WELS VP Don Patterson.
"Shucks. Y'all caught me signing up
for the next Exponential Conference.
We get a group discount."
12/02/08 13:05 from Planting Space
Last Chance! Super Early Bird Rate Ends December 5th There are only a few days left to get the lowest possible price of $129 to the largest church planting conference in North America. Not sure who will attend with you? No worries.
Church Planting Network is honored to oversee and shepherd the Exponential Conference. Exponential has become the largest gathering of church planting leaders in North America (possibly the world). This cross-denominational conference is designed to connect, inspire, equip and challenge church planting leaders. The conference brings over 3,000 church planting leaders from over 35 different denominations, networks and heritages together in one place.
This year's theme features the Art of Movements. Some key highlights include:
15 pre-conference intensives
Over 60 national church planting leaders including Alan Hirsch, Francis Chan, Craig Groeschel, Tim Keller (via video), Erwin McManus, John Burke, Efrem Smith, Ed Stetzer, Darrin Patrick, and many more.
Over 35 denominations, networks, and heritages
7 main tracks including pre-launch, post-launch, reproducing churches, multi-ethnic, church planting spouses, and missional
Over 40 sponsors representing the best services available to planters
Over 3,000 church planting leaders in one place
Orlando, Florida. Sun. Disney World.
Here is where to register.
"THE ART OF MOVEMENTS"
God is moving and at work all around the world and wants us to join Him in similar ways here.
"His purpose was for the nations to seek after God and perhaps feel their way toward Him and find him-though He is not far from any one of us. For in Him we live and move and exist." - Acts 17:27, 28
"What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us. The history of mankind will probably show that no people have ever risen above its religion, and man's spiritual history will positively demonstrate that no religion has ever been greater than its idea of God. Worship is pure or base as the worshiper entertains high or low thoughts of God. For this reason the gravest question before the Church is always God Himself, and the most portentous fact about any man is not what he at a given time may say or do, but what he in his deep heart conceives God to be like. We tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God. This is true not only of the individual Christian, but of the company of Christians that composes the Church. Always the most revealing thing about the Church is her idea of God." - A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy (New York: HarperCollins, 1961)
We want every attendee at Exponential to understand that God is moving and at work around the world and to be actively looking to join Him where He is moving and at work.
How we think about God will shape the vision of our churches and therefore how we do the work of God. While there is an increase in interest and participation in being a reproducing church (church planting & multi-site) in the west, the western church is being held back by two basic thoughts pertaining to God: First, that He is static, rather than moving and second, that He has a western bias rather than being God of all creation.
We wrongly think of God as static rather than dynamic and moving. In our effort to acknowledge God as King and Lord, we often think of Him as sitting on His throne, making rules and demanding that we must come to Him. While it is true that God is King and Lord, He is also a Creator and on the move. We see this God on the move in the first pages of Genesis: "And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." (Genesis 1:2) Jesus reinforced this idea of the Father and himself being creators in the gospels: "Jesus said to them, ‘My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working.'" (John 15:7) It's clear that the early church understood that God is active and moving when Paul explains: "The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands." (Acts 17:24)
We also tend to think of God with a western bias rather than a God of all creation. This is seen in everything from bumper stickers that say, "God bless America," to how little we know about our world outside of the United States. The Old Testament shows us a God who is omnipresent: "But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain You. How much less this temple which I have built!" (I Kings 8:27). And the New Testament declares a God who is not limited by space or time: "He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:27-28); "with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day." (II Pet. 3:8).
Approach for 2009 Exponential Conference: Our themes the past few years have been heavily biased to the "science" or "mechanics" of church planting. This year we will try and broaden our view to "The Art of Movements." In our lifetime we've not experienced true church planting movements in the US...we've only seen them overseas. So, we will be featuring a number of international leaders likely unfamiliar in the U.S. Most conferences (including ours in the past) take the approach of "come and learn from us." We are turning that upside down (or maybe right-side up!). In 2009 the call is "come and learn with us...as we experience the stories of those who are in the middle of movements.... as we discover what God is "up to" around the globe." We're prepared to be surprised, challenged, inspired, maybe even devastated by God's heart for a world in desperate need of the Gospel of Christ.
Gold Sponsors:
Church Marketing Solutions
Church Marketing Solutions is a leading provider of high-quality church marketing services at non-profit prices. They are passionate about church planting and providing unmatched service to church planters.
Here is another sponsor -
Catalyst One: Meet Andy Stanley, WELS Mentor
WHAT YOU WILL LEARN At Catalyst One Day.
You will:
- Discover the key to creating and sustaining momentum in your organization.
- Identify and break through the barriers to momentum and overcome personal leadership lids.
- Leverage the three triggers which ignite organizational momentum.
- Create a culture of continual improvement.
- Embrace a new approach to leading organizational change.
Both apparently have the same position on the Means of Grace.
Recognized as a top influential leader for pastors, Andy Stanley is senior pastor of one of the fastest growing ministries in the country, North Point Ministries. With campuses including North Point Community Church in Alpharetta, Georgia; Buckhead Church in Atlanta, Georgia; and Brown's Bridge Community Church in Cumming, Georgia; North Point Ministry locations are visited by more than twenty thousand congregants each week.
Andy has written the best-selling book Visioneering, as well as The Next Generation Leader, How Good Is Good Enough, Choosing to Cheat, The Best Question Ever, Am I Good Enough, and 7 Practices of Effective Ministry, among others.
Exponential Sponsor Dave Ramsey:
Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace providing biblically based, common sense education and empowerment which gives HOPE to everyone from the financially secure to the financially distressed.
Shepherd of the Lakes Lutheran Church, WELS is planning to offer five subjects for small home groups, beginning in January, including basic truths of the Bible, a Financial Peace University course by Dave Ramsey, a marriage enrichment workshop by Dr. Kevin Leman and the Total Transformation course by James Lehman.
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Reprise:
Baptist-Pentecostals despise the Means of Grace? He gets vicars for free each year and helps populate Texas with Church and Changers. Guess where Wayne Mueller's kid vicared? Yup, ri-cheer in Austin. Patterson wants to be DP when Vilas Glaeske retires.
Let's untangle a few more lies from Church and Change.
Part I. WELS Pastors take a pilgrimage to Stetzer.
The issue of Baptist Ed Stetzer speaking at the next Church and Change conference did not originate with Bailing Water or Ichabod.
In the beginning...a group of WELS pastors went to the Exponential Conference, which featured only Enthusiasts (Book of Concord term - unfamiliar to Sausage Factory grads). Baptist Ed Stetzer spoke there. All he does is speak - all over America and Europe too. Look at his schedule. He is a WELS Church and Change sweetheart, but also a Leonard Sweetheart. If his kids see him, they probably burst out crying because a stranger who looks like Michael Moore is kissing their mom.
Who were those WELS pastors?
The pastors at King of Kings in Orlando (Maitland) led by John Stelljes.
The 1st VP of the South Central District was there, Donald Patterson from Holy Word in Austin, TX along with some of his disciples (Doebler from Christ the Rock in Round Rock).
$200 for the next conference.
Other WELS pastors were also there, but those names have not been disclosed to my network of informants. When asked directly, the Church and Changers have refused to answer which other WELS clergy were there.
"Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive."
KJV Romans 16:17 Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them. 18 For they that are such serve not our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own belly; and by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple.
Part II. The District Presidents Find Out about Church and Change/Stetzer and Frown.
DP Englebrecht wrote in a letter to his pastors:
The next Church and Change Conference will be having Ed Stetzer, a person not of our fellowship, be one of its speakers. He is part of the "missional" movement. The members of the COP in looking at his theology and aggressive style of presentation have some serious reservations about his appearance at this conference and have asked President Schroeder to express our concerns to the leaders of Church and Change.
His comments were forwarded to me by...I forget.
Part III. I double-checked because I knew the Church and Changers would get nastier than skunks who haven't slept in a long time.
I started looking up Ed Stetzer because he was a nobody in theology. As diligent as I am, I had trouble locating his supposed "two doctorates" and "two masters" which appear on all the websites about him. This struck me as too bombastic, like Mr. Toad of Toad Hall, so I searched until I found him earning a DMin from one school (never heard of it) and a PhD from a liberal Baptist seminary.
I found Stetzer's schedule, which showed him teaching the Word of God to WELS at the next Church and Change meeting, followed by a stop at a Leonard Sweet event. He was also going to speak to LCMS executives.
To observe the permutations of the 8th Commandment, I looked over the Church and Change menu. I know it pretty well, since I copied most of its toxic content into Ichabod. Think of Ichabod as a mirror site, in case the server at Pasadena goes down.
I could not find any future Church and Change conference listed and said so.
The deception of the Church and Change website is now being used to attack people who ask questions about Stetzer. So, in effect, Church and Changers are attacking Englebrecht and the DPs who expressed concern about Stetzer. The DPs raised the issue. Englebrecht sent the letter. I am a mere journalist, a baby journalist at that, with only 20 credits at the end of December.
Church and Chicanery made the news and hid the news. I reported what I knew.
Bruce Becker, BPS Administrator, owes WELS another apology for this fiasco. He is a board member of Church and Change. He needs to move out of the stealth mode and into honesty and transparency.
