Redefine your evangelistic starting point.  God responding to the cries of a broken world.  That’s the starting point.  “I’ve heard your people crying.”  Exodus 3:6  When we stop hearing the cries of people…

Identify God’s response to the brokenness of your own life.  When we begin to feel like we’re fixed and we are now fixers…we’ve missed the point.  We’re still being fixed.  We haven’t arrived.  If we don’t know that, evangelism becomes information.  Not transformation.

Move from a basketball christian to a football christian.  When you’re a football player you run through the line, get knocked down, pounded, get back up and are ready to run again.  When you’re a basketball player you only have to be touched to go to the line for a free shot.

Identify and love the brokenness of the people in your church.  People are crying all around our churches.  People are crying in our cities.  We need to know it’s there and we need to do something about it.   “The only thing that travels faster than light is darkness running away.”

Reestablish your evangelistic priority.  Who’s your neighbor?  The church is the only organization ever created for the people who aren’t in it yet.  What will kill your ministry, your church, will be keeping it to yourself.  What won’t kill it?  Doing what Jesus did.  Going where He went.  Being with the people that He went to be with.

Oh my…I wish you had been here.

Dr. Will Miller was hilarious last night.  I have to tell you that that is a HUGE understatement.  When he was telling about driving someone else’s beater car I very nearly wet my pants, which according to Bill Search is about the bladder (as opposed to the bowels as John Burke mentioned).  Ever seen Will Miller?  Click here to see a short clip of a previous talk.

Creative Community for Emerging Generations:  Ten principles:

Embrace the individual.  This generation is a complex one culturally.  It will be a relational model that reaches this generation.  Keep some great questions in your back pocket as you sit down with someone.  “Which fruit of the spirit is working most in your life right now?”

Give young adults a platform.  Give them a voice in communicating the vision.  Beyond coming up with the vision…they need to be able to communicate it.  They don’t need their questions answered every time.  But they need them validated.

Harness the power of creativity.  There might be all kinds of ways that this generation would want to do community.  Bumpers and gutters are necessary.  It has to be relational.  It has to be missional.

Validate community where it already exists.  Church is the only place in the world that thinks it has to provide people with friends.  For example, turn missions groups into small groups.

Make your groups experiential, intellectual, and relational.  Not all at once, but over time.  Variety is a key.  Multiple ingredients.  Dinner together?  Have everyone bring their favorite cereal!

Make discipleship non-linear.  They want to invited to come on a journey.  An adventure.  With you.

Discover a rhythm.  Semesters give NCC three times that they can focus on a launching strategy.  They pay for a once a year event for leaders, off site, completely paid for, high interest.  There is a sense of anticipation.

Harness the power of story.  Cool use of video to promote groups like alpha.  Coolest thing at NCC; The Story.  Larger environments where people can come and check out groups.  The Story is tackling the entire Bible in 3 nights.  Not just people’s story…but also the story of the Bible.

Harness the power of technology.  The Reformation was influential because of the power of the printing press.  Emerging generations are getting their theology from music and movies.  God at the Billboards and God at the Box Office are two series that NCC does every year.  This is what Paul did in Athens.  Why wouldn’t we do that now by talking about some of the songs and movies that are right on the front of mind anyway?  While we need to be creating culture, we need to know what to say and how to say it.  Launced a group called The River for sexual and relational brokenness.  Promoted by video.  Video is a gradually increasing flood of one liners that express feelings.  Soundtrack?  Starts with dripping sound.  Progresses to the sound of a raging river.

Be you.  You don’t have to be cool or hip.  You do have to be you.  Not an excuse to be a major dork.  Be you.

Sesson wrapped with a great video about baptism.  You can see it right here. Watch it at your own risk.  If you’re not someplace where this could happen…well, you may need to make it happen.  Whenever I see this kind of thing it always pulls me back to my days at Fellowship of The Woodlands.

Batterson’s story is really engaging.  The beginning of National Community Church in Washington D.C. is a really good story.  Don’t know it?  You can check out Mark’s blog right here. It was one of the first blogs I ran across a little over 3 years ago.  Great way to eavesdrop on a really cool story.

Heather Zempel, Wineskins for Discipleship, is the Discipleship pastor at National.  She’s talking about the relationship between systems and outcomes and doing a cool demonstration (with assistant) with dirty pennies dipped in lemon juice, water with salt and vinegar, or ketchup.  While she talks about the catalysts that push forward the growth of community this experiment is going on.  A wild looking guy with a twist of Einstein is doing the experiment.  It’s a very good performance art way of engaging the crowd.  Turns out that any of the solutions/ingredients will make the penny shiny.  Good way of showing that if the penny getting shiny is the goal…there’s more than one way to do it.

First core value is “everything is an experiement.”

“Sometime a long the way we stop doing ministry out of right brain creativity and start doing it out of left brain memory.”  “We believe that there are ways of doing church that no one’s thought of yet.”  We try to approach everything we do in an experimental fashion.  No matter how God ordained your vision is there will always be people who don’t want to do it that way.  When it’s only an experiment…

Group Life experiments:

1. Semester system.  They stopped trying to fight against the rhythms of Washington D.C.  Because their population is transient they’ve used semester to promote group life at three times.  They didn’t disband existing groups.  They simply went to a system that works for their environment.
2. Digital discipleship.  Started a blog Zonegathering.com that provides discipleship tools for their leaders.  (In fact, you can check it out and see a good recap Group Life 2008).
3. Bad experiment.  Used Guitar Hero tournament as a cool fundraiser but didn’t prescreen the lyrics.

Second core value: The modulus of elasticity.  Everything has a unique stress capacity, a yield point, where once it’s stretched to there it never will go back to its previous size or shape.  If you want to influence people, help them become like Christ, it can’t be one-size-fits-all.  A free-market system allows all kinds of groups for all kinds of people.

“Let God be as original with others as He was with you.”  Oswald Chambers

Third core value: Expect the unexpected.  Spiritual growth is a conundrum.  When a routine becomes a routine you have to change the routine to keep it from becoming routine.  Change of pace plus change of place equals change of perspective.  From a physical exercise standpoint you have to change the routine if you want to continue to take shape.

Bought a bunch of Five Guys Burgers and Fries

Fourth core value: Love people when they least expect it.  John 1:14 Jesus was full of grace and truth.  Honest no matter what.  Loving no matter what.  People need the truth.  It’s not what they need to be politically correct.  Doing a series called The Elephant in the Church.  Love them when they least expect it and least deserve it.

Session starts with a hilarious rendition of a small group experience through the eyes of the Wizard of Oz characters (ala Mystery Science Theater 3000).  That was HILARIOUS.

And so it begins.  Bill Donahue warming up the crowd.  Telling the story of how it all began 10 years ago.  Good times.  I always wonder about any conference where they’d have me do a breakout, but this a.m. was a lot of fun.  Wish you’d been here.

If you want to follow along with the conference I’ll be posting after each session.  Also, you can check out the Group Life blog.

Love being at this conference.  Running into a lot of friends…from everywhere.

Great drama…love these moments…and then comes John Burke.

What is the center line in the architectural plan that we’re supposed to be building?  Jesus to Martha, “Only one thing is necessary.”  JB, “That must be the center line?  That must be what is essential.”

Jesus’ last word?  John 13:34-35: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

Center line of group life?  Love one another.  How do you love one another?  Stay connected to God.  What happens when you stay connected?  Fruit happens.  Is it easy to stay connected?  No.  The easiest thing to do is drift.