Emergence

Yesterday, I returned from a quick trip to Orlando, Florida with the Elder over Emergence, Mike Kuder. While thousands were heading to Orlando to attend the Exponential Conference, we were heading down to attend the conference outside of the conference--the one we made up.

See, I'm not at all opposed to conferences, but I'm operating on two prevalent principles:

1. I am in no mood to sit through another plenary session and take notes about philosophical ministry thoughts. (If you've been at the tables I've been at in meetings for the past 8 months, you'd know why).
2. The most valuable parts of every ministry conference I have EVER been to have not been the sessions--it is what happens outside of the "program." The relationships forged and the conversations amongst team members are the biggest benefit.

With those two things in full effect, Mike and I decided to go to Orlando... for 30 hours.

We flew out of Newark at 7am on Monday morning. This has its good and bad points. Good: no delays. Bad: wake up at 4am. I do believe in 100% assurance of salvation (the importance of which I cannot stress enough) but at 4am I am strongly tempted to doubt everything I know to be true.

After arriving in O-town, we hit up a Waffle House (only downside of JetBlue... cookies for breakfast) and then headed over to where exponential was happening. This is a gathering of church planters and people passionate about multiplying the church and raising up leaders. While we are not the former (church planters), we are certainly the latter (passionate about planting churches and raising leaders), and LOVE being around these sorts of people. 

Since we weren't registered for the conference, we decided to just walk around the place... meet people... and not take part in any programming. As we walked, we bumped into great friends and kindred spirits: Michael Stewart, Matt Carter and Kevin Peck from Austin Stone Community Church, Alan Hirsch (Mike's buddy AKA Mission-al), and even folks from the church where our NJ church planting buddy Reid Monaghan came from. It was quite a fruitful afternoon of relational contacts, and it got us in the mood for the evening's festivities. 

The main reason we came down to Orlando was to connect with and start dreaming about relational work and partnership with the folks from Christian Associates. If you've been around Emergence a little while, you know we love CA. Mike has been to Europe a gaggle of times with them and I took a Discovery trip with my wife and extended family to Amsterdam on a CA trip about 4 years ago. If you were at Emergence PM a month or so ago you met Phil Graf, a missionary with CA who is just plain nuts... in a good--even awesome--way.

We met up with the CA crew at a dinner sponsored by CA and the Upstream Collective. You can see the video of the dinner HERE. The main event of the dinner was a discussion about missional churches between Alan Hirsch and Ed Stetzer. It was a great dinner and discussion. It was in a room full of church planters--I even got to sit a couple of seats away from Scott Thomas, the president of Acts29. Our friend, Brad Leeper, from Generis also was at the dinner. It was fun to catch up with him on all that's going on in the church world as well as update him on what God is doing at Emergence,

some of the takeaways from the discussion:

• your christology must lead to your missiology must lead to your ecclesiology (more on this in a later blog post)--Ryan talks about this all the time
• if Hirsch or Stetzer were planting a church, they'd choose exactly where we are... near NYC... in one of the most spiritually void places in the nation
• plant the Gospel before you plant the church
• engage culture by deciding what to adopt vs. adapt vs. reject
• the how of church should be guided by the who, where and when
• we need to "unlearn" church and relearn Jesus... then bring Jesus to the world

and SO many other things...

The highlight of our trip, in my opinion, was our time after the dinner with the team from CA. God has really connected us in a great way with an amazing bunch of missionals. We got to spend a few hours with Linus Morris (President of CA), Rob Fairbanks (CA North America Team Leader), Dan Steigerwald (CA North America Advancement Team), and Frank Wilder (Ca missionary in Paris). We talked about what God is doing at Emergence, the amazing things we're seeing happen, the heart for multiplying (read: Emergence raising up leaders and helping to plant churches in places like Hoboken and Montclair) and being a community of missionaries bringing Jesus to North Jersey, and our heart for partnering with people in Western Europe to see the Gospel impact our cultural predecessors overseas. It was a great conversation that I am certain will lead to some great fruit down the road. 

Here's what I know... life, much like a conference, is not about the show--it's about relationships. It's about people. This was one of the best conferences I've been to, and I didn't even go to it.

30 hours after we left Newark (well, 31... we got delayed. It IS Newark, after all) we were back home. I left for FL excited about what is going on at Emergence. I came back even more pumped. There's something going on... and we get to be a part of it!

See you Sunday.