Francis Chan, one of my favorite guys, introduced to the tune of "Back in Black". Check it out!
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Exponential 09 Day One
Erwin McManus, Alan Hirsch, Larry Osborne. That's a pretty good day. Today was the first official day of the conference, though yesterday I attended an intensive on forming a launch team. But that's pretty specific and you probably don't care about it. I have tons I could talk about, but McManus was too good not to share. So here it is.
This guy is amazing. I have seen him a couple times before (though probably not for the last 10 years) and I've read two of his books, both of which were life changing (The Barbarian Way, Unstoppable Force). His talk centered on a passage from Acts 17, a pretty well known one in church world where Paul goes to a place called Mars Hill and begins to talk to people there about the living God. He talked about three "spaces" in which Christians interact with the culture around us. The first space is a space we know very well. It's a space in which we are quite comfortable. If you read the passage, you notice that after Paul sees the idol worship and all that is going on there he goes to this first "space" - the synagogue. He goes to speak to Jews and "God-fearing Greeks". If you are concerned about a culture, and want to affect change - why do you go to the synagogue first? Again, it's the place that is most comfortable for Paul. Most often in the church we choose to address the needs in our culture from within the church. We hope that people will come to us and we can address them in a "space" in which we are most comfortable.
Thankfully, Paul doesn't stop there. He goes on to the second "space". This is the marketplace. The place of business, of real life. It's where we live and do everything that we do. It's here that Paul begins to address the culture where they live. This is the place Erwin urged us to be. He called us as the church to be functioning from this second "space". We can't expect to impact culture from within the first "space." Many churches, many Christians for that matter, fail to live their faith here in the second space.
And then there's the third space. The third space is a place that we cannot go unless invited. After speaking in the marketplace people are interested in what they are hearing and invite him to the third space. It's their space, and Paul is invited in. It's here that Paul refers to their gods, quotes their poets, and basically speaks their language. We have to earn the right to be invited into the third space. We earn the right to be brought into the discussion. Many of us try and force our way into this third space, and end up being completely ineffective - or even counter productive.
Erwin was very transparent with us. He shared of how difficult it has been for him as a leader in living out these kinds of things. He told of the death threats, the heretic hunters that constantly bombard him and even his children. And yet he courageously dared us to risk life in the second space. He called us to be willing to trade in all of the Christian approval in the world for the chance to introduce people in the marketplace to Jesus.
I love it Erwin. I'm in.
This guy is amazing. I have seen him a couple times before (though probably not for the last 10 years) and I've read two of his books, both of which were life changing (The Barbarian Way, Unstoppable Force). His talk centered on a passage from Acts 17, a pretty well known one in church world where Paul goes to a place called Mars Hill and begins to talk to people there about the living God. He talked about three "spaces" in which Christians interact with the culture around us. The first space is a space we know very well. It's a space in which we are quite comfortable. If you read the passage, you notice that after Paul sees the idol worship and all that is going on there he goes to this first "space" - the synagogue. He goes to speak to Jews and "God-fearing Greeks". If you are concerned about a culture, and want to affect change - why do you go to the synagogue first? Again, it's the place that is most comfortable for Paul. Most often in the church we choose to address the needs in our culture from within the church. We hope that people will come to us and we can address them in a "space" in which we are most comfortable.
Thankfully, Paul doesn't stop there. He goes on to the second "space". This is the marketplace. The place of business, of real life. It's where we live and do everything that we do. It's here that Paul begins to address the culture where they live. This is the place Erwin urged us to be. He called us as the church to be functioning from this second "space". We can't expect to impact culture from within the first "space." Many churches, many Christians for that matter, fail to live their faith here in the second space.
And then there's the third space. The third space is a place that we cannot go unless invited. After speaking in the marketplace people are interested in what they are hearing and invite him to the third space. It's their space, and Paul is invited in. It's here that Paul refers to their gods, quotes their poets, and basically speaks their language. We have to earn the right to be invited into the third space. We earn the right to be brought into the discussion. Many of us try and force our way into this third space, and end up being completely ineffective - or even counter productive.
Erwin was very transparent with us. He shared of how difficult it has been for him as a leader in living out these kinds of things. He told of the death threats, the heretic hunters that constantly bombard him and even his children. And yet he courageously dared us to risk life in the second space. He called us to be willing to trade in all of the Christian approval in the world for the chance to introduce people in the marketplace to Jesus.
I love it Erwin. I'm in.
Monday, April 6, 2009
Crazy Month
Time to shake the dust off the old blog. I've been pretty busy lately, here's a rundown of what I've been up to and what is coming soon.
March was a month of figuring some stuff out. We began to zero in on the location of our church plant. Our application for the school facility has been submitted and as of right now we are still waiting to hear back on that. I've been doing lots of talking with lots of pastors, church planters, and leaders over the last couple of weeks. I'm asking lots of questions and taking lots of notes. As we get closer and closer to September, my list of questions is growing more and more. We are still trying to raise several thousand dollars, and over the last couple of weeks some interesting opportunities have opened up that may result in some big time gifts. Last week my good friend Barry Rice of GO Church was in town and he spent the evening with our team encouraging us and helping us to understand God's heart for the church.
Our group continues to meet every week for bible study and worship and of course some great food. After Easter we will begin separating our bible study from our launch team meetings. We hope to make our bible study a little more public, meeting in a more public place - and make our launch team meetings a little more strategic and intentional, keeping those in our home for now. We hope that through our bible study we can continue to grow our launch team and be ready for launch in September.
Last week I drove to Memphis (750 miles each way!!) to spend the week with the Yucaipa High School baseball team that I used to coach in Southern California. They were there for a tournament and while it was a long ways away, it was probably the closest they will ever be to Durham. I had a great time. They gave me a uniform and put me back in the dugout with the team just like old times. It was a lot of fun. The team is pretty phenomenal too. They won the tournament relatively easily and are now 11-0 on the year.
This week my mom comes to town, and we are really excited to see her. She hasn't been with the girls since November, so she's pretty anxious to hang out with them as well. Thanks to skype, they have seen her and talked to her, but it's not the same. While my mom is here, we'll be taking a family vacation to Orlando. I'll be going to the Exponential Conference there, and the family will be joining me in Orlando thanks to the aforementioned Barry Rice. He is totally blessing us with a place to stay so we couldn't pass up the opportunity. And of course, being in Orlando we'll be spending a day at Disney. The rest of the time, the family will be hanging out at the pool and the playground while I'm at the conference learning about church planting stuff.
Along the way this month there are some other training things I'll be doing, as well as connecting with some more mentors and coaches. There's a possible trip to Arizona coming up soon but I'm not sure when that will happen just yet.
But the best thing of all - baseball starts again TODAY! Wish I could be in Anaheim watching my halos tonight, but thank the Lord for ESPN.
March was a month of figuring some stuff out. We began to zero in on the location of our church plant. Our application for the school facility has been submitted and as of right now we are still waiting to hear back on that. I've been doing lots of talking with lots of pastors, church planters, and leaders over the last couple of weeks. I'm asking lots of questions and taking lots of notes. As we get closer and closer to September, my list of questions is growing more and more. We are still trying to raise several thousand dollars, and over the last couple of weeks some interesting opportunities have opened up that may result in some big time gifts. Last week my good friend Barry Rice of GO Church was in town and he spent the evening with our team encouraging us and helping us to understand God's heart for the church.
Our group continues to meet every week for bible study and worship and of course some great food. After Easter we will begin separating our bible study from our launch team meetings. We hope to make our bible study a little more public, meeting in a more public place - and make our launch team meetings a little more strategic and intentional, keeping those in our home for now. We hope that through our bible study we can continue to grow our launch team and be ready for launch in September.
Last week I drove to Memphis (750 miles each way!!) to spend the week with the Yucaipa High School baseball team that I used to coach in Southern California. They were there for a tournament and while it was a long ways away, it was probably the closest they will ever be to Durham. I had a great time. They gave me a uniform and put me back in the dugout with the team just like old times. It was a lot of fun. The team is pretty phenomenal too. They won the tournament relatively easily and are now 11-0 on the year.
This week my mom comes to town, and we are really excited to see her. She hasn't been with the girls since November, so she's pretty anxious to hang out with them as well. Thanks to skype, they have seen her and talked to her, but it's not the same. While my mom is here, we'll be taking a family vacation to Orlando. I'll be going to the Exponential Conference there, and the family will be joining me in Orlando thanks to the aforementioned Barry Rice. He is totally blessing us with a place to stay so we couldn't pass up the opportunity. And of course, being in Orlando we'll be spending a day at Disney. The rest of the time, the family will be hanging out at the pool and the playground while I'm at the conference learning about church planting stuff.
Along the way this month there are some other training things I'll be doing, as well as connecting with some more mentors and coaches. There's a possible trip to Arizona coming up soon but I'm not sure when that will happen just yet.
But the best thing of all - baseball starts again TODAY! Wish I could be in Anaheim watching my halos tonight, but thank the Lord for ESPN.
