i2 Conference: It’s AD 30 all over again (plenary session)

Reggie McNeal led this session. He related that while working with a church staff, he gave them the following:

Assignment: Leave staff meeting and find a Starbucks, mall or park bench and simply pray, “God, help me to see what you see.”

They came back and shredded the church agenda. It changed the church because it changed the staff. They realized that what God was concerned about was not what they had been concerned about.

What we discover when we go out “there” to bless people is that God has them lined up for us to relate with, influence, and be transformed by. I’m not trying to help you do church better but to simply get involved with what God is doing in our world. Get out there where God is doing things!
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i2 Conference: What are you looking at? (plenary session)

It’s Thurday a.m. at the i2 Conference at Fellowship Bible Church. Reggie McNeal is speaking today and is the author of several books and and is a Missional Leadership Specialist in Leadership Network in Dallas, Texas.

“Helping Christian leaders live more intentional lives (or persecuting them) is a subtext of my life.”

McNeal said, “I’m here to get you out of the church business; there’s not much future in it. I want to get you in the kingdom business. The single biggest development since the Reformation has also started overseas. It was news to a group of Lutheran pastors I spoke to a few days ago. People who “get it” have more in common with other people who “get it” from any tribe than people from within their own tribe who don’t. The movement is the rise of the missional church. People confuse the missional church with the emerging church, but it’s not about a new methodology.”

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I2 Conference: Team Ministry (consultation workshop)

Afternoons at Fellowship’s i2 Conference are oriented around “Consultation Workshops” with the main leaders at Fellowship. However, there was only one of me and 11 workshops, dadgummit. I chose the one on Team Ministry led by Teaching Pastor Bill Parkinson. Bill is also the main Team Building Leader at Fellowship.

Any pastor who has served one church for 30 years is to be applauded and revered, but when you have three co-pastors who have served in one church for 30 years, it’s a phenomenon. Bill Parkinson, Bill Wellons, and Robert Lewis have raised the bar so high for team leadership in American churches that it may not ever be surpassed. However, for those that would claim that the concept of team leadership does not work, one doesn’t have to look further than Little Rock.

It’s hard to detail Parkinson’s session this afternoon simply because there was so much content, so I’m going to try to hit some high notes. First of all, he highly recommended two resources, one as preparatory and one as preventative. The preparatory material was George Barna’s The Power of Team Leadership. The preventative material was The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. The latter was also recommended yesterday by Executive Pastor Ken Dean. Get the feeling that these leaders are on the same page and reading the same stuff?

Parkinson began by relaying people’s unbelievable expectations on church leaders in the 21st century. They are expected to be experts in everything, evangelists, community servants, adept at Bible teaching, full-time ministers to every member (and members’ extended families), well-read, active in community life, present at all church events, informed politically, socially proficient, entertaining behind the pulpit, ready to be a cheerleader for every pet cause that comes around… well, you get the picture. However, studies have shown that 62% of pastors say that their primary gift is teaching. Only 12% claim that their primary gift is leadership.

Parkinson said the options for the church are few…

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i2 Conference: Bridge Building (plenary session)

Tim Lundy began by showing us an incredible video produced about The Call, which is a ministry seeking to mobilize foster parents in Central Arkansas led by some inspired lay leaders in Fellowship. It is one example of the way Fellowship seeks to build bridges of hope, love and ministry into the community. The Call has a powerful mission: To have no waiting children in foster care in Central Arkansas by 2008.

Types of Bridge Building…

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I2 Conference: Past, Present, and Future (plenary session)

Tim Lundy shared in both of this morning’s main sessions. In this session on Past, Present, and Future, he shared the central model of I2 (Irresistible Influence), noting that it is based on Ephesians 4.11-13.

It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

Pastors and leaders are given to the church to equip God’s people to do the work of the ministry. Unleash the people. The central leadership model is one of team. No one person can fully equip the body of Christ.

In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven. (Matthew 5.16)

Scriptural Overview: It starts with Jesus.

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I2 Conference: Four Questions for Spiritual Leaders (plenary session)

Tuesday night’s opening session was powerful. While most of us expected some kind of high-powered, high-octane message related to Fellowship’s theme of a church of irresistible influence, Tim Lundy, Directional Leader and Teaching Pastor, offered a much more personal, and I think profound approach for the 400+ attendees.

With pastors, staff, and lay leaders present from more than 30 states and 7 countries, Lundy addressed to personal, spiritual life of the leader. Laughing about the fact that most of us probably came for “answers more than we did for questions,” Lundy posed the following four:

• Do you have a personal or a professional relationship with God?
• Are you living the Spirit-filled life? (from Ephesians 5.18-21)
• What do you do with your doubts?
• Do you still have hope?

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I2 Conference: Strategic Planning (consulting workshop)

I was hoping to do some liveblogging from the conference today, but those of you sitting on the edge of your seat at the 2:00 p.m. start time were sadly disappointed. As was I. Although there was a wireless signal, I didn’t think ahead of time to get a password, so here I am now typing in notes from this afternoon’s plenary session.

Entitled Strategic Planning: Turning Vision into Reality, the session was led by Ken Dean, Fellowship’s new (as of October) Executive Pastor Ken Dean. Ken was brought on board to help steer and direct the church administratively.

Though much of Ken’s session was full of principles that I’ve read (or even thought) before, it was still helpful to be reminded and to hear it from him. Part of leading any organization, I think, is the challenge of continual communication.

New people come into the organization (in my case, our church), and because they missed what has gone on before, they pick up in midstream, but although they look and sound like everyone who is already there, they do ot have the collective experience or knowledge of the organization’s history and culture.

Leaders, unfortunately, seem to develop organizational amnesia too often, forgetting the urgency and necessity of communicating again and again to old and new folks alike the culture, values and vision of the organization.

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Homeschooling… a strategic decision

Ouch. Poor Tim. 94 comments and counting. He opposes homeschooling, in most cases.

Fellowship Bible Church’s I2 Conference

I’m heading to Little Rock for the next three days of Fellowship Bible Church’s Church of Irresistible Influence Conference. I’ve missed it the the last two years, and this year I had told myself that I’m going, no matter what. The only thing I’m disappointed about is having to go without some of the other leaders from Journey. It’s always difficult to communicate an experience and what you’ve learned “after the fact.”

Fellowship Bible is probably one of the huge influences in how Journey is structured and shaped. I grew up in Little Rock and actually threw the Arkansas Democrat to its three founding co-pastors, Bill Wellons, Bill Parkinson, and Robert Lewis. I’ve seen the church grow and thrive over the years into a literal mega-church, but to this day, you can set up an appointment (and sometimes even drop in) and have coffee with any of its leaders.

I hope to be attempting something I’ve seen others do… liveblogging. If there’s a hotspot, I’ll try to do some blogging live from the conference to keep all you regulars up to speed.

For those of you left behind in Monticello or its vicinity, make sure to try out Journey’s D-Group! It’s been awesome so far, and there’s only three weeks left.

David Copperfield messes with my mind…

Click here and let me know if he guesses what’s on your mind…

Many thanks to my grandmother-in-law for totally freaking me out today.

What kind of parenting do you practice?

George Barna has a book out called Revolutionary Parenting. It looks to be a powerful study and even more alarming call for transformation in Christians’ parenting styles. In it, he identifies three parenting styles:

• Parenting by default, which he says is “the path of least resistance”
• Parenting by trial and error
• Revolutionary parenting, which he says is simply taking the scriptures at face value where they address parenting and seeking to apply them diligently to life and family practices

For the first three commenters, I’ll buy and have the book shipped to you. But here’s the caveat..

1. You have to write a blog review of the book on your own blog (If you have no blog, your comment won’t count.)
2. Implement one principle learned in the book in your parenting style (telling us in your blog entry what you’re going to do)
3. Link back to this post in your blog entry
4. And pass the book on to a friend, listing its destination in your blog entry.

Happy commenting… and parenting.

Unchurched number in U.S. reaches 100 million

According to the Barna Research Group, the number of unchurched folks in the U.S. (those who haven’t attended a religious service in the past six months) surpassed 100 million last year. this included teens and children.  It’s enough to make the unchurched population the 12th most populated nation in the world…

To put that figure in context, if the unchurched population of the United States were a nation of its own, that group would be the twelfth most populated nation on earth (trailing only China, India, the churched portion of the United States, Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Russia, Japan and Mexico).

Another interesting study has just been released in a book which you can find in my Amazon wish list, Jim and Caspar Go to Church. It chronicles a former pastor and an avowed atheist as they visit more than a dozen different churches across America and then offers some conclusions, which include:

• An alarming amount of Christians are indifferent towards non-Christians
• Privatized faith far exceeds the notion of communal faith.
• Overemphasis on programmed religious activities andworship performance rather than on helping people experience the presence of God
  
• Virtually no “marching orders” are given; church members are allowed to simply come and attend with little call for action
• Unwillingness to grapple with tough questions and to allow divergent opinions or dissent

A runny chihuahua

For those of you with weak stomachs, stop now. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Now, on with the post.

My daughter’s chihuahua is named Fancy, Fancy Hairbow, to be precise. When she’s in trouble, which with our daughter is rare, Adelyn will yell, “Fancy Hairbow! You get over here right now!” However, the chihuahua has earned a special place in my life. I’ve discovered that there’s a certain place on a chihuahua that is a perfect match for the end of my Nikes. Just kidding! Please erase PETA from your speed dial.

Honestly though, there’s not much love lost between Fancy and me. I guess picking up poop after three years is getting old. Oh, and there’s Fancy’s love of any rug in the house. And the fact that she barks incessantly at any noise inside or outside. And the fact that she occasionally can knock out a full grown man with her odor.  (Fancy, not Adelyn).

You can imagine my dismay Tuesday when upon letting Fancy back inside…

(Her being outside should mean, for any normal dog, an opportunity to relieve herself. However, for this particular creature, being outside means barking. Barking at the cat, barking at visitors, barking at the UPS lady, barking at whatever.)

… I noticed that her bootie was brown. Now, Fancy is normally a light brownish-tan, but this color was definitely a dukey brown. There was a good reason for that, because upon closer examination, I confirmed quickly that it was dukey. Runny dukey. Yep, chihuahua diarrhea. Can life get any worse?

Adelyn, who professes an undying love and devotion for this, this animal, suddenly would have nothing to do with Fancy. A few moments later, it was me, Super Dad and Chihuahua Hater who was spraying Fancy’s dukey bottom off with the sprayer in the kitchen sink. Yep. Then I Cloroxed the whole area.

From that moment forward, Fancy took a steady nosedive into lethargy. She would not get up, she would not bark, and she stayed away from the rest of us. It was wonderful.

However, when Wednesday rolled around, and Fancy was showing no improvement, Carolyn decided that Fancy needed to go to the vet. Of course, that was a great decision for her; she had gone to Hot Springs with some girl friends for Kim Pigott’s birthday. It was an easy call for Carolyn to make from the spa.

So I dropped a pitiful Fancy off at the vet and went to the MEDC monthly board meeting at UAM. That afternoon, we picked her up from the vet after I grabbed the kids from school. The vet had called and said that I needed to come and hold Fancy so they could give her a shot. I wasn’t pleased. I paid $82 for meds, a shot, and a fecal parasite examination and still had to hold a crappy dog (yes, she’d done it again!) while the vet administered a shot.

The vet also did not provide poopy transportation protection. So, upon our arrival at home, I not only had to spray Fancy off and clean her again (and the kitchen sink’s sprayer is so handy), but I had to do the same with my floormat from the car which Fancy had browned like toast. (I used the hose outside for that; I still haven’t figured out why I didn’t clean Fancy off outside either. Mental lapse.)

Anyway, today Fancy seems to be recovering from her bacterial/booty problem. However, I think I need counseling. And a new kitchen sink.