the reluctant leader

My Aussie Adventure, So Far…

My OZ travel adventure, so far:

FRIDAY. Overnight flight. Manila to Singapore to Brisbane. Long night. Uncomfortable seat. Little sleep. I'm here primarily to minister at 2 state Christian Outreach Center (COC) leadership conferences. COC is a church planting movement that started in Brisbane 35v years ago.

SATURDAY.  Landed Brisbane 9AM. Met some of the great Christian Outreach Center  pastors. Beautiful city. Slept, finally.

SUNDAY. Preached 2 services at Citipointe COC Church. Amazing worship. All original songs. Can’t wait to get these CDs to Jose & Terri. Drove Brisbane to Sunshine Coast. Preached PM service @ Suncoast Church. Great worship again.

MONDAY. COC Queensland pastors’ conference. Finally met COC national director, David McDonald. Felt like I was listening to myself when David talked about church & ministry. He’s a “legend.”

TUESDAY. Preached about Discipleship Principles & Process.

WEDNESDAY.  Drove back to Brisbane to fly to New Castle to minister to the COC New South Wales pastors on Discipleship Philosophy.

THURSDAY. Taught Discipleship Principles and listened great messages from Phil Campbell (cousin of Wes) and Jack McD (son of David McD).

Will post rest of the story tomorrow…

Latest "accidental missionary" post: Late Update From Australia

The Ministry of Reconciliation

Too busy to blog lately. But, I fly back to Manila tomorrow and will have about 20 hours on the plane to catch up on my "What is an Every Nation Church?" blog series.

I'll get to that tomorrow. But today I want to review Bethel's 11:45 Sunday service with special guest, Bishop Wellington Boone. Great message from a great man.

Wellington is a pastor, church-planter, husband, father, author, long-time (former) ECFA board member, a minister of reconciliation and a Promise Keeper.   

Here are my notes & quotes of Wellington's sermon, Living this Life with the End in View.

- "Too many Christians serve God for His hands not for His feet. His hands represent what He does for us. His feet represent our walk with Him."

- "The weight of carrying the Ark of the Covenant caused the carriers to leave footprints in the sand that could be followed. Much of modern Christianity is so light that it leaves no footprints to follow."

- "Believe in people before performance. I'm glad someone believed in me before I performed anything worthwhile."

- "We know what it is to be a male, but not what it means to be a man. One had to do with gender, the other has to do with development. Any male can father a child, but it takes a real man to be responsibe for the child."

- "We got to get delivered from a spirit of broke."

- "The color-line was covered by the blood of Jesus."

- "You're not just a church, you're a family - all with the same Daddy."

What is an Every Nation Church?

"What is the key to empowering next generation leaders, and not seeing them eventually run off and do their own thing?"

I have been asked many versions of the above question countless times.

My answer is always something like this: before you empower leaders, you have to establish exactly what you are empowering them to do. In other words you have to be crystal clear about your mission, vision and values. If you are not clear about what you are building or where you are going - when you empower leaders, they will run full speed ahead in the wrong direction.

But, when you are clear about where you are going and what you are building, you can confidently empower next gen leaders, knowing they know what to do and where to go.

While having breakfast with my friend,  Mel Mullen, during the International Apostolic Summit last week, we had an interesting conversation about what kind of church we are trying to lead. We both expressed that we don’t always fit in the standard “Charismatic” box.

If we are not traditional Charismatic churches, then what are we?  In response to Mel's question about what kind of churches Every Nation is planting, here’s what I said:

"We want to plant churches (and campus ministries) in every nation that are Christ-centered, Spirit-empowered and socially responsible, and we want to do it in a way that is culturally relevant."

In my next few reluctant leader blogs, I want to explain what I mean by each of these ideas:

Christ-centered

Spirit-empowered

Socially Responsible

Culturally Relevant