DRIVE conference - DAY 2

Today was a full day. We attended 3 break-out sessions, one main session and a "road trip."
My first break out was "Starting Point". It is the ministry at North Point Community Church in the Atlanta area that is focused on those who are investigating Christianity or fairly new to Christianity. This seems to be an area in which we are weak at Grace; so this was good for us to sit through and think through. Their starting point is: "a conversational environment where people can explore faith and experience community." We may not be able or even want to implement everything they are doing in this area; but we agree we need to do something to help people in these stages of spiritual growth.

The second break out was "Turning the Bus around". This was led by two different pastors, who led traditional churches to adopt the North Point model, which meant dramatic change for their ministries. Both churches were headed to death, according to these pastors, and the changes eventually turned them into churches that reached more people for Christ, although they lost people who didn't agree with their methods. Although we do not agree with just making sweeping changes, we do agree that we need to be purposeful in what we are doing and continue to take steps forward - even if that does mean that people decide to leave on their own.

The third break out session was "How did you do that?". It was about creating a creative team, helping to take the message and make it "stick" with the listeners. This is actually something we already started at Grace several weeks ago. I have really enjoyed the process of collaborating with others about creative ideas to communicate the truth more effectively for life change. This session will help me think through more details about this process.

The main session was entitled: "Becoming a Great Staff" by Andy Stanley. The goal: "A staff culture characterized by mutual submission." The basic idea of this talk was about truly serving one another on staff; in particular those seen as the main leaders. The key question to keep asking is: "What can I do to help?" This was a good reminder that I am here to serve everyone in my ministry, modeling the love of Christ. If I will give myself to that, I will be honoring God.

The road trip in the afternoon led us to one of the satellite churches with North Point. On Sundays, they show the same message by satellite, but do their own worship and other programming. They brought in a bluegrass band and Jeff Foxworthy, who is an attender at North Point. He was clean and very funny.

It has been a very enjoyable time so far, being able to think and talk alot about our ministry, as we can appreciate what God is doing here in his context. Tomorrow morning we have 2 more break out sessions and one more main session.

I will write tomorrow as we end our conference.

Greg