I feel I am called to be a pastor. But I enjoy good church leadership conferences. I thought this one would give me some insight into the DNA of my new church, Vintage21, as they are an Acts29 regional hub for church planting. I am certainly not worthy to debate, add anything to, or comment intelligently about what I saw or heard. I'm just a regular guy, called by God to serve him in the local church in some capacity.
The speakers at this conference were several Acts29 network pastors, including Scott Thomas, Chan Kilgore, Daniel Montgomery and our local pastor, Tyler Jones. Additionally, we had the Acts29 founder and church plant hero second only to Jesus, pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, Mark Driscoll (pictured), as well as renowned missionality author and LifeWay staff member, Ed Stetzer.One distinctive of this conference is that I probably heard the words "Jesus" and "gospel" more times in the last 2 days, than in my prior 42 years combined. It was a good thing, and I will blog more about that later. I've walked out of other conferences fired up and energized. From this one, I walked out stirred up and mesmerized.
In this post, I am just going to include some funny and/or clever comments I heard today from Driscoll and Stetzer...
- Mark Driscoll (MD): I am a functional charismatic with a seatbelt
- MD: Elder should be able to teach and connect everything to Jesus.
- MD: Elder likes his bible - that's his default source for answering questions
- MD: pastor should not touch the church secretary or church money
- MD: discouraged use of website sermons - should study bible until it convicts you, and then preach out of your own experiences - this will show church body that YOU too have applied the scripture to yourself.
- MD: preach not for information, but transformation
- MD: church planters are not wusses
- MD: church planters are farmers who yell at the dirt "GROW!" (2 Tim 2:6 The hardworking farmer should be the first to receive a share of the crops.)
- MD: key characters of church planter: patience & humility
- Ed Stetzer (ES): Churches should be biblically faithful, culturally relevant, countercultural communities
- ES: churches should be "seeker-comprehensive" because sometimes the gospel is not "sensitive"
- ES: preaching against culture is like preaching against a house - it's where you live - it has sin and it has righteousness
- ES: if a pastor rejects (or does not embrace) accountability, it is a mark of immaturity, not leadership
- MD: First things a young pastor should do: 1. get a wife 2. read the bible 3. sleep with wife 4. get her to read the bible.
- MD: key attributes of a church plant core group: leaders, servants, givers, gatherers. Don't plant a church with needy people such that they consume the church's resources (like all the pastor's time, for counselling)... they need to be leaders, servants, givers, and gatherers.
- MD: roles of a pastor in priority order... Christian first, then husband, then father, then pastor.
- MD or ED (can't remember which): every sermon needs to include some tie to the over-arching theme of the gospel... the gospel is the storyline of the bible
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