Last week I went to a conference at Mars Hill Bible Church in Grandville, MI. [That's where Rob Bell is if you didn't make the connection]. Great conference!!! It sounded like they were going to make an annual thing out of it. I'll be there next year!

It was like drinking from a fire hose! But, most of if stayed in my mouth. I don't know how God fit it all in there but it happened. We talked about the Eucharist, Rhythms of life, had Q & As Salvation, and some break out sessions.

I went to the student ministry break out. It felt pretty programmatic still, I was pretty disappointed actually. One thing that I did gather though was that they write their own small group curriculum and it has many different option for teaching in it. They described it like a choose your own adventure. They don't do much with the schools in the area, surprises me. They have it divided by 5th & 6th Grades, 7th & 8th and 9th-12th. They do their large group gatherings for HS once a month, the rest is small group time. The try to plug students into service opportunities that the rest of the church is doing, their trying not to reinvent the wheel.

The second break out I went to was being a good neighbor, about house churches. Nothing really revolutionary there. The have Grand Rapids split into 11 different neighborhoods and there are about 10 house churches per neighborhood. They help each neighborhood, I don't like the phrase "service project" anymore. It sounds too limited and also sounds like the ones serving are benefactors that are blessed to now I will help you peons who are desperate. Sorry about that tangent.

The closing was awesome they just had some worship. They "opened the altars" for communion, served and on you own, anointing oil, prayer, and special pray for marriage or other issues like porn or things that could involve marriage. They had two people holding a prayer shawl like in a Jewish wedding for people to come under. Rob opened the service with his message about the prayer shawls. If you were at IYC 2006 you heard it. It's a reoccurring message for him. It ties in Numbers, Malachi, and Mark [the woman that was healed by touching Jesus' prayer shawl.]

I took 28 pages of notes in my journal. I will probably be making copies or something for some of them for you guys to have it you want. Or maybe I'll just hoard them. :) I've been interrupted a few times now and I have no more to say now.

Labels: conferances

So, as American culture keeps changing and evolving, the praxis of the church must as well. I think we're all on the same page as far as that is concerned. Traditionally in a church the first staff hire would be a youth pastor, but is that the most effective 1st hire anymore?... this leads me to my question:

If you were building a church from the ground up, what would your first staff hire be and why? Has this changed at all?

Post some comments, and let's get our talk on.

i just had this link sent to me about house churches. it's probably not any new info for this conversation; as we've probably seen this coming for some time now. but it begs the question surrounding community. one of the opening lines in the article is the underlying issue that we don't know how to do community very well.
i just came from an over-night discussion/planning session with my sr. pastor and one of the things that i'm bringing away from that time is this: how do i re-imagine the life of Jesus in me?

this plays into community because if i do the hard work of thinking and living through this question it has the possibility of becoming a point for community. time spent reimagining what my faith looks like, what church looks like, how i connect to God then; and ONLY then - after i've done the 'quiet center' homework - do i have something of power and influence to teach/lead.

yea, but that sounds like a lot of work. i'm gonna' go take a nap.

OK so we're switched over now.

Rememeber to resubscribe to the new feed!

This Wednesday January 17th I am going to migrate ChOG Migration, to that actual domain name at blogspot. This curent domain will no longer be good after that. I will have a link there reminiding people of this to catch traffic. Remember to resubscirbe. Peace, I'm out.

An interesing post over at MMI about church growth... it's basically a study of 900 churches, and the ones that are growing have 4 things in common:

1. The church is multiracial
2. Men make up at least 60% of the participants
3. Leaders describe worship as "slightly to not at all" reverent
4. Drums/percussion is used every time.

Just thought it was interesting and might be good to bat around some thoughts/conversation about the study. I thought it might be a bit of a window into current culture and relevance issues. Anyway, the link is above. Enjoy and post some thoughts if you'd like.