Takeaways from the Churchplanters.com conference
Posted Wednesday, February 20th, 2008 at 9:01 am
Here is what I learned at the conference over the last 2 days:
From Shawn Lovejoy’s talk:
- Healthy leaders produce healthy churches and unhealthy leaders produce unhealthy churches.
- It take DISCIPLINE to be healthy.
- A lack of physical discipline will spill over into every area of your life.
- Being a disciplined leader gives the leader authority to lead.
From Steven Furtick’s talk:
- From the promise to the payoff there is always a costly process.
- Courageous leadership is not a product of cut and paste, it must come from the inside out.
- You can’t mimic someone else’s miracle.
- The difference between a day dream and a burning vision is the audacity to act.
From Darin Patrick’s talk:
- The first point of Luther’s 95 thesis was “all of life is repentance”.
- Pastors are often the worst repentors.
From Mark Batterson’s talk:
- Don’t play the comparison game, its just pointless.
- Success isn’t numbers, King Saul got hung up on that and it got him nowhere.
- Celebrate your failures because you learn a great deal from them.
The conference was very good, and possibly the best part was just networking and being encouraged by other church planters.
February 20th, 2008 at 10:13 am
Adam,
Most of that sounds good. However, since I wasn’t there and I am only operating from your bullet point notes above, could you possibly blog further on why the first set about Shawn Lovejoy isn’t/shouldn’t be taken as “works-based”? I mean, I literally got P.O’ed when I read “Being a disciplined leader gives the leader authority to lead.” Huh. I would’ve thought any number of things, including the elders, being called, being ordained, and most importantly GOD would give someone the authority to lead. To say that being disciplined gives authority to lead sounds incredibly dangerous, because it sounds completely like the “worldly” view of leadership, not servant leadership.
“You VILL follow me because I am die Uberpastor! Look at how disciplined I am!”
I figure that’s an unfair summarization of the presentation, so since you seem to be moved by it (you’ve posted snippets on it twice) I would appreciate if you could expand on it and flesh it out and tell us how discipline, or in fact anything we try to do on this planet by ourselves, without God involved, gives authority for leadership or in fact any other claim on being a Christ-follower? Not trying to be combative, just trying to wrestle with the bits coming from your notes.
Thanks!
Jim
February 20th, 2008 at 10:55 am
Jim,
Just so you know, I went to great lengths to say that self discipline is NOT self help. It’s self control, which is a fruit of the Spirit. So self-control being under God’s control…It IS a very spiritual relational exercise.
February 20th, 2008 at 11:29 am
Looking back at this mornings hurried post I realize that I should have expounded on this more. Obviously Shawn has clarified himself very well, but I will also be writing a post about this because Shawn’s talk about discipline has really impacted my spirit and my thinking.
February 20th, 2008 at 11:44 am
Shawn,
I figured there was much more and it was just because of coming through in “bullet points” that something got lost in translation, so to speak. I know I wouldn’t want anyone else taking MY notes from a conference, which are often just personal memory-joggers for whole implied frames of reference the speaker built up, and take that as “what the speaker said”. And I’ve read Adam long enough to know he wouldn’t have fallen off the wagon THAT easily.
Adam,
I look forward to it!
February 21st, 2008 at 5:54 pm
[...] Spiritual: Discipline Written by Adam on February 21, 2008 – 5:54 pm – Back on my post about takeaways from the churchplanters.com conference I was asked to write more about why focusing on discipline isn’t a works bases philosophy. So [...]