Dave Gibbons asks GREAT questions @ Story 2009
Before I dive into the questions and observations that Dave makes let me say that we need to pay very close attention to him if for only that he gave his talk from something he felt the Lord gave him about 8-12 hours before he was to speak at this conference. When someone is willing to scrap a message to people that you desperately desire to impress after being awakened in the middle of their sleep I LISTEN. That’s what happened with Dave, and I was most impressed and not in the worldly sense where I think, “Boy I want to be like Dave Gibbons.” That kind of impression is a very selfish kind of impression. Instead I must say that I was impressionable, as a child is impressionable, and because that is where God had me then Dave, by the leading of the Holy Spirit, branded me…impressed me, and all at once it was painful, beautiful, disturbing, and encouraging.
I pray that my small attempt at making notes does the same for you. First, I would encourage you to read Isaiah 6, and while we usually stop at verse 8 I urge you to press on and focus on what happens after verse 8. Because Isaiah is given a disturbing message to communicate, with verse 13 being Dave’s focus.
“13 And though a tenth remains in the land,
it will again be laid waste.
But as the terebinth and oak
leave stumps when they are cut down,
so the holy seed will be the stump in the land.”
NOTES…
Why can’t we measure success in churches by:
1. Eradicating the foster care need in our community
2. Eradicating poverty in our community
3. Caring for the elderly in our community
Instead of…
1. Church attendance
2. Baptisms
3. $
Dave is not suggesting ignoring what we typically measure in the Church, but it needs to be tempered with “Are we making a difference in our communities?” kinds of questions. If we cannot answer these kinds of questions affirmatively then it makes the typical measurements of success irrelevant.
What if 80% of our budget was spent on outreach instead of our venue?
What is missing in spiritual formation in churches?
1. There is no one size fits all. We need to customize a path based upon collaborative resources
2. We miss the intersection between a person’s story and the Holy Spirit by trying to immediately funnel them through a series of steps with the false promise that at the end of the funnel they will move from broken to whole and from newborn to fully devoted follower of Christ.
Churches need to start asking, “What do we NEED to feel uncomfortable about?”
Churches need to develop a theology of suffering because walking people through suffering can birth a HOLY seed.
What I learned from Ed Young @ Story 2009
After doing some research on Yacht Clubs Ed discovered that most Yacht Clubs began as Rescue Societies. They gave themselves to the hard and dangerous work of going to sea in the worst of conditions in order to save people in trouble. Over time people began to tire of all of the work involved, and the Rescue Societies began to be transformed into Yacht Clubs where people joined, not for the adventure or sense of duty of saving people in trouble, but for what the Yacht Club had to offer them in the way of networking, prestige, food and pleasure.
The Church is NOT a Yacht Club.
The main thing for the church is to throw drowning people the rescue ring of Christ (cue Flood by Jars of Clay).
Excuses for not throwing Christ to the people (I’m highlighting excuses I commonly hear at HCC):
1. The Depth Excuse, “I’m just looking for something deeper” – ALL rescues happen in DEEP water! Philippiams 1:6
2. The Knowledge Excuse, “I just don’t know enough to rescue people.” – If you don’t know your own story of transformation then maybe you’ve never been rescued because that is the only thing you need to know.
3. I Need to Pray About It Excuse – We’re commanded to do this, so why do you need clarification?
4. The Sheeple Excuse – When you are comfortable with growing in numbers by transfer from other churches, then you cease being the church. True growth is through baptism.
My reflections: True growth is in baptism of the unbeliever, and a growth in love and compassion by the believer for the unbeliever.