Thursday, February 08, 2007

We make music better together.

I'm serious, it was a good time.
It was my honor to be in the same room with some very sharp people.
And to tell you the truth, they used to scare me.
The place was Champaign, and I was attending the Midwest Region's Healthy Reproducing Churches conference.
Now I must admit, church planters are a unique lot, they by nature have a pioneering spirit, are much braver than most (at least braver than I) and they have a real desire to reach people for Jesus that just aren't interested in most people's idea of church.
At times I felt ashamed that I didn't have the fire that some of these people had, I mean gee whiz these people were EXCITED about church planting.
What a bunch of nuts, right?
Well I came away with hope, and that might sound strange. I truly felt I was looking at the future church, and not a church with a huge building or super large numbers, and not a church focused on itself.
A church that has it's eyes fixed on Christ and on the mission that He commanded we be on.
As president of the region I started thinking, what if every commission I had was this serious. What about our Church and Pastor relations commission, our Cross Cultural commission? What if every area of our region got really serious about what they were doing?
I was watching a DVD last night, Genesis, Live at Wimbley, and they always have some extra feature at the end of the disc. One was an interview with Tony Banks, who plays keyboard for the group. He made the statement that he enjoyed playing in a group because "you can do so much more musically together than you can do by yourself".
I thought, how better could we do things if all parts of the body of Christ, all of our talents and gifts could somehow be used in harmony with one another to make something beautiful.
But we don't, we just want to be excited about us. We might be jealous, or even hostile towards others who seem to be doing something more than we are doing.
Brian once told me I should plant a church in my home town, and I told him that he was nuts (or crazy) that I just wasn't gifted with the people skills to pull that off.
But that doesn't mean I can't come alongside people who can and cheer them on.