Anyone need to get rid of some frequent flyer miles?
There is a conference I would love to attend this summer but I just can’t afford the airfare out there. The first set of tickets I found cost over $800 and they were economy tickets with layovers! I was able to find some tickets for less but not enough to really make a difference.
The conference is in the middle of June and I would need to get from Dallas to Washington, DC.
Is there anyone you know of who could help a brother out?
I had a great opportunity to participate in a leadership conference call with Pastor Mark Batterson this morning. Batterson is the pastor of National Community Church and the author of In the Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day. The way NCC is “doing church” has really captured my imagination. NCC’s vision is to meet in movie theatres along the Metro lines in our nation’s capital. The only physical structure they use to meet in is a coffee house near Union Station. Ebeneezer’s serve great coffee and allows the church and culture to “intersect” on a daily basis.
Someday I hope to plant a church and I have learned a great deal from NCC and Batterson’s candidness. They are always open for questioning and are just as willing to speak about “missed opportunities” as they are about big wins. Mark’s blog is a daily stop for me on the interwebs. Mark is open and honest about leadership, family life, church direction, and vision casting. I enjoy hearing about what he is up to and I have enjoyed hearing about the victories that his church has been blessed with. Thanks Mark!!!
The conference call was put together by Catalyst Filter, a great leadership resource that I became a part of at this year’s Catalyst Conference. The call lasted about an hour and Mark talked about everything from balancing personal time with work to staff development. I even got to ask a question.
Here are my notes from the call:
Creativity and Innovation
Creativity is a byproduct of planning. NCC has a weekly “big idea” meeting where the leaders discuss what they want to happen each week in services, small groups, etc.
Creativity and innovation are hard wired into the DNA leaders and churches
Annual Retreat
Summer- “Play & Pray Retreat”- name says it all. The team plays and then they pray.
December- Planning Retreat– 48 hrs. spent dreaming, thinking, setting goals
Service Planning Process– What happens on Saturday and Sunday
Try and speak to what is practical in the lives of people
One goal of ministry is to lead people into becoming self-motivated disciples
20somethings– largest demo of NCC is single 20somethings
Meet needs- Students have needs and wants. Offer students pizza, homes to meet in, relationships with members
Speak to them- if the goal is to reach 20somethings, speak to/with them. Sermon series that address their unique phase of life (I believe most churches fail this point)
Engaging Culture
1) Engage culture by creating culture- NCC built a coffeehouse rather than a building. This breaks down walls within culture, allows for relationships to be built within culture
2) Sermon series that engage culture
Use music and movies. Most people today get their theology from music and movies. Movies reach out for truth but miss the mark in pointing to Truth- Jesus. We should step in and connect culture with Ultimate Truth. Movies and music give us permission to speak to tough subjects (Think “Hotel Rwanda.” I was able to use this film in a powerful way to speak on racism and equality in a way that I would have been unable to do through a typical Bible study)
Moving from Traditional to Contemporary
1) Make moves toward change that are practical in execution
2) Sometimes the change is too great for an establishment. When that happens, you can always plant and hardwire into the DNA of the church plant a desire for innovation and avoidance of stagnation. Sometimes it takes a step of faith.
Balancing Personal life with Church work– Mark has a wife and three kids
YOU control your calendar
Mark gets up at 5:30am and makes time to write, think, pray, go through spiritual disciplines before the day “officially” starts
Meeting days- schedules 2 days specifically for meetings
Focus days- 2 days to study, focus, read, dream
Family
Make family a priority. Mark is specifically doing 2 things this year to show his family they are the priority of his life
1) Mark intentionally used every single vacation day for he and his family
2) Father/Son Meetings– Mark and his 12 year old son agreed to a covenant that this year (as his son turns 13) that they will complete a spiritual challenge, an intellectual challenge, and a physical challenge. The point is to intentionally grow closer together and intentionally honor God during their time together (I plan on doing something like this if we have kids)
Learning
Stay curious
Stay humble- 1Cor 8:2- “The man who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know.”
When reading, cross-pollinate. Choose books and resources from a wide spectrum of disciplines
Keep learning
So there are the highlights. I hope that you too can benefit from the conversation. The call ended up being the best hour of my work week. So good!
I’ll be out of pocket most of the weekend. This might be my last post until Monday. If so, have a great weekend everyone.
..all God’s people carry within themselves the same potencies that energized the early Christian movement… Apostolic Genius (the primal missional potencies of the gospel and of God’s people) lies dormant in you, me, and every local church that seeks to follow jesus faithfully in any time. We have quite simply forgotten how to access and trigger it. This book is written to help us identify its constituent elements and to help us (re)activate it so that we might once again truly be a truly transformative Jesus movement in the West.
The first book I decided to tackle in 2007 is The Forgotten Ways by Alan Hirsch. Although it looks like a regular book it is dense and thick and that makes me all excited inside.
In the introduction Hirsch asks the $64,000 Question:
How did the early church grow from being a relatively small movement to the “most significant religious force in the Roman Empire in (just) two centuries?”
Hirsch explains that by most estimates the early church had grown to about 25,000 people at the close of the first century. Two hundred years later, conservative estimates put the church at 20 million strong. That is incredible growth. Hirsch throws a wrench in your answering of that question by reminding you that this growth happened in spite of the follow:
Ok, can you answer the question? How did they do it? 25 thousand to 20 million in 200 years?
Before you answer Hirsch adds this:
But before the example of the early Christian movement can be dismissed as a freak of history, there is another, even more astounding manifestation of Apostolic Genius, that unique and explosive power inherent in all of God’s people, in our own time- namely, the underground church in China.
When Mao took power 1949 the Chinese church was estimated at 2 million. Mao set out to wipe China clean of all religion focusing explicitly on Christianity. Those in senior leadership were executed, church property was nationalized, missionaries and foreign ministers were deported out of China, and public meetings were banned by threat of imprisonment and death. This still occurs even today.
When foreign missionaries were finally able to return in the early eighties they expected to find a severely diminished church. The found that the church in China had grown to 60 million.
Hirsch says that by looking at the growth of the early church and the Chinese church we find that elements such as “the strange mixture of the passionate love of God, prayer, incarnational practice, appropriate modes of leadership, relevant organization and structures, and the conditions that allow these to catalyze” allow something remarkable to take place.
I am very much looking forward to reading this book. If the inrtoduction is any indication than I am in for a wild ride through these pages. One can only hope.
TheForgottenWays.org
Discreet and Dynamic: Why, with no apparent resources, Chinese churches thrive.
I downloaded and watched the first episode of the new Sundance Channel show One Punk Under God. The show follows Jay Bakker, son of Jim and Tammy Faye, as he struggles to grow his church in Atlanta.
The show was great and I really enjoyed the brief peek of behind the scenes church planting. I hope that continues through the rest of the series.
You ought to check out the show. It’s worth a watch.