It is starting to be that time of year again. Today was the first day of the new year I actually had to get out the grass cutting paraphernalia and chop away the spring growth. Since I just got back from the Unleash Conference late last night, our Friday Feet today was just some work at home and some dinner in town. The conferences are always a huge amount of information and even though this one was only a one day event, it was very draining mentally and physically, so we didn’t plan a whole lot for today.
I have been trying to run back through the events of yesterday in my head. All the various one liners I posted on twitter, (sorry for the twitter dump yesterday to all my followers, next time I will probably use Scribble Live) the volumes and volumes of information given out in just a few hours on how to lead and grow today’s church body, and the face to face contacts I made were great but almost overwhelming. The photo below is me in the hotel room the night before contemplating about the day ahead.
To clear the head, I love to get out on the John Deere tractor today and take care of business on the farm. For those who don’t have a tractor or any large plots of grass to mow, it is one of the more relaxing things I know to do that of outside just sitting on the beach (which we should be doing soon I hope). It was an enjoyable day and I am looking forward to a nice evening with Deborah.
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The final session of the Unleash Conference started with an unbelievable worship time and moved into Perry Noble talking about leadership in the church. He brought up some serious issues in the church and asked some tough questions. Who is with me? How often are we asking the question, am I pleasing God? How much time are we spending in prayer? Are we only inviting the people we want in church, or are we remembering that God wants everyone in church? He left us a lot to wrestle with and it will take some time to process everything. I am glad there are churches like NewSpring over here in Anderson and around the world.
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We are now halfway through the day here at the Unleash Conference and I have moved into the next breakout session called Multi-site Campus and Technology. It has been a packed morning so far and I will update any photo only posts here with some commentary at a later date, but it has been a great experience so far. What is pretty incredible is the volunteer staff here at NewSpring. I am totally impressed with the force the volunteers have taken over here at NewSpring. They have been nothing but helpful, nice, and servants of everyone visiting from outside the Anderson campus area.
The efficiency that they have shown so far has been just amazing. Lunch was probably the largest display of Chick-fil-a I had seen since the Chick-fil-a Bowl during the SEC football season, and the volunteers served an amazing number of people at one time. Thanks to everyone at NewSpring for your hospitality.
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All I had time to do here was upload the first opening set of the Unleash Conference. Can’t wait to see what the rest of the weekend has in store, I am ready to take notes.
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Today was one of those crazy days that started off a little foggy, then things just never rolled into a routine. I spent a good 4-5 hours on I-85 in the back seat of an extend-a-cab truck with four guys on our way to the Unleash Conference put on by NewSpring Church in Anderson, SC. My one instruction from Deb for this conference was to pick up a Clemson tiger for the dog but I am not so sure where in the world I would be able to find one of those guys. Anyone that happens to be in Clemson and is going to Unleash, and happens to have a spare (small) Clemson Tiger, that would be much appreciated.
Most of the staff here at Cornerstone Church made the trip out (in a few different vehicles) and as I write this in the back seat of the truck, one carload is in Atlanta, one is in Greenville, one is behind us by about 10 miles and we are about 2 hours before all of us meet back up at a restaurant for dinner. It is a pretty rare thing for all of the staff to be together in one place at one time, and I am looking forward to catching back up with each of them tonight.
On a side note, if you would like to follow us on Twitter you can do so with the following ID’s for Unleash
- Rusty Hutson – @rustyhutson
- Josh Agerton – @joshagerton
- Jack Fisher – @jackfisher
- Brian Johnson – @bslash
- Amy Coxwell – @aecoxwell
- Julia Farrow – @farrowj
- Scott Fillmer – @scottfillmer
One thing that is really nice about traveling, when you don’t have to drive yourself, is the time you have you wouldn’t otherwise have to do those things you don’t normally get to do, like read in the middle of the afternoon or just sit and listen to some music. I use to travel all the time and miss it quite a bit for the free time it provides by nature of traveling. Most that travel a lot get quite bored with it, but in the 10 years or so I did nothing but travel, I always loved it.
Going to Catalyst just a few weeks ago to shoot for the event got me really excited about going to Unleash because I wasn’t going to have to drive. I could actually do something else, like write a blog post and try to finish up Killing Cockroaches (which I did not do). It got me thinking about how much I could get done if I was on vacation, but that sounds like an oxymoron (and I haven’t actually been on an official vacation that I can remember).
One of the guys going with us posed a great question when we piled into the vehicle. What’s the purpose and what are we supposed to learn from by going to Unleash? I starting thinking about what I really wanted to get out of Unleash and realized I hadn’t even given it any thought at all before we got in the car to drive to South Carolina.
What I Want to Learn at Unleash
Communications and Technology – I would like to get a better understanding of how a larger church effectively uses technology to communicate to their church and those not yet at their church
Networking – since I have been working in ministry less than a year I feel like those who have spent their whole life in ministry (which seems to be a lot) already know each other, I don”t, but like every industry, it is a slow process. I hope to meet up with a few people I already met at Catalyst and make some new friends I can connect with once I get back to Auburn.
Leadership – these conferences are always about leadership in the church, but I am looking for some differences between what I have already heard before and what kind of leadership we are looking for in the church that hasn’t made it out of school yet. I am looking for information about where the church body is headed as far as raising up and developing new leadership for the church that will take it into the next generation. I am already too old to make an impact as a young leader, but eventually I could make an impact on a young leader.
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I am still working through the last part of my edit for Catalyst One Day. Two of the key speakers at the One Day event were Andy Stanley (North Point Community Church) and Craig Groeschel (LifeChurch.tv) who talked about creating and sustaining momentum. They had several individual sessions and then one larger session with both Andy and Craig with a great Q&A session which brought out hard questions from attendees. I only wish I could have mentally recorded everything they said.
What I did record of course were the images of the day. Andy Stanley and Craig Groeschel are always animated, making for great photographic subjects. Hope you enjoy a few from the day below. The first photo is back stage with some of the Catalyst staff prepping for the day (that is Brad Lomenick in the middle sporting my very own hair cut).
I still have a few more, one from a session with Lanny Donoho which had everyone on the floor laughing, and then he drops a hand full of Mentos in a 2-liter of Dr Pepper, so stay tuned.
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Today Pastor Fred Winters of First Baptist Church of Maryville was shot to death by a single gunman during their worship service. Once the gunman started shooting he was “arrested” by the congregation who surrounded him and detained him until the police arrived. As soon as horrific and evil events like this happen it tends to bring out all the Atheists and Agnostics that scream and yell about how God lets bad things happen, in some sort of “I told you so” way.
One blogger I consider to be much more intelligent on the issues than some normal Atheistic or Agnostic rant who doesn’t really understand the issues of the Christian faith is Unreasonable Faith. He wrote this post about the shooting, Illinois Pastor Shot to Death at Church, which brought up some very good questions. Questions I couldn’t possibly address in one blog post, but I love reading Daniel’s blog, it keeps me on my toes and sharpens me more than many Christians I know, even if his ultimate conclusions are wrong.
Why Does God Allow This to Happen?
They pose the typical questions like who would want a God that allows things like this to happen and they try to point out that God doesn’t exist or wasn’t involved because He let this happen (and one can quote scripture totally out of context to prove any point). Asking these questions is not wrong, or even bad. As I told a pastor Fred Winters today he reminded me that John Wesley once said, when you go to work, be prepared to preach, pray, and die [for the Truth].
God does listen, He does care, and He does answer all prayer, but the answer could be yes, no, or not right now. Trying to say we know and understand the mind of God is dangerous, and saying that because evil exists in the world means God doesn’t is just not a good argument. The Christian antagonist would have you believe that where evil exists, God does not, and therefore God was not with the people in Maryville. Quite the opposite.
I can not offer intelligent reasons (because I do not have the mind of God) why things like this happen any more than I can really understand why there are those who are so antagonistic to the Christian faith that they themselves bring people away from faith in Christ. It is one thing to not believe. I have many friends and family members who do not believe. They do not take the position of Paul before his conversion on the road to Damascus to purposely bring people away from their own faith in God, but according to scripture, Saul (Paul) did just that.
In the end, you either hold the scriptures to be the inspired Word of God with Jesus as the risen Messiah, or you don’t. If you do, it doesn’t mean that we as Christians are supposed to sit around in a circle and hold hands and “pray” while we watch someone mow people down in a thunder of bullets and do nothing at all. It doesn’t mean that we have to understand the ways of God either.
Luke 17:20 says:
He replied, “Because you have so little faith. I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”
So does that mean that if I can’t move the Rocky Mountains I have no faith. Not at all, but some will try to tell you that is certainly the case. Arguments like these have gone on for thousands of years and I can’t even start to say I am smart enough to understand the why’s about it all. I can see that I am very much like the flip side of Daniel when I say “Now I’m figuring out what it means to be a Believer and a person of faith.”.
Daniel credits himself as being a skeptic much like Pyrrho who is credited as being the first Skeptic philosopher, and the inspiration for the school known as Pyrrhonism in the 1st century BC. As there will always be skeptics, there will always be people of faith in Christ. One thing we can both agree on is that it was a terrible tragedy for Winters to be gunned down in his place of worship in front of his family. My heart goes out to their family and their church. God is with you, He loves you, and yes, His will (though we may not understand), will be done.
