Ignited

The Ignite Church Leader Conference at Pinelake was fantastic. I wished others from Meadowbrook would have been able to attend. A meager 20 bucks and a few hours was well worth the inspiration, encouragement, and teaching that was available at the conference.

Bob Russell was the keynote speaker. He has a gift for humor and insightful teaching. At these sort of events, it seems you always come away with a few catch phrases that speak immeasurable truth. Indeed I did catch a few such phrases. I'll share one principle Bob Russell shared that I think made the weekend worthwhile: Churches can always recover from bad decisions; Churches can never recover from stagnation and lack of action.

The lesson there? Be haphazard in your decision making and actions? Certainly not. As church leaders, we need to pray hard and long about big decisions. We need to carefully consider all aspects of an issue. And then after we have discussed it and prayed about, let's have faith that the Spirit is working among us and guiding us to the will of the Father. Let's make a decision and take bold action. When we see where God is leading us, let's be faithful to Him and follow. Let's dream so big and set goals so high that without God in them we will certainly fail.

Bob told the story of South East Christian Church in Louisville, KY. He also gave a disclaimer, saying certainly God isn't only interested in numbers. Humans have a tendency to measure success of churches by attendance and giving numbers. While those things are important, they certainly aren't the end goal. What God is really interested in is our faithfulness in following His leading.

Another highlight of the weekend was the worship time. It's good for me to get to worship on occasion without also thinking about the queues and mechanics that are naturally present in body worship (body worship is my new term for corporate worship - I've decided corporate worship connotes a feeling of some sort of sterile, organizational behavior tied to the business/corporate world; I believe the sentiment we are trying to express in the term "corporate worship" can better be expressed by "body worship" or "family worship"). It was refreshing.

I'll talk a bit about the breakout sessions I attended in my next post. They were just as encouraging.