Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Exponental 2010

I am in Orlando, FL right now with out staff team at the Exponential Conference. It's an annual conference for church planters and pastors. I have to admit that my attitude going into it was not great.

We have just come off a whirlwind of back-to-back events at our church that began in February and ended with our big 4th anniversary celebration last weekend. In between has been a lot of stress, overtime, and being apart from my family, even when I was physically with them. At that same time we were buying and moving in to a new house, doing our taxes, teaching a class on marriage, and dealing with a series of stomach viruses that swept through the house, not once but twice! Now, don't get me wrong, there was also a lot of cool things happening: God was moving and growing me and my marriage, He was doing amazing things in our church body. There were plenty of good times along with the pressure, but the last thing on earth I wanted to do after all that is be away from my family for four days at a conference for pastors. I mean, seriously.

But in her Spirit-filled, graceful way, my wife reminded me to stop and ask God what He wanted to show me at the conference. She is so wise! I love that God put her with a doofus like me; I benefit from her wisdom and she gets to learn patience and long-suffering and mercy. It's a win-win! :-) So I asked God to show me what He has for me.

Okay, so it's only one day in and already it's been really great! Yesterday, I got to sit at the feet of one of the biggest influencers in my life, Matt Chandler, the lead pastor of the Village Church in Texas. Don't know if you know what all is going on in his life, but you can read about it just about anywhere. This dude is AMAZING. His wisdom, his knowledge of scripture, and how to practically apply it in personal discipleship is second to none. He is very funny but very serious at the same time. He will lay a truth on you that will just lay you out but you will be laughing at the same time. And he doesn't water anything down or pull any punches. I highly recommend his podcast as part of your regular intake of truth and wisdom from the Word.

Biggest takeaway from his workshops yesterday was this nugget: He was speaking on Matthew 13 about the parable of the sower and the seed. He was breaking down Jesus' explanation of it to the disciples in verses 18-23, as to what the different soils and scenarios meant. And he was framing it for church planters and pastors, who are sowers of the Gospel. We can become very frustrated and disappointed when people don't respond to the teaching or when our people fall away or don't seem to get it.

So he gets to verses 20 - 21:
As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy, yet he has no root in himself, but endures for a while, and when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately he falls away.

Chandler breaks it down this way: This is the guy who hears it, gets it, gets saved, gets baptized, plugs in, then a year later falls off the wagon and disappears. Why? Because he doesn't make the connection between the Gospel and his suffering, He doesn't connect the dots between the Gospel and persecution. Chandler says pastors have to make that connection for their people so they will be ready when suffering comes:

"Suffering is coming for your people. It just is. You can't protect them from it, but you can prepare them for it."

Isn't that huge? Isn't how we see and interpret and handle our suffering just ginormous in our relationship with God. Otherwise we think He is out to get us or doesn't care or maybe isn't really there. My thought is this: if we fail our people in this, we are handing them over to the Enemy. We are setting them up to fall away and disappear.

Also, I got to meet Matt and shake his hand and personally thank him for being faithful. I got to look him in the eye and tell him what a difference his faithfulness has made to me and my wife. Matt has terminal brain cancer and will die, when is anyone's guess. I just didn't want to miss an opportunity to tell him what he means to me while I had the chance. It was great. He is speaking this morning and I can't wait to hear what he has to say.

There is a ton more but I gotta run and grab breakfast real fast before we leave. Later!