One last word before I retire for the night. Our small group was great this evening.
Ken & Lenore Swaner are excellent leaders and the JWATR material was superb – informative, encouraging, challenging.
Pity we have to wait a whole seven days for the next part.

Footnote: If you’re part of our church and haven’t got into this small groups’ cycle, late as it is, go for it. Call the office, call Lesaya, call Town Hall, but get the details of the group nearest you and don’t be stupid enough to miss what’s left of an outstanding series.

On Day Deux of the church planters’ conference hosted by Mountain Lake Church in Cumming, GA, I checked the schedule and opted for a double dose of Perry Noble(http://www.perrynoble.com). This 35 year old pastor of one of America’s fastest-growing churches – located in the middle of a field off a minor road in Anderson, SC – is an outstanding communicator and he really is getting the job done.

His church has gone from a handful of people to over 7,000 in just seven years and there’s no question that his down-to-earth, totally non-religious style has played a great part in that growth. Gill and I took in a Sunday night service there at Newspring last July and the place rocks. Here’s a link to their website – http://www.newspring.cc – sorry, Blogger has changed a few things and I can’t work out how to do a proper hyperlink!!!

Here are a couple of bits and pieces I scribbled down from his talk -

FIVE THINGS A LEADER MUST ADMIT

1. I Must Champion The Vision
Most churches are like planes where the pilot has to go back to first class and ask for permission to follow a course of action. Then first class goes back to coach and makes sure everyone likes the idea. Meanwhile the plane crashes.
Leaders must lead and must drive the vision.
If you don’t lead your church, Satan will.

2. I Cannot Please Everyone
Whatever you do, you will upset some people.
People will leave the church.
Things have to fall off the space shuttle for it to get into orbit.

3. I Must Fully Trust God
If you’re taking risks you’re going to have plenty of Oh crap! moments.

4. I Cannot Do Everything
Keep it simple for the church and for yourself.

5. I Am Not That Smart
Two solutions -
Follow Scripture
Talk to a lot of people who know what they’re talking about

Perry’s stuff was brilliant. As you can see I didn’t really write a lot down, but that was by design as I wanted to be focused and take it in – plus I ordered the CD later of course!

Here’s a great quote from Bill Hybels -

The goal (of the church), is to slowly make believers independent. We (as a church and pastors) should focus our attention on introducing people to Christ, and then helping them grow to a certain point. After that–they should feed themselves and focus on helping the church introduce more people to Christ.

Couldn’t have put it better myself!

Okay, that’s it – I’m done!

On November 27th I was on a plane from JFK to Mumbai, India and last night, February 27th I flew up from Atlanta to LaGuardia. In that span of exactly three months I have covered 44,000 miles, give or take an odd one here or there and man, am I glad it’s over!

It has all been good – I’ll tell you more about the incredible second day of the Church Planters’ Conference later – but it’s enough.

That’s mainly because I’m itching to get more fully stuck into where we’re headed this year right here at home. We’re in the process just now of sharpening our skills at communicating with those who don’t yet know Jesus and we’re building up to one of the main outreach events of the year – Easter.

Tonight I’m going to get my first chance to join a Just Walk Across The Room small group. I missed the start but plan to be there for the rest of the teaching and then I’m getting ready for our A.S.Q. series – Answers to Serious Questions – which is designed to help deal with those really tough questions that genuine seekers sometimes ask.

One thread that ran through the conference was the importance of sticking with the vision and for us, part of doing that is creating steps to help people see it happen. Since our goal is to seek and save those that are lost, we’re really homing in on how to see that become a reality.

Exciting weeks ahead – plenty of time now to simply focus on things at home.

Over the weekend I was pondering what insanity had led me to register for a church planters conference just six days after coming back from India. I was so tired after our service yesterday that I went home instead of to the airport and told Gill I wasn’t going to take the trip.

This evening I’m glad I did. After two full weeks of giving out over there, God knew I needed to sit back and get refuelled and that is precisely what is happening.

I could have left for home about mid-afternoon today and this brief journey south would have been worth it, but there’s still a whole day to go.

The conference kicked off with host pastor Shawn Lovejoy talking about Resisiting. His church has grown from nothing to more than 2,000 in attendance in little more than six years, so I guess he knows a thing or two. Resisting what?

Well, Shawn talked about the fact that a few years into their journey most churches are not what they originally set out to be. He talked about how they get pulled off course and how the only solution is to constantly be mean with the vision.

I know what he was talking about. We started our church with one goal in mind – To seek and save those that are lost. Over the past eight years there have been plenty of people who have suggested we should take a detour and do something else. But the “What about me?” crowd have quickly discovered that we won’t be moved from our stated purpose either. I’m mean with the vision too because the stakes are too high, people’s eternity is in the balance.

There are hundreds of thousands of churches out there doing church for the Christians, but last time I checked, our consuming passion is meant to be reaching those who are lost.

Shawn talked about those whose self-centredness is hidden behind the complaint that as mature believers they need to be fed and made a very sound point when he said mature believers should know how to feed themselves and should be on board with the mission of bringing others to Jesus and helping them to mature.

I like that guy!

Another guy I like is my friend Gary Lamb. He was doing a breakout session on Going All Out For The Disconnected and I got a front row seat for this one. Gary’s church has gone from four couples to over 700 every Sunday in less than two and a half years and 70% of those people did not know Jesus at all when they first came to Ridgestone Church.

Gary’s young, passionate, direct, unapologetic and hilarious too. I love listening to him and spending time with him. We’re in touch all year round, but it was good to hear him at the conference and see him sharing his heart with others who are serious about church planting too.

All in all, an excellent day, topped off with a couple of hours in Outback, chewing on a (small) steak and picking the brain of another friend, Tony McCollum who leads Mill Creek Community Church in nearby Buford, GA. Man, does that guy talk a lot of sense!

Today I woke up in Cumming, GA and there’s a good reaon for that – this is where I went to bed last night!

I am attending a church planters’ conference being hosted by Mountain Lake Community Church and will soon be joining around 600 other leaders involved in this extreme sport of pastoring.

The word that church planting is the best way to reach those who don’t know Christ is old now. It’s well proven and I’m looking forward to getting together with hundreds of others who are seeing that happen and listening to some of the most respected new church pastors in the country.

Will be home to snowy NY tomorrow evening, but for today I’ll enoy the sunny 68 we’ve been promised for the Atlanta area.

Lesaya was brilliant this morning!

It was so good to be home after spending the last two Sundays in India. I love it there of course, but it’s not here. It’s not Church At The Movies and it’s not our folks. It was great to be back in the thick of things today and what a great morning.

Since last Sunday’s service was cancelled, today I got to listen to Lesaya teach the second part of our series Just Walk Across The Room. I’m pumped about this series because it’s about what we’re about – reaching out in a relevant way to people who don’t yet know Jesus. What a lot of insight she brought today.

She was challenging, inspiring, practical … and funny. I loved the story of her doorbell evangelism in California as a teenager when a guy in his birthday suit responded to her knocking at his home!

She brought some great stuff out of Luke 15 about the lost sheep, coin and son. I really liked the thought that none of them was chided for where they were at or how they’d got lost, people who cared just looked for them, found them and celebrated. God deliver us from judgmentalism and condemnation and help us to love those who are still lost regardless of where they’re at and how they got there.

Lesaya Kelly is a great asset to our church and a valuable part of all that we’re expecting to see God do as we continue to press forward.

There has been some interesting feedback from the Sunday off that everyone got last week because the theater’s heating went kapput.

The bottom line is that everyone who has talked to me really missed being able to worship with the Church At The Movies gang. Some went to a different church for the day and got a reminder that there’s quite a difference between us and any other church in the county.

Others just enjoyed sleeping late and didn’t even think of going elsewhere because it wouldn’t be the same.

We don’t have it all together. There’s plenty of scope for improvement. We’re not better than any of the other good churches in our area. But we definitely are different and I love that. It isn’t just that as a relic from the rebellious 60’s I thrive on challenging the staus quo. There’s more to it than that.

Truth is 1.3 million people in our county have never opted into established church. They don’t want normal. So since we’re offering an alternative style, we have a good chance of drawing some of them in. They don’t want church as it is – so we offer church as it could be! And that’s why we are the way we are and why we do what we do.

Spend any time talking to someone who has been on a missions trip and sooner rather than later it is inevitable that the conversation will come around to the facilities available for relieving yourself. Here are a couple of bathroom snippets from our recent visit to India -

1. On our last morning there, I heard a piercing scream from the bathroom where Gill was showering. Turns out there was a fair size frog clinging to the tiled wall and for some reason my good wife had an aversion to sharing her personal time with the creature! Enter Sir Galahad.

2. During the pastors’ conference I was teaching we touched on how it is important that our facilities look their best for the sake of our Sunday guests. The state of the bathrooms was mentioned in this segment, after which the pastor of a large church in Hydrabad thanked me for the insights and said he had decided that from now on they would ask for the use of the toilets in the building they rent on Sundays. Turns out they had never had them opened up because it would cost more!!!! Short services there, I guess!

3. I cannot for the life of me work out why in the men’s room of the business class lounge in Mumbai airport there are two urinals and no stalls. I guess posh people don’t … okay, you get the idea!

I’m pumped that so many of our folks have already purchased their own copies of Bill Hybels’ new book, Just Walk Across The Room. We just bought in a load more, because now that I’ve finished it myself I want to be sure that everyone in our church gets their minds around what’s being taught in its pages.

We’ve set this year as the one when we break through the 500 barrier, but wishin and hopin and thinkin and prayin won’t make that happen. There has to be a plan.

The first part of it is that we spend four Sundays talking about influencing people for Jesus, at the same time our small groups watch Hybels on DVD and discuss each week’s theme, then we all read the book and finally – we start to do all this!

This is a great book. It’s liberating, guilt-destroying, innovative and best of all has very few big words in it. It is very, very readable.

Just Walk Across The Room sets the tone for our year. It’s foundational and I’m loving it.