#WiBo Reflections: Notes
by Rob ~ May 24th, 2008. Filed under: WhiteBoard.Early on I realized that I could neither write nor type fast enough to keep up with the great things that the WiBo speakers were saying. So…..I am grateful for the host of folks who were also taking notes and who posted them on their blogs. Here’s what I was able to capture….it’ll probably be duplication of what lots of other folks have posted, but perhaps there’ll be something that I captured that others missed…..
Mark Batterson
- The further away from home you are the more of an expert you are. I’m 15 miles from home. What does that make me?
- The longer I do ministry, the more I covet the favor of God
- The favor of God is God doing for you what you cannot do for yourself
- Isaiah 55:8-9
- Our best thoughts on our best day are about 13.2 billion light years shorter than God’s best for us
- Systematic theology is an oxymoron
- Our best discoveries will be amended because we will make additional discoveries that will cause our paradigms to shift
- Everybody here underestimates God by 13.2 billion light years
- Out dreams are too small
- When was last time we confessed the smallness of our dreams?
- We live as though God is not part of the equation of our lives.
- We are repeating the past, not dreaming, and our ministry is not out of imagination but out of memory.
- We cannot allow memory to overtake imagination.
- If you don’t have any holy discontent in your heart, go on a mission trip.
- I would rather have 1 God idea than 1,000 good ideas.
Vince Antonucci
- If churches are exploding with growth and church planting is growing exponentially, yet how is it that church attendance is averaging 8 million LESS than it was 20 years ago?
- We are reaching people. We just aren’t reaching lost people. We are reaching saved people.
- Only 2% of the churches in America are reaching people through conversion growth
- We get the honor of being the answer to Jesus’ prayer for workers in the harvest
- We are to seek and save the LOST (not the misplaced!). Does this make our heart beat faster?
- What breaks our heart?
- What’s our ambition?
- Why did we go into ministry?
- Are we willing to go to where lost people are?
- How do we define success?
- The most messed up people in every town wanted to hang out with Jesus. Are the most messed people in our communities wanting to hang out with us?
Tim Stevens
- Reality# 1: Churches are not impacting their communities
- Churches ARE the problem. They are getting in the way of people coming to Christ!
- Reality# 2: Spiritual interest is growing in our culture
- In the church we are answering questions no one is asking
- Jesus reserved his harshest words for religious leaders
- Acts 17–Paul celebrated their search for spiritual reality
- Paul started with an idol to an an unknown god and connected the dots to Jesus
- We tell stories of how it used to be rather than how God can connect to their lives in the here and now
- We must leverage culture so that people will forever be changed by the Gospel of Jesus
Darrin Patrick
- Romans 1:8-25
- Historical theological understanding of Genesis 3 = “The Fall”
- Paul’s understanding = “The Great Exchange”–we exchanged the Glory of God for the created thing
- We exchanged the object of our worship
- We worship God or something in creation as god
- Worship is the natural response to whatever captivates us
- If we have a problem loving people or a problem walking in the light, then we have a problem of idolatry
- Anything can be a potential idol
- The Bible doesn’t treat idolatry like any other sin
- Idolatry is the sin beneath the sin
- “An idol is anything in my life that occupies the place that should be held by God alone.” -David Martyn-Lloyd Jones
- We are very insightful about other peoples’ idols but clueless about our own
- Our idols become evident when they are threatened.
- Idols hide deep in our hearts. They are under most sins, not the surface sins.
- Alfred Adler says there are 4 basic motivations of all human behavior:
- Power
- Comfort
- Approval
- Control
- Are these our idols?
- (He showed a really cool trampoline graphic about repentance and faith and surface sins and root sin)
- We walk around thinking that God is punishing us for our sin. This is theological heresy. God punished our sin in Jesus.
Mark Dever
- Greetings to the “untucked generation” from the “tucked-in generation”
- (Dever, however, was NOT wearing a tie….there were some bets lost on that one)
- There is something about the Trinitarian God of the Bible that requires a community to interact with and reflect the very character of God
- God’s Word builds God’s Church
- Propositional truth is not at odds with a personal relationship with God
- We should never lose the distinction between the church and the world. The distinction is the transformed lives of the members of the church.
- Southern Baptist churches are known for carnality and nominalism
- The Church IS what God is doing to draw people to Himself.
- The only program of evangelism we use at CHBC is to try to BE the Church.
- Don’t think of our main gathering (viz. worship) as an event.
- Worship is not an event to be produced, but a community to be cultivated.
- How many of Paul’s letters in the New Testament ask for a numerical report from the churches? NONE!
John Burke
- In this midst of his church plant, God asked him, “Am I enough for you?”
- Is God enough for us?
- John 15
- Stay connected. Fruit happens.
- We need a strategy to help our communities to do this.
- Our strategy is simple–so simple a child could do it. Question is, DO WE DO IT?
- Grace is the foundation for growth
- Phrase repeated in Scripture (OT & NT): “He who has ears to hear, let him hear…” But we must be taught how to listen
Perry Noble
- Mark 3
- Ministry is the toughest job on the planet
- (Perry shared a hilarious story of being on a treadmill at the gym) How many days do we fell like we’re on the treadmill?
- When the treadmill ramps up, we will quit or we will disqualify ourselves morally
- 1. We’ve got to understand that we are called–Mark 3:13
- Are we doing what we are because we are called or in reaction to something
- example: church planters who are called versus those who are pissed off at a senior pastor and refuse to be under authority and go out to start their own church rather than submit to authority
- God wants us because He has something so unique that He needs done that no one else in the world could do it
- We must remember that we are called and we must honor that calling even when we don’t feel like it.
- Are we doing what we are because we are called or in reaction to something
- 2. We must understand our priorities–Mark 3:14
- to be with Him
- if ministry outstretches our time with Him, then we’ve missed our calling
- to preach
- to have authority over demons (I swear he said “deacons” then corrected himself!)
- we must quit being afraid of men and start standing in the authority of our call from God
- There is way too much imitation in the church and not enough revelation.
- God is not green. Kermit is.
- Deacons are necessary for the Christmas program, when you need a cigarette lighter to light the candles.
- Do we want to be a prostitute the rest of our lives or will we be faithful to the calling and authority of God?
- to be with Him
- 3. We’ve got to understand temptation. Mark 3:16-19
- Judas walked closer to Jesus than any of us ever will, but he didn’t finish because he gave in to temptation.
- At this point I quit writing….I couldn’t keep up any longer.
Ed Stetzer
- We’ve got to move through doubt to faith
- Somewhere along the way we got the idea that it is not OK to have doubt
- You can’t get to faith if you don’t go through doubt
- John 14–Thomas didn’t get it.
- Don’t be afraid to say to God, “I don’t get it!”
- If our Gospel ends when we cross a bridge to a full and meaningful life, we have misunderstood the Gospel
- Saying to a lost person “I don’t know” is not a sign of immaturity, but a sign of maturity.
- Jesus didn’t come to give us answers. He came to give us Himself.
- Jesus doesn’t always speak happiness to our situation, but he does always speak peace
- Thomas missed the meeting when Jesus gave the Great Commission, and yet he was the one who went furthest (geographically from Jerusalem [to India]) to share the Gospel. Something happened in Thomas’ life.
- The doors were locked, yet Jesus appears.
- Jesus = Lord = He calls the shots in my life
There were probably other points that I Twittered throughout the day…..but these are the things I copied into my notes.
All the speakers were phenomenal! It’s going to take me a whole lot longer to process what they said than it did for them to say it!



