Category: God

DAY 2 – Wednesday April 23RD 2008

1.  The First Baptist Church Orlando is laid out like a college campus – or at least my personal depiction of what a college campus would look like. I never attended college, so during these three days at the Exponential Conference I got to be the college kid that I never was as I walked to and from sessions in classrooms and portable buildings carrying books, folders, pens, and paper. As the ‘Professors’ talked I listened intently and took lots of notes, and when it was time for all of us to meet assembly-style en masse we all did so in the big auditorium. That’s right – for three days I felt like a 41-year-old college kid !  😎

2.  Dave Olson was my Professor for 3 hours today. He’s the Director of ‘The American Church Research Project‘, and he wrote the book ‘The American Church In Crisis‘. Dave highlighted a lot of negatively-trending statistics. On a typical weekend in 2006 only about 17% of adult Americans attended a church service. That percentage is expected to continue to drop ever so slightly (just as it has for the past 50 years), and it could be in the 14% to 15% range a decade from now. Overall church attendance (in raw numbers) is pretty much exactly the same as it was 15 years ago despite the fact that there are more than 50 million new U.S. residents today than there were back then.

3.  Small churches (less than 50 attenders) and large churches (more than 2,000 attenders) appear to be growing just fine (or at least keeping up with population growth). It’s the mid-size churches that appear to be declining and even dying. 1% of churches close annually. That’s about 3,700 churches that cease to operate every year. At the same time about 4,000 new churches are born every year, so that’s a net gain of about 300 churches every year. Older Pastors tend to attract older attenders. These are the churches that are typically in decline, as there is no biological growth (new babies in the family), there is little to no conversion growth (people being saved), and they are not birthing any new churches because they are very set in their old-fashioned ways. They tend to be older than the surrounding community that they are supposed to serve. They tend to be more closed than open to the general public.

4.  Is the American church an endangered species that is headed towards extinction ?  If you look at what it was during its peak in the mid-1950s versus what it is now then perhaps you may think that is the case. The church (in general) needs to figure out what century and what decade it is living in. ‘Where Are The People ?’ A slightly positive trend has developed since the catastrophic life-changing events of Tuesday September 11TH 2001. The bleeding may have stopped, and overall attendance appears to be headed back in a slightly positive direction. But a lot of churches are stubborn. They refuse to adapt and change with the times. The times are changing. Churches need to change the way that they do business in order to be alive and relevant.

5.  C3 Church in Orlando put on a really nice presentation for us at the Cinemark movie theatres at Festival Bay on International Drive. This is actually not where they set up their church every Sunday morning, but on this night they set up three theatres there to show us what church looks like in a typical movie theatre setting. They had a lot of nice features, gadgets, and storage units with their setup, but they also spent a lot of money for it all. The C3 ‘Praise & Worship’ band played on the main stage, and complimentary dinner and a movie was provided during and after the presentation. I think if I ever find myself in Orlando on a Sunday morning then I may just have to check out one of their church services and compare their movie theatre environment with our movie theatre environment at Life Pointe Church.

6.  One last notable item of interest here. I met up with this cool guy during Lunch on this day. I personally thanked him for what he did for me. When he was at Life Pointe Church back in early-March as a special guest speaker he did an assessment of our church and reported to Travis and Paul that I was being underutilized as a leader. Travis and Paul then delegated their authority and gave me a whole bunch of work to do every week. I was given the amusing title of ‘Director Of Cool’, and I was put in charge of the assimilation process at our church. Yes – It is a lot of work every week, but this work is God’s work. He put me in this place at this time to do this work, and there’s no denying Him. I serve Him enthusiastically. 

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 !)