One week ago Louise and I attended the Externally Focused Church Conference in Longmont, Colorado. Here are a few tidbits we picked up. For one thing the Holy Spirit is moving. God’s speaking to traditional and seeker churches calling them to get involved in their communities. We’ve lost our voice in the world because we’ve turned in and spend so much of our time taking care of the already saved. What we saw was church after church after church beginning to love on their neighbors. As they do good deeds, good will comes and from good will they inevitably ask, why, why are you helping us? Then we can give the good news of Jesus. It’s good deeds first, then good will, then good news.For the first 400 years the church reached out to meet needs no one else would. As the miraculous gifts seemed to subside this new way of establishing credibility took hold. Our earlier brothers and sisters were like Jesus in that they went around doing good, Acts 10:38.
One seeker church pastor told me that using the externally focused model almost 600 have trusted Christ. What’s more the people who had already known the Lord are more excited about Him than they have been in some time. The conference was hosted by Leadership Network. Check out the website at http://www.leadnet.org/.
Last Sunday Louise shared about this mammoth grisly bear we saw face to face in Yellowstone on the way home. As we entered the Park Ranger told us that a man had been badly mauled. The next day we came within 100 yards of his golden highness. We enjoyed driving believe it or not to Colorado and back and celebrated some amazing times and our 33rd anniversary on the way home.
