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Archive for the ‘Conferences’ Category

Last week at the Verge Conference, Francis Chan shared a video entitled The Big Red Tractor as an allegory for the contemporary church.  Enjoy!

The Big Red Tractor from Jacob Lewis on Vimeo.

Quick reflection on Verge2010:  Wow!

Was like eating prime rib followed by the smoothest crème brûllé you’ve ever consumed! Dense! Rich! Sweet! Filing!

We saw God’s Spirit move in one of the most intense, melt-your-face-off worship times this afternoon. After Francis Chan spoke and Aaron Ivey led us in worship, nobody moved.  Almost everybody just stayed where they were. Then we had about 15 more minutes of spontaneous praise and worship. Was one of the sweetest times I have ever seen!

The speakers were all intense. Much to digest. I took like 33 pages of notes. Glad all the main sessions and break-outs (all of them, so we can “attend” the ones we didn’t attend) will all be posted online.  Many new friends made,  many blog and Twitter friends met face-to-face, and many old friendships renewed.

Bottom line: God is moving across our nation and around our world. But if you’re expecting that the next move of God is going to look just like the last one, you’ll miss it.

So…get your head out of the sand (or wherever it is) and

Look at the nations and watch—
and be utterly amazed.
For I am going to do something in your days
that you would not believe,
even if you were told.

Habakkuk 1:5, NIV

It’s hard to believe it’s Sunday again already!

• Had a great day in worship today!
• We had a ton of visitors in the service, and a ton of kids in Children’s Church!
• Today we talked about the Kingdom of God and the Lordship of Christ.
• And yes, I did say that the Kingdom of God is like a lady’s purse.
• You’ll have to listen to the audio to get the whole thing.
• It’s hard to believe that Advent begins next Sunday.
• I’m excited about our new message series that we’re starting: Come Home for Christmas.
• I’m praying that folks will take advantage of this series to invite their unchurched and dis-connected friends to come to church.
• This past week was a wild week!
• Monday-Wednesday I was in Fredericksburg for the annual meeting of the Baptist General Association of Virginia.
  • Got to talk to a LOT of people about AngelFood Ministries, and that was exciting.
  • I also got to see a lot of friends in ministry across the state that I don’t get to see very often.
  • But I am also concerned about some things I’m observing in our life together that do not represent positive trends.
• Thursday and Friday I was in the DC area to attend a Church Planter Roundtable sponsored by the Association of Related Churches (the ARC).
• The event was held at Ebenezer’s Coffee House, which is operated by National Community Church.
• I met up with Ross Middleton, who is the Campus Pastor at Ebenezers, for lunch, and then hung out for awhile at Ebenezer’s before the roundtable got started.
• The Roundtable was awesome. Billy Hornsby and the folks from the ARC presented an incredibly challenging and inspiring program.
• The host pastor for the event was Mark Batterson.  Mark is an incredibly gracious host and servant, and it was an honor to just hang around and listen and watch him be Mark. He gave us the “official” tour of his office, and even took a few of us on the “unofficial tour” up to his prayer watchtower up on the roof of Ebenezer’s.
• There were some incredibly talented and passionate church planters who were at the Roundtable. I am in awe of how God orchestrates the interchanges that happen at these events: I met a church planter and his wife from just across town that I had heard about but couldn’t get in touch with, and I met a pastor of an 85 year old Assemblies of God church in Pennsylvania that is in a situation similar to ours that is pursuing revitalization.
• I came back with my mind teeming with ideas and possibilities, and some clearer vision for our work at Cradock.
• I’m looking forward to this week: Coming off being out of the office for a week and trying to cram four days’ work into three is always fun.
• Family is rolling in for the holiday, and we’ll celebrate Caitlin’s birthday later this week, so it’s going to be full of fun times!
• If I don’t get a chance to post again before, y’all have a great Thanksgiving Holiday!

Earlier in the week I said I had planned to live-blog the ARC’s Church Planter Roundtable I am attending up in DC.  But….wow….this is more like eating fine prime rib.

So to be able to get the most out of this experience and be fully present in the moment and able to hear what God is saying, I’m shuttling those plans.

Give me a little time to digest and I’ll share more soon.

Well…it’s been a busy week and weekend.

• We had Flood, Funeral and Food.
• Unless you’ve been living in a cave, you’re aware we had a rather significant storm pass thru this week that left us with substantial flooding.
• We’re now hearing of folks in Portsmouth who have lost everything. Heartbreaking!
• If you follow my Twitter feed, you know we also had a long-time member of the congregation who went home to be with the Lord this week.   Her funeral was on Friday.
• Our AngelFood distribution was on Saturday, and, despite some logistical uncertainties going into the day, everything worked out great.
• I had a meeting scheduled for last week that we pushed out to Monday of this week because everything was shut down on Thursday due to the storms.
• After that meeting, I hit the road for Fredericksburg to attend the annual meeting of the Baptist General Association of Virginia (where I am now).
• From here, I’m headed up to Washington to participate in the Church Planter Roundtable sponsored by the Association of Related Churches (ARC).
• It’s being held at Ebenezer’s Coffee House, which is run by National Community Church, where Mark Batterson is the pastor.
• Today’s been a full day of meetings and great conversations with folks in the exhibit hall. Talked about AngelFood Ministries a LOT!
• I’m outta here. Hope to live-blog from the Church Planter Roundtable!
• Later!