stuff i think

last weekend's conference

It was a hoot sitting in with Steve Sjogren and others at last weekend's National Servant Evangelism Conference in Dayton, OH. I toyed with the idea of posting my outline and notes, but that seemed particularly goofball to me. Besides, the guy who was writing a book and asked for my outline made me a little queasy. Instead, I'll just toss up a few quotes from my Friday morning session.

Stuff I said....really:

"I interact with pastors from all over the US and across the theological spectrum and if I see any common factors that worry me, they are these: An overwhelming reliance on competency, a high value for safety, and the tendency to do what we can rather than what we should...all 3 which strike me as oddly contrary to the essence of the gospel."

"Our problem as a whole is not unfulfilled dreams. It’s undreamed dreams. We really don’t let ourselves think about what might be because we’re afraid to get emotionally invested, in case what might be turns into what wasn’t, so we settle for what is and call it what shall be."

"If Jesus were a bean counter, Mel Gibson would have had no Passion to produce, because where practicality rules, there is no passionate story."

and finally, the comment that got the most feedback :)

"We didn’t intend to plant a little church, it just sort of ended up that way. This was back before it was hip to be an organic, missional, relational community, so we just thought we were bad church planters. It turns out that we were just ahead of the trend."