JUST PUDGE

The amazing thing about this year’s MAIN sessions at UNLEASH is that we have opened up our Student building at the Anderson Campus.  In doing this we were able to open up the amazing technology (drop down screen, HD IMAG type shot) God has allowed us to use at our other campuses at NewSpring.  VERY COOL stuff!

Here are some of my notes from the Main Session this AM…

• 2 Kings 7
• There is a MAJOR breakdown in the church today.
• We are called to lift up the name of Christ in the church today!
• The Church is the Bride of Christ…its HIS CHURCH!!
• It’s not the deacons church, your church, Mrs Sue’s church (who has a plaque under the window) because “she bought it”

3 questions we have to be willing to wrestle with as a church…

Are we WILLING to embrace CHANGE

• We have to be willing to change to the church God has called us to be
• (from scripture text in 2 Kings)There were 4 lepards at the city gate realizing things were bad.  They were willing to try something risky because they knew they had nothing to lose.
• Its just HARD to embrace change
• We (the church) hold onto things that are DEAD because we aren’t willing to embrace change.
• Anyone can look at another church and see what needs to change…it’s not so easy at our own churches.
• The only the reason we aren’t willing to change is that we are married to an idea rather than being head over hills for Jesus and obeying HIM!
• Grandparents flooding the churches, willing to give their life for grandkids, but not willing to give up their style of music.
• The church has a choice…change or die.
• Where does this idea of CHANGE come from…ACTS (the book in the Bible).  The ACTs church was constantly changing.
• You can’t PLAN a work of God, you can’t manage a work of God, its a MOVE OF GOD!!
• When a move of God starts happening, sinners come and experience LIFE CHANGE because they MEET JESUS!
• Yup, we do have a lot of sinners here, they got saved and we hired them!
• We had a kid in the parking lot fussing at his parents saying, “I want to go back in the d*mn church!”
• How comfortable are with with that?  Are we ok at meeting people where they are?
• You know who has the hardest time with change in the church?  THE STAFF!!
• The reason many churches aren’t growing is the KEY leaders are still TOO involved in the day to day operations.  They are IN THE WAY!
• Where do you give the vision for multi-site?  ACTs 8
• Are we taking the chance away from other pastors that won’t to preach and start a church by doing multi-site?  NO, if that’s your view, your God is too SMALL!!
• We’ve got to get out of the business with competing with one another (each other as churches) and in the business of completing one another.

Are we WILLING to WORK?

• Perry used to weigh 300 lbs.  How did he lose it?  HE WORKED!
• We have to be WILLING to do the WORK to make the CHANGE happen.
• We have used prayer for too long as a church as an excuse to be inactive.
• 2 I’s that go with this if we are going to be WILLING to WORK…
• INVESTIGATE the OBVIOUS
  • Is there anything going on in your church right now that if you weren’t on staff you wouldn’t come to it?
  • Are you have to manufacturing energy for things within your church (Sunday School — no one goes, not even the people that lead it)?
  • Are their volunteers or staff that aren’t getting the job done that needs to be addressed?
  • We have “bad” greeters but we don’t say anything…we say, “but he loves to greet”…but he SUCKS at it!
  • Call stuff like that out!
  • Do you have someone on your stage that can’t sing? (they say “God laid this on my heart” and we ask…”God…you laid this on their heart?”)
  • “but she has a good heart.”  Yeah but her voice is horrible and we aren’t listening to her heart.
• IGNORE the J*CK*SS
  • The problem is too many pastors are listening to the jackass and not to God
  • 2 types of Jackass
    • One that criticizes your church and has never stepped foot in your church
    • One that is in the church (”I want to go deeper”)

Are we SERIOUS about reaching the world?

• We (as the  obsessed with terminology and not reaching the world.
• 4 terms overused in the church today…
  • Contemporary (pastor wears sweater vest, we treat Jesus more like our boyfriend than our KING)
  • Blended (no one in our church posses a set and will address where we stand.  So in an effort to keep everyone happy, we reach no one)
  • Missional (most overplayed term in the church, no one is showing up…so we sought out a term to explain the mission we are carrying out isn’t the great commission we were given)
  • Emergent (we are a bunch of spoiled church kids who have a problem with authority, including the authority of scripture, so we have sided with satan in attacking the word of God)
• God didn’t call your church to condemn the city, he called you to REACH the city…to save the city in the name of Jesus Christ!
• People say…”NewSpring is all about numbers…”  GUILTY…because every number represents a soul saved by Christ!
• Who would be angry about the lost getting saved and LIFE CHANGE happening…Jesus or satan?
• Read through ACTs and see how many times the word “NUMBER” is written.
• Numbers matter to God.
• Numbers happen when we live in the FEAR of GOD and OBEY Him at all cost!
• If numbers aren’t important why is it written all through ACTs.
• The only people who don’t care about NUMBERS are the churches UNWILLING to CHANGE, WORK and REACH the WORLD!
• The church has been “cruising around” for years.  We have more power under the hood (of car) than we know.
• t would BLOW up if we would just be willing to obey God and CHANGE, WORK and REACH!

Perry was ON FIRE during this session.  If you can view it on the web (www.newspring.cc)… DO IT!

Now onto CM breakout, I will try to blog notes from this too.  It should be AWESOME!

“See ya” at the next session!

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 12th, 2009 at 10:36 am and is filed under NEWSPRING. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.