The first couple of days this week, I’ll be at the Velocity conference at Mountain Lake Church. Great conference, and outstanding clients of our executive search firm. Velocity is all about church planting, and if you know Shawn Lovejoy, you know that’s his heart.
Tony and I will get the chance be speakers alongside Rick Warren, Matt Stone, Shawn, Steven Furtick, and a whole bunch of other great guys. In preparing for that conference, I’ve been studying what the Bible has to say about church planting.
Here’s my conclusion – it’s not revolutionary:
God uses the old things, but His movement is all about planting new things. When there was nothing, He created something. When the Law wasn’t enough, He created a New Testament in Jesus. When my life was a wreck, He planted a new heart. And the story all ends with a New Heaven, a New Earth, and a new and restored body for you and me.
Over the centuries, when He has launched movements in the church, He has planted new epicenters of the faith. In fact, we are the only religion I know of with a portable epicenter. We have no Mecca, Temple, or pilgrimmage. Rather, God moves the center of the faith into the new thing He’s doing.
God is into the new thing. It’s His heartbeat, and it’s where His best work happens.
So here’s the tough question He prompted in me:
“What new thing will you let me do in you today William?”
That’s hard. I get less flexible every day: whether it’s my joints or my habits. Doing new things gets harder as I get older. So I’m stretching today. Looking for the new thing. Trying to answer His question.
How would you answer?
good post,bro…have fun at the conference!
Great post! Scary to really tkae to heart, pray, and act accordingly. I’m actually at Velocity too. May try and stop in to your talk.
Thanks for the post.
Here is my comment. Here is a letter I submitted to my congregation who is in search of a full time minister.
Address to the Sunset Elders:
I want you to know you have my full support and prayers for your guidance during the pulpit selection for Sunset Church of Christ.
I am certain God wants Sunset to continue to fulfill the Church’s role in continuing his eternal plan, his doctrine shared, and his love demonstrated.
I would hope the Eldership at Sunset would continue to make world evangilism it’s priority, with local missions and maturing the local body in sound doctrine as criteria for the selection of a pulpit minister.
Sunset is unique in that God has choosen her to be his one and only bride, a church that reaches far beyond our United States borders, this is the heritage of Sunset.
As I look toward the future, I see a passing of the word, passing of leadership, and passing of responsibility to a baby boomer generation. Sunset has passed down from the likes of Cline Paden and his generation
a rock bed foundation which will never be shaken at the corner of 34th and Memphis in Lubbock, Texas. The baby boomer generation of which most of the present Eldership is composed of, has an opportunity to expand
and fortify the church upon which that former foundation has been laid. The pulpit selection of a minister for Sunset for the next decade of the 2010’s is really a simple one, who is most qualified to continue the
evangisistic outreach to a globalized, interconnected, shifting population of souls around the world.
If the next decade beginning 2010 is to be a starting point for a furtherance of the Gospel the baby boomer generation only has about 3 decades to make certain Sunset will be an outreaching, loving, and edifying
church, and she continues in the work of teaching, maturing, and mentoring the next generation to continue God’s eternal purpose at Sunset.
I personaly feel that the Pulpit misister is a vital piece of that mission at Sunset. The membership is going to support a minister who edify’s, encourages, and present’s the word of God in a manner that doesn’t
preach in a theatrecal manner, but one that instructs, offers hope, and encourages the membership to study the word, encourages the membership to live it’s Christianity in the work place and at home, and asks us
to share that message we have heard on Sunday to our world we contact that week.
Picture if you will, the corner of 34th and Memphis, as a light unto a dark city, Sunset has to make sure the light illuminates our minds, hearts, and mission of the members who support this calling. As you are
praying to God to help you select the right man to lead this congregation ask that the minister will preach in a way that will glorify’s him, enlightens the body about his son, Jesus, and is bold about
asking the congregation to live life in a manner that others would want to come and be a part of this opportunity.