So this past weekend, I attended the 1st Mission Arlington/Mission Metroplex Local Leadership Conference. It was an incredible weekend and this blog won't even do justice to the things that went on, but I'll try to paint as best a picture as I can.Here is the schedule of events, just to give you an idea of what we did during the weekend:
Friday
We all met for supper, which was some Mexican food cooked by two of the missionaries, and had an introduction time. We then took a tour of the whole complex. I probably could have led the tour for the most part, but we did get to go into the dental and medical clinics which I had never seen.
Saturday
We met and had some breakfast, then headed off to do some work projects. (I chuckled to myself at all the preacher types who showed up in slacks and button up shirts.) Our group got to sort through a mountain of toys that have been donated to the mission for their annual Christmas store. This year the gave away a ton of toys and they literally start gearing up for the next year the day after Christmas. After lunch we split up into teams and went with a few of the missionaries to their complexes, where they showed us around and let us do some work for them. They answered questions on what their life was like and how they did ministry in the apartments that they served in. We then headed back to the mission for our breakout session. This, for me, was the best part of the weekend. Some of the staff members offered up their advice and thoughts on different subjects, and then answered questions from the group. I'll go more in to detail later, but this was a really cool time where the missionaries got to share their hearts.
Sunday
This was probably the best day overall. As a youth going to Mission A, we always had to be back home and couldn't stay for the Sunday services. On this trip we were privileged to be invited to attend church at some of the local apartments. My group went with an elderly couple to a bible study that was comprised on almost all Hispanics. We sang songs in Spanish and English, heard a bible story and then broke up into groups for further study. I went with the group of school age kids as the took part in an acting out a meal with the 12 disciples. It was really cool to see these kids sit around a table and read cards about the disciples as they shared a meal together. They really paid attention to each other and seemed to really want to learn more about each person.
Next I want to give you some highlights that I took from the breakout sessions that I attended:
Transformed, Not Transplanted: Building a church out of lost people, not church shoppers. Dr. Jim Burgin
- We are all missionaries, we just get to sleep in our own bed at night
- 3000 people living in the same area form their own culture and we must recognize that
- We have reversed the Great Commission...COME IN HERE!!!
- We have made it about the Church, not about the KINGDOM!!
- You will have failure in your life, church, ministries
- Prayer is HUGE...it keeps you connected, and it takes HARD work
- We have to have a love for people...God loves them
- We have to have a willingness to take a risk, or two, or three
- This might mean leaving our 11am Sunday service
- We have to be consistent
- We have to build up a strong team, and be accountable and together!!
- Building up trust take time and patience
- Trust the Gospel to develop, and God to save
- We can't make mission just an outreach of the church, but what the church itself is
- We limit the harvest because of our preconceived ideas of teachers
I Started a Bible Study.....Now What? How to take the second step. Matt Hart
- You CANNOT plan a move of God
- People will know they are a project if you make them one
- Jesus meets people where they are
- The Great Commission is not multiple choice
- Do people around you say: "It looks different because the Christians have been here!"?
- You have to prove to people that you love them as a person not as a statistic
- Are we: Acts 2:42-47
- Devoted to teaching and prayer: Involving the Gospel in everything we do
- Together with everything in common: Just be with the people. Eat, play, live with the people
- Giving to anyone who has need: Find and meet needs: physical, spiritual, emotional, educational, etc.
- Praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people: Make sure that God always gets the glory for everything that happens
- More complicated and more expensive is not more effective than simple gifts of time
This was an amazing weekend. Friday and Saturday night I got about 4 or 5 hours of sleep because I was too excited about what God was going to do with the things people took from this conference. I think that the weekend could be summed up in the words of a black pastor from Mississippi that I had a conversation with Sunday before we left. He had just got back from one of the apartment churches and he said this: "I never understood why people didn't want to come to my church, but this morning I saw God move in the lives of people who would never step foot in our church building. God showed up this morning and we had church, right there in a run down apartment, it was AMAZING!!!!"
