Worship Set:
Holy Is The Lord
Enough
Saving Grace (Jones)
I WIll Trust You (Lizotte)
Forum leaders:
Eric Pickerell
Rand Tucker
Jeff Connell
Eric Sandras
Wayne Purdom
(Travis Twyman can’t make it)
split up into regions, introductions
Jeff Connell: Emerging church and church models planting in clintonville, OH
led alpha, taught
recovering fundamentalist, serious
used to get guilted into making decisions about jesus
met a woman who was born & raised in this area
did alpha: had goals. always ignored them, didn’t report results. but made huge amount of disciples.
didn’t do a “real” church plant. Hived off; home group that became a church.
started out moving people. as a service project.
blogs @ messychurch
there’s a temptation to define yourself by what you’re not as a church
i’m like hte anti-rich nathan.
everything good i have is from my mom (praying for me) and mother church, whose model is differnt than mine but she’s my mother
i saw all these people who would have killed themselves otherwise but found the church (a megachurch, peter yes)
there is no model for early church: Look at peter’s chruch and paul’s church (personalities)
ingredients: authenticity knowing god and each other you can whip them up a hundred ways.
bless all church models that work.
Discussion time:
– attitudes/jealousies
– missionally reaching young people
—
Eric Pickerell, Joshua House
Recommended Book: Soul Searching
on American teenagers and their spiritual lives
One of the findings:
– radical spiritual questers: only 2%.
Instead teens are swallowing wholeheartedly their parents’ religious values.
Sum up of his findings: default religion is moralistic, therapeutic deism.
Leaders of youth – their assumptions about the culture tends to be wrong.
1. a god exists who created
2. god wants people to be good, n ice, fair to each other
3. central goal of life is to be happy and feel good about oneself
4. good people go to heaven when they die
5. (i missed one)
morality: “just don’t bve an a-hole, that’s all”
feeling good about oneself is the goal
therapeutism: this componetn huge.
studied words for diffferent religious experiences. being, getting, being made happy
way down the list: god is trinity
book’s recommendations:
1. rel. communities should stop presuming that us teens are alienated by religion. not the case: they love religion, positive about spirituality
2. faith comunities shouldn’t be shy about teachign young adults. they’re not teaching anymore. or talking more about will & grace than about the theool9gy of grace
3. educators need to work much harder on articulation, helpinog ppl articulate their beliefs
4. we need to challenge teens to escape boredom by showing them how normal they’re acting.
(p.268)
—
Wayne Purdom, Yakima Vineyard
MSG, Matt 5: Salt-seasoning, god-flavors of the earth. light, god-colors. we’re going public with this.
Sea monkey image
-> rich, rewarding cynicism, skepticism
instead of pointing that tool outward, emerging leaders as they read that matt 5 passage, point that skepticism inward.
we’re caught in the already/notyet and believe we have no possibioity of achieving it.
counteracting the sea-monkey in your life
1. Reality. Which reality do you believe? (corp america says tha tto be somebody you need to succeed). or do you believe the biblical message that you were created uniquely, purposeful, for community? what type of reality do you believe? i have to continually go back to biblical truth to find out who my dad says i am.
2. Relationship. you have to know and be known.
3. Risk. Faith==risk. Fear of failure is crippling. I force myself to take risks all the time.
—
Eric Sandras, Olympic Vineyard
4 things I learned the first year I planted a church
but I’ll only share one of them
We got St. Arbuck’s in town, praise God.
We’re at 300, 50% conversion growth. 2 years ago our county was the 2nd highest meth addict rate, gettin better now.
I was given great advice by a multi-time planter: don’t do your own thing. do one thing: build the kingdom..
Rememb er that you are a person of the kingdom. in the KOG, fullness is measured by overflow. be filled by the kingdom, overflow in it.
(I’ll do the rest of them later)
I resonated much with wayne’s stuff. relationship especially.
A lie that we buy into: “at some point in my life, the price of repentance will become too high”. as you become a person of influence, the enemy will tell you that you have to be a role model to people.
the power of secrets controls; we’re called to be authentic, transparent people. meanfingul significant trusting relationships. people who know you as a huyman being, not as a a gift mix or role.
purpose relationship not based on shared activities, but on intentional relationsihp for the purpose of accountability
eric tells the story that begins his book.
i stand here today to tell you that i’m an example of god’s redemptive story. married, kids, rstored to ministry.
—-
rand leads in ministry
pat loughery 