pat loughery

I’m sitting next to a blogger! http://walkingrace.blogspot.com/.

Worship Leaders: Same as devotions + fem lead, 2 acoustic guit lead + Ruis. i’m only guessing who the acoustic leads are: Cindy Rethmeier and Jeremy Riddle. Is Cindy Rethmeier a striking, slight woman with dark hair and a deep tan? The male lead OWNED the two Jeremy Riddle songs (Precious Jesus/MoreThan…). They must be his. If I’m guessing wrong, sorry! 😉
Worship Set:
Psalm 113
All Heaven Declares->
Ruis leads from Revelation 5 ->
All Heaven Declares
I Bow Down
Precious Jesus
More than a Friend ->
How Great is Our God [what a fantastic song]

VLI video. Interview includes Matt Redman (I’d heard that he was working with Don WIlliams, but didn’t knwo he was in VLI. Is he serving a Vineyard church now??)

Rick Olmstead: Joining God’s Mission by Building an Outward Focused Church

Rick: I’m proud that we’re still standing, still moving, still listening. It’s been hard to go through transitions, but we’re still going.

There’s not one picture of an outward focused church. It’s not an optional idea.
Luke 5:

Peter’s probably being sarcastic. “Sure, Lord, you’ve got the God thing going on but I know how to fish. I’ve been doing it all night long, but YOU know best.”

25% of Vineyard churches reported 0 converts last year. That has to become unacceptable to us as a movement.

Rick tells the story of having to re-examine his church’s commitment to evangelism in services.

We have to get past this tension of “is it community” or “is it mission”.; is it discipleship or is it evangelism? It’s both.

Where do we begin?
1. Let’s challenge the refuge mentality the us-vs-them (Christians vs. non; vineyard against the rest of the church). (shows video clip of Bubble Boy, with mom wanting to protect him against the world). We’re not to be bubble churches but outward-focused churches.

quote Erwin McManus from Unstoppable Force comparing the church and the monastery, where the church is “out there” and the monastery is “in here”. This doesn’t square with my reading of monastic life, at least not as a general rule. Maybe because I’m focusing on Celtic monastic life, which is very open and hospitality focused.

How to do this in our services:
1. Throw out the red carpet; go out of your way to be welcoming.
2. Be intentional. Small things really matter.
3. Typically it’s the insiders of a church who don’t make the small thing matter; they don’t remember what it’s like to be new.
4. Reduce the weird factor/cringe factor. When you bring a friend to church, you see it through their eyes.
5. There’s a cost. If you truly love the lost, you have to have a place for them to come and be accepted and belong (before they believe).
6. People will accuse you of lowering the bar, selling out to the culture, cheapening the gospel.
7. Die, like salmon, to give life to a new generation.

Let’s learn what we can. Let’s learn from those who are doing it better than us.

Contextualize the Gospel for your own culture. You’ll get accused of capitulating to the culture, but tough… every missionary contextualizes.

Ministry time: prophetic words releasing from guilt-driven leadership; embracing grace-driven leadership. A prophetic call back to our roots as a movement to the disenfranchised and broken. The last one resonated with me greatly.

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Pat’s thoughts:
That’s the notes. I’m feeling a lot of disconnect here. This is good stuff in terms of making our church services friendly to outsiders, but… Looking through the workshops, listening to this talk – it’s all about building a more attractive environment for seekers to come to. THIS ISN’T MISSIONAL! Missional means we GO where “they” are: not just emotionally, or logistically, but physically! It means that we spend more time in the drug dens than in the sanctified dens. Yes, we need church gatherings that are safe for seekers, but that’s not the be-all, end-all.

++ Please, God, teach us and kick us out of the safety zone! ++