.

The final song fills the auditorium one last time. We fill the air with the final applause, and then linger to hug dear friends we may not see again for another year. Conversations stretch just a little longer. Nobody seems especially eager to leave.

Then, somewhere between the parking lot and arriving home, our convention notebook slips into a bag.

And that’s often where it stays.

Oh, of course we don’t mean for that to happen. We filled those pages with scriptures that genuinely touched us and illustrations we wanted to remember. We wrote down precious thoughts shared that made our hearts whisper, I needed that. We fully intended to look through them again.

But life has a way of picking up where it left off. Before we know it, weeks have passed. Then months. The notebook patiently waits on a shelf or in a drawer until the next convention rolls around. Or maybe it sits there forever.

What a shame, really. Not because the notebook itself is important, but because it’s holding onto reminders that Jehovah knew we needed.

The beautiful thing is that it doesn’t take much to keep those notes alive. A few simple habits can help the encouragement from the convention continue long after the final prayer.

Read Them Again While Everything Is Still Fresh

If you only reread your notes once, make it during the first week after the convention.

Something interesting happens during those first few days. You don’t just remember what the speaker said. You remember how they said it. You can almost hear the emphasis they placed on a certain scripture. You remember the audience smiling at an illustration, or the thoughtful pause before an especially encouraging point. Or the emotion that welled up inside you when you heard something that touched your heart.

Given too much time, that part will fade surprisingly quickly. Reading helps you recapture all of those unwritten things while they’re still fresh.

Re-reading your notes doesn’t have to become a big project, either. Read through a few pages during your lunch break, while you’re commuting, or during a slower evening at home.

There’s something really special about reading a spiritual thought in your notes and suddenly remembering the whole moment it came from. For just a little while, you’re back in your seat, hearing the program all over again.

Let One Talk Become Family Worship

Here’s an idea that can make your family worship especially meaningful. Instead of trying to review everything from the convention, choose just one point from the convention.

Perhaps one particular thought, fact or spiritual expression really stuck with you – even weeks after the convention ended. Maybe one illustration has kept coming back to mind. Let that become the focus of your family’s evening together. After all if it keeps coming to mind – it’s standing out for a reason – and focusing on it further is the best thing you can do spiritually.

Whether family worship means a full household, you and your marriage mate, or simply your own personal study; one well-discussed point often stays with us much longer than trying to rush through an entire notebook.

Check In With Yourself Later

Convention weekends often leave us with wonderful spiritual goals we want to pursue. I always leave the convention with something new that I want to try, or areas in my life I want to improve on. We hear a point and think, I’m going to work on that.

But sometimes, though we have the best of intentions, life settles back into its usual routine. After all, Satan’s system is designed to keep us stressed and distracted. So, the weeks pass, and without meaning to, some of those resolutions slowly fade from our minds.

If that’s you, don’t feel ashamed it can happen to the best of us. But, here’s something you might like to try.

Write down your goals from the convention and put them somewhere visible or where you’ll easily find them again later. Connect the goals to the points you’ve written down in your convention notes. Then pick a date a few months from now and write it in your calendar for when you’d like to read those pages again later in the year.

When that time comes, ask yourself one simple question: How did these notes change my life? Or help me to improve in any area of my life spiritually? The goal is to see if you’ve actually made any changes in response to what you heard and what personally touched you at the convention.

Spiritual growth is always worth noticing and celebrating – so give yourself a chance to do so! It’s evidence that the convention continued shaping you as a spiritual person long after you arrived home.

Organize Your Notes Before You Put Them Away

Have you ever remembered a wonderful point from the convention, only to spend several minutes flipping through your notebook trying to find it? We’ve all been there. Before you put your notebook away, spend a few minutes making it easier to use so that if you ever want to return to it, you’ll find information more easily.

A few ways you might do this:

• Add tabs for each day or session.
• Write talk titles in the margins.
• Date your pages if you don’t normally do that.

Months later, you’ll be grateful you took the time to organize it so it’s not just stack of disordered notes. The great thing about this is that it also makes your notes much easier to share. Perhaps a friend asks about a point they missed. Maybe you’re discussing a talk after the meeting, or helping someone remember which scripture was used. Or getting ready for the congregation review of the convention! With just a little organization, your personal notes can continue encouraging others too.

Bring the Convention Into the Ministry

One of the easiest ways to keep the convention fresh in your mind is to bring it with you into the ministry.

Maybe you’re waiting with the car group before service begins, or you’re walking between doors with another publisher. Those little conversations have a way of drifting toward spiritual things anyway, so when someone asks what you enjoyed about the convention, don’t stop at, “It was really encouraging.” Open your notebook and share the scripture or illustration that touched you the most.

You might be surprised how often the other person says, “Oh, I’d forgotten that point,” or even, “That’s exactly what I needed to hear today.” Encouragement doesn’t end when the convention does. Jehovah can keep using what you learned to strengthen someone else weeks, or even months, later.

Sometimes the encouragement we received becomes encouragement we can pass along.

Let One Point Become a Personal Project

Every convention seems to leave us with one scriptural thought that follows us home. It’s the scripture that keeps coming back to mind during the week, or the point that gently nudges us when we’re not exactly following a Bible principle. Long after we’ve forgotten which session it came from, that one lesson somehow keeps resurfacing.

Rather than trying to hold onto everything from the convention, why not give that one thought a chance to grow?

Turn it into a personal study project. Read the surrounding chapter to see the scripture in context. Look up the cross-references. Search the Online Library to see what else has been written about the subject over the years. You may even find examples of faithful men and women in the Bible who applied that very principle in their own lives.

As you continue studying, you may discover that what first caught your attention at the convention was only the beginning. One scripture often opens the door to many others, and one encouraging point can lead to a much richer appreciation of Jehovah’s thinking.

Months later, you may not remember every outline or every illustration from the convention, but you’ll remember that one truth because you made it your own.

Keep One Encouraging Thought Where You’ll See It

Every now and then, a speaker says something that seems to settle right into your heart. It isn’t always the main point of the talk. Sometimes it’s just a single sentence, or the way a scripture was explained. For whatever reason, it stays with you. You find yourself thinking about it while you’re washing dishes, driving to the meeting, or lying in bed that night. I don’t want to forget that, you think.

So don’t.

Instead of leaving those words tucked away on page fourteen of your notebook, bring them into your everyday life. Write them on an index card, print them in a favorite font and frame it, or make a simple bookmark. Then, when your day is harder than usual or you’re trying to decide how to handle something, your eyes will land on those words again and remind you of exactly what you need, right when you need it.

I wonder how many convention notebooks are sitting on bookshelves right now.

Some are neatly organized. Some have little sticky notes peeking out of the top. Some probably still have a program tucked between the pages. Mine usually has at least one page where I was writing a little too quickly to read my own handwriting later.

But none of that is really what matters. What matters is whether the meaning behind those notes found their way off the page and into our life. Those are the things we’ll still be grateful for when next year’s convention arrives. The notebook simply helped us hold onto them until they became part of us.