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Whiteboard takeaways Part 1

A good friend of mine and a fellow church planter (Steve Whipple) invited me to travel with him to a one day leadership conference called The Whiteboard Sessions.  We left late Wednesday night and returned late Thursday night and it was a great day.  The format was for 8 of today’s influential leaders to have 30 minutes each on “their big idea” for leading in the church.  Here is a synopsis. 

Mark Batterson spoke first on the Big Idea “Our dreams are way too small!” 

• He defined God’s favor as God’s ability/willingness to do something for you/through you that you can’t do yourself.  Read Isaiah 55:8-9.
• My best thought on my best day is so far short of God’s goodness, bigness, and His love and mercy!
• We tend to underestimate God by 13.2 Billion light years.  (Had to be there). 
• My dreams are too small!!  I underestimate God!!  At some point, memory overtakes imagination–We must facilitate dreams and visions and imagination.
• The Great Commission is THE GREAT DREAM!

The next speaker was Vince Antonucci, pastor of Forefront Church in Virginia Beach, Virginia.  His Big Idea was “Reach the Lost” 

• How is it possible that He lived for twenty years in the U.S. and never heard about Jesus?  The total number of people in church is 8 million less than 20 years ago!  How is that possible?
• We must be about the mission of Jesus and seek and save the lost.  Luke 19.10
• Vince told a great parable about shark fishing.  Would you be considered a great “shark” fisherman if you went out and caught 120 fish but only 2 of them were sharks?  What if you only caught 25 total fish but 20 of them were sharks?  It is less total fish, but the majority of them were the specific kind of fish you were targeting.  Many of us are simply catching people that are already saved and “churched”.  This is while the number of people far from God continues to grow.  Jesus says “anyone who is THIRSTY come to me” 
• What breaks your heart?  Jeremiah 4.19-22, check out what breaks God’s heart.
• Are we going to places lost and disconnected people go to?  Are we counting fish, or are we counting sharks?
• If you are not drawn to people far from God, you are probably not as close to God as you think you are!

3rd Speaker was Tim Stevens, Executive Pastor at Granger Community Church and author of Pop Goes the Church.  His big idea was “We must leverage the culture or risk losing our impact.” 

• Reality 1 - Most churches aren’t impacting their communities. 
• UnChristian, a book written by Gabe Lyons and Dave Kinnamon, helps us understand that the public image of Christians according to research done with 16yr-29yr olds is that we are basically, 1. Hypocrites 2. Too focused on making converts.  3. homophobic  4. Sheltered  5. Too political  6. Judgmental 
• If you looked at the people in our communities in one of three categories, 1. Churched  2. Unchurched  3. DeChurched.  We are growing through primarily reaching people already churched.  RUSS opinion: Churched (people that have grown up in churches or come from established and traditional church backgrounds) people cause the most problems.  We are not doing a good job of connecting with the unchurched and dechurched.
• Reality 2 - Spiritual interest is growing in our culture.
• Read John 1:14 (Msg)
• Paul shared Jesus in Acts 17 utilizing elements within the culture of the Athenians.  Tim Stevens did an outstanding job of exegeting this passage and applying it to our current setting.
• Conclusion:  Paul leveraged his culture to tell people about Jesus!