Drive Conference: An Experience Beyond Church

[this was partially typed on the ride back from Drive Conference, and partially typed more recently so please excuse the somewhat random nature the post takes on...]

When people think of Church conferences most people think of a bunch of 40 or 50 year old pastors sitting around singing hymns, and planning different ways to do missions, youth functions, or any other number of activities that pastors might take on at any point in time. What people don’t see is 2500 pastors, tech directors, team leaders, worship leaders, among numerous other staff positions in churches spending 3 days learning and developing totally revolutionary ideas for how to reach the people in their communities, but that is exactly what I’m on the way home from as I write this. By day, I am a benefits consultant for a fortune 200 company, but by life I spend my time reaching those that are far from God.
Drive Conference is a Church development conference that North Point Ministries hosts that allows churches to take an inside look at how they function and how in the past decade they’ve grown to include 3 campuses that are beyond belief. Many churches in today’s culture would kill to have just one campus as nice as that of any one of these. Buckhead Church features an amazing array of ministries hosted in a very urban part of Atlanta, including some of the best facilities I’ve ever seen for children’s ministries. North Point has not 1 but 2 of the nicest auditoriums I’ve set foot in. Browns Bridge was, in my opinion, the nicest campus, boasting 40 acres of land, a top of the line sound and lighting system in a beautifully done facility that is just perfect for any kind of setting.
But these facilities weren’t what we came to see. We came to learn, and study what allows North Point Ministries to reach so many people with such tenacity for God. Not necessarily to see what they do exactly as how they do it. Not to change everything we do but to see how we can better ourselves to reach people who are far from God. Once thing Andy Stanley said that will stick out in my head forever is “To reach people no one is reaching you have to do things no one is doing.” and this statement is so true.
As a church in our community Lifepoint has already done things here that no one has seen done. Such as our egg drop where we had nearly 10,000 people show up, or our spontaneous baptism recently where 61 people were baptized. These are the things that affect our ministry. We are not afraid to do things that some people think are crazy for a Church to do. But maybe that’s where we succeed… Maybe the key to reaching people who are far from Christ is to getting their attention in any way possible then showing them God’s love and plan for their lives. What would happen if a growing church body were to reach out to a community with all the energy they had and made it their sole passion to reach people who are far from Christ… I think we’re finding that out now…

Drive Blog: part I

So I’ve decided to just go through each part of our Drive experience and try to handle each part in a condensed version. So here’s part one, this will be based off the first main session…Broken down and in my own words… So here we go. Enjoy!

To begin with Andy chose to talk about being trustworthy, and he talked about it in a light I hadn’t thought about it before. As he put it when something unexplainable happens we can either fill the gaps with trust or suspicion… That simple. You can either trust someone… or you can be suspicious… And I’m sure we all know that trust is an intricate part of what it takes to run any form of team, especially a ministry. And a big part of this trust is that we must actively participate in trusting each other. We must say “I CHOOSE to trust you!” We must defend people when others fill the gap with suspicion, and we must go directly to the source when experience begins to erode the trust.

The next step in this trustworthy journey was to take a look at our own trustworthiness. We must not only trust but also be trustworthy. This doesn’t mean we’re perfect it means we do what we say we will, and when we don’t we go ahead and tell the truth about it. This next thought is something that I’ve at times thought about and that’s the thought of not over promising and under-delivering. This just talks about not saying you’re gunna do more than you actually can.

Finally, Andy brought to light what can happen when mistrust is harbored within an organization. As you can probably assume this will poison an organization and it’s culture… It can pretty much ruin the ability for people to trust each other once trust is blown on one facet. As Andy stated “The consequences of confrontation are far less sever than the consequences of concealment. This breakout ended with a passage from Matthew 5:23-25 stating “Therefore, if your are offering your gift at the alter and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the alter. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.”

I pray as you have read this you have found ways that you can apply it in your lives. And that as your personal ministry grows you will be able to be the trustworthy person God has crafted you to be.