DAY 1 – Tuesday April 22ND 2008
1. This is the first of three editions in a row of the ‘Exponential Conference Orlando Tossed Salad’ – one edition for each day of the conference. These ‘Tossed Salads’ are being written more than two days after the fact based on my personal recollection of the events that were experienced and the material that was presented with strong support via a whole bunch of crib notes written shorthand style on three full sheets of letter-size scrap paper. I’m not one of those instant laptop notetakers that can type all of his or her notes just as fast as the speaker can speak it and then instantly publish it into a blog for the entire world to see. No offense to anyone who has that wonderful skill. I’m actually envious of those of you that can do that – such as my own Lead Pastor ! You’ll have to check out his blog if you wish to read his ultra-descriptive notes from the conference. Give yourself a good hour to read through all of it. You’ll feel like YOU ARE THERE !
2. The First Baptist Church Orlando hosted the conference, and their sanctuary is MASSIVE. Anne J. inadvertantly referred to it as a ‘convention center’, but that’s pretty much what it was in this particular type of setting. I know that it’s the largest church sanctuary that I’ve ever been in that wasn’t at the Vatican. I’m sure that there are countless others here in the U.S. that are much bigger than this one, but you’ve got to remember that I was saved just 20 months ago, and I went more than 30 years before I walked into a place of worship for the first time as an adult (in January 2007). The experience of being 1 of about 2,800 in attendance praising and worshiping Him in unison to a LIVE rock band is an experience that will forever remain in my mind as one of the most awesome ‘rock show’ experiences in my entire Life.
3. Church planting is an extreme team sport that is the greatest work on the planet in that we link together human lives. We obviously have plenty of church planters. 2,800 of us were in attendance at the conference. Now we need the movement to occur. We need churches to plant. We need to be more kingdom oriented. We need the kingdom of multiplication to spread. We need the kingdom to be exponential.
4. Because of their ‘thinking-outside-of-the-box’ innovation smaller churches are more likely to plant spinoff churches than bigger (mega) churches. The fact of the matter is that churches should actually be born ‘pregnant’. Non-denominational local neighbourhood churches make the best plants. More unchurched people would go to church if there were a church that was conveniently located just around the corner right there in their own neighbourhood. Healthy church plants include a durable and dependable support network. It should really be within the DNA of every church to be alive and be able to multiply. If we can successfully reproduce disciples and leaders then we can successfully reproduce churches.
5. I’ve been a fan of Chris Elrod‘s blog for quite awhile now, and he himself co-hosted a breakout session on blogging with Todd Rhoades and Scott Hodge. (I added Scott to my Blogroll a couple of days ago, and I just added Todd’s ‘Monday Morning Insight’ to it.) A blog is essentially an electronic extension of the person that is writing it. People all over the world will know you through your blog even though they have never met you in person. As a blogger you should always expect the unexpected. What you think will be a runaway smash hit on your blog could actually be a dismal flop. The unsuspecting blog entry that you don’t think that much about could actually be the one that pops big-time on the search engines and drives rush hour traffic straight to your blog en masse. (Don’t I know that !)
CountUp 