Plenary Session 5b -- Rick Warren

Rick is the author of the NY Times best seller, The Purpose Driven Life. He has also recently made it his goal to work to bring P.E.A.C.E. throughout the globe. Here's the highlight of his closing talk.

• Listen to your wife. She's often the Holy Spirit.


• Before you marry, opposites attract. After you marry, opposites attack.


• The purpose of marriage is not to make you happy; it is to make you holy.


• God gave you your wife not just for sex, not just to mother your children, but to be a counselor to you too. You don't have it all together. You need other people, especially your wife.


• God said, “I never called you to compare yourself to others. If you do, you will limit what I want you to do in your life. I want you to be you.”


• Growing churches require growing pastors. The moment you stop growing, the church will stop growing. Leaders are learners. The moment you stop learning, you'll stop leading.


• There is one thing you cannot delegate and that is faith in God.


• Rest and relaxation are so important that God put it into the Big 10 right next to murder and adultery.


• Don't call it a day off, call it a Sabbath. If you call it a day off, you'll violate it.


• Don't pay attention to critics and compliments. They are both like bubblegum: chew on it, but don't swallow it. You have to do your work for an audience of one.


• A great commitment to the Great Commandment and the Great Commission will grow a great church, Christian, community.

Plenary Session 5a -- Tim Keller

Tim Keller is a true inspiration to church planters. Tim and the congregation at Redeemer Presbyterian in Manhattan have taken the call to plant very seriously. In living it out the Great Commission, they have helped change the world. Here's the highlights from his part of the last session.

• It's pretty obvious that the DNA of a reproducing church has to be the gospel.



• The text says that gospel is power. It is the power of God in verbal form.



• The gospel completes the baseline cultural narrative of hearts and society. He's taking the baseline aspiration of the culture, he uses it to confront the culture, but also there is an invitation to repentance from the culture.



• The gospel is: In Jesus Christ, God emptied Himself and became a servant; In Jesus Christ, God atoned for our sins by substituting Himself for us; In the end times, God will come back to restore all things to Himself.



• God cares so much for His creation that He became materially and that He will restore it as well.
  

Plenary Session 4b -- Dave Ferguson

Dave Ferguson is the President of the Conference this year. He does an incredible job in leading the New Thing Network. He also wrote an incredible book entitled The Big Idea. The highlights of his talk:

• Community :: grow in their love for God, their love for God's people, their love for God's world.


• From the very beginning of time, God has been all about community.


• If it is what God is about, maybe it should be what we're about.


• The most important question might be: Are we coming together to create community? Are we loving God and loving God's world?


• Be the community. Be the church and go create community.

Plenary Session 4a -- Steve Andrews

Can't find a good picture, so you just get the highlights:

• There is a fresh wave of the Holy Spirit in the church. There is a spirit of openhandness that is catching like a virus. There is a spirit that is rejecting the competitive, isolationist attitude.
• Every man or woman has to hear the call of God, decide what that is and then give their lifeblood for that.
• Live with the vision in an unwavering way.
• There is an exploding number of people who believe in the Great Commission who don't care who gets the credit. They just want to see Jesus Christ lifted high.
• No ego leadership means that we will change the world by allowing others to surpass us in every way.

Breakout session -- Vince Antonucci

I confess. I have a church planter's crush on Vince Antonucci. Why? Ten reasons...

10. His church name has a golf term in it: FOREfront.

9. In a world of tall, handsome, perfect teeth church planters, I'm actually taller than Vince.

8. He has an awesome sense of humor.

7. He is a genuine great guy. I sent an email asking for some advice last fall and he quickly replied (multiple times). He wasn't too busy for others.

6. He told people not to join his church.

5. He has a church service in a bar. You could blame someone sleeping on them "passing out" and not on the fact that they didn't like the sermon.

4. He's really good at top 10 lists.

3. He is an incredible story teller.

2. He wrote an incredible book that I highly recommend.

1. He takes God's work very seriously. He doesn't take himself too seriously.

So I got to meet Vince in person today. Awesome experience. Here are some of the highlights of his talk:

• God is an uncivilized God. He acts in uncivilized ways. He calls people to act in uncivilized ways.


• If it seems like the right thing to do, it's probably not. If it seems like something that we can be criticized for, it's probably of God.


• Do what God is calling you to do, not what someone else is doing. The Bible says that God gives us visions and dreams. Perhaps God has a vision or dream for your ministry.


• To reach people who haven't been reached, you have to do something that has never been done.

So much more good stuff. I encourage you to look at his blog to catch even more details.

Plenary Session 2 -- Andy Stanley

The second followed the first, imagine that. Andy Stanley, the pastor at Northpoint in Atlanta, shared some of his thoughts. He mainly focused on the need to communicate vision. Here are the highlights:

• “I've never done what you've done. I know more about splitting churches than planting churches.”


• “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” That statement is the glue that holds all of it together.


• Vision is the mental picture of what could be, fueled by the passion for what should be. This isn't just what can be, but what has to be. Something needs be different.


• Memorable is portable and you need a portable vision.


• What is Barack Obama's vision for America? Change. We have a candidate who has done an incredible job of linking his vision to a word. You may say we don't know what it means. He'll have four or eight years to explain it if he wins.


• Define the problem. Offer a solution. Explain why and why now.


• Don't miss opportunities to systematically celebrate someone fleshing out the vision. Stories are powerful for communicating vision.

Exponential Conference -- Opening Session

Exponential has arrived. The volunteers are amazing. The worship team from 242 church are leading worship. They are amazing. I wish I could put some of our worship team, like Dan & Nick, in touch with them. They are great.

Ed Stetzer, one of the godfathers of North American church planting, opened the conference. He did a great job. Here's some of the highlights from his talk and the panel discussion he led.

• Many church plants are moving away from a denomination backing to more of a local church focus.


• Churches that plant aggressively: expect church planters to raise 50-80% of their support; provide less financial support to one church so they can support multiple churches; assign 10% or more of their overall budget to the church; had staff assigned to church planting; encourage their members to be involved in supporting church plants.


• Churches of 200 or less are 4 times more likely to plant than those of 1000 members or more.


• There's never a good time to plant a church, like there is never a good time to have children. Yet they are both very positive experiences.


• How awesome would it be if all our church plants were born pregnant.


• Neil Cole -- Your church is never better than the disciples you produce.


• Ron Sylvia -- Learn and return. What we learn from God, we are going to return to His kingdom work.


• Randy Pope -- They (people in the church) are going to seek what you celebrate.


• Ron Sylvia -- You are doing some of the greatest work. You are involved in the extreme sport of ministry.