WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW:
WHO WENT THAT YOU MIGHT KNOW?
Pastor Ski - St. Marcus - Milwaukee
Pastor John Parlow - St. Mark - Depere
HOW LONG WERE WE THERE?
WHERE WAS THE CONFERENCE?
What is Drive ’08? That’s a great question. Drive is a two day conference for church leaders. During these two days church leaders from the three North Point campuses will share what they have learned over the last twelve years about creating and maintaining awesome ministry environments. The entire conference has been designed around questions from churches all over the world.
Over the two days Andy Stanley (Lead Pastor at North Point) will address the attendees in three main sessions. There will be five break-out sessions that will revolve around questions asked by the attendees. These sessions allow those in attendance to get pretty specific on certain areas of ministry as well as get great feedback.
I invite you to check out my blog while I’m gone. I’ll try to update the blog daily and share what I’ve learned. Please feel free to share your comments.
I’ll see you all when I get back!
3 comments:
Two questions:
1. What is "...creating and maintaining awesome ministry environments?" I always thought the pastoral ministry was the preaching of the Word and the proper administration of the Sacraments.
2. Please define "awesome worship." Is this what we do or what our Triune God does for us?
They sure like that word "awesome." I think it's pretty awesome to receive Christ's actual Body and Blood every Sunday. I think it's pretty awesome that God can convert a soul with simple water and the Word. I think it's awesome that Christ Jesus fulfilled the Law perfectly. Nothing we do is awesome.
What in the world is the (W)ELS teaching their kids?...
Things to remember when planning youth group activities:
Activities should vary covering these five areas: Recreation, Worship, Learning, Fellowship, Service.
Don't be afraid to beg, borrow and steal ideas that work from anyone!
Long weekend of rustic camping (no running water or amenities): your group will connect on an entirely new level (spiritually and socially).
http://archive.wels.net/cgi-bin/site.pl?2617&collectionID=1642&contentID=75910&shortcutID=27036
I pored over the whole 5 days and looked at the pictures too and several thoughts immediately came to the surface.
1) Who paid for this excursion to Georgia? His congregation? Was it out of his own pocket? Seems like this was a pretty penny spent when you could probably just get a Andy Robbins book on tape for $12 and get the same results.
2) Judging by my reading, these guys were not just standing there quietly with hands clasped during these worship services. Firsthand accounts of worshiping with people of different faiths right there in print. Incredible. Being WELS, I remember having crises of conscious as to what I should do everytime the Lord's Prayer was being said at one of my Catholic relatives' weddings, but these guys are whooping it up with completely different sects of Christianity without an issue. And presumably they should know the Scriptures if they are going to have the title of pastor.
3) "To be trustworthy is to be worthy of trust": this was an insight from DRIVE '08 that was mentioned as being memorable. If incredible nuggets of insight like that are being absorbed by, listened to and paid for by supposedly educated pastors, then that's pretty sad. Frankly I should see if I can get into this conference business because I could probably come up with gems like that too. "Heart attacks attack the heart" or "Whopper Jrs are Junior Whoppers" or "Using a posthole digger will help you dig post holes" and many more!
4) The fact that Deutschlander didn't take his mug and throw it down in disgust is the most surprising item in the whole spiel. He at least was at a relevant WELS conference, being WELS and all. He should have said something along the lines of, "You didn't learn a thing in my classes did you?" and finish his beer and walk away.
5) Finally taking ideas on how to present worship from people who is not of your faith whatsoever is bad enough, but when they steal their ideas from hackneyed 80s metal bands, that's crossing a line. Looking at these photos, I noticed that you could've told me that Poison was about to take the stage and I would've fully believed it. They are only platform boots and facepaint away from being a KISS show, which should make anyone gag with anticipation of mediocrity. Imagine all of the people Jesus touched by just speaking to them throughout Israel. Now just imagine how many more would've listened if he had a smoke machine, flashpots, and projection screens! Oh wait, He didn't need that. Apparently the Word was effective without the Weapons of Mass Distraction.
That I think is the point of all of this. There are ideas and concepts out there that might lend to a new approach in presenting law and gospel. But do they cheapen the message? Are they focused on solid doctrine and based on the solid foundation of God's Word? Ask yourself if you took away the flash and bangs and smoke machines and viewscreens and guitar straight from the Van Halen playbook, what's left? Precious little.
I occasionally watch Trinity Broadcast Network for no other reason than laughs because these people couldn't be more addicted to the old Bakker/Swaggart/Tilton methods of production if they tried. The pics that I saw looked like the mediocre watered down set dressings from the shows on TBN. That's sad more than anything else.
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