Curtis Sergeant :: Friends blog

http://blogs.lifeway.com/blog/edstetzer/2008/11/thursday-is-for-

I have been too busy to keep up my normal blogging pace, but will get back to that soon. In the meantime, let me mention a couple of things coming up on Thursday.

Tomorrow, Eric Geiger will be by the blog to answer questions from his newest book, Identity: Who You Are in Christ I will post his interview early in the morning and he will be answering questions all day. Feel free to drop by.

Also, if you are around Chicago, be sure to come by Trinity Evangelical Divinity School for an afternoon conference (open to the community). I will be teaching on the missional church. Info is here.

Let me add that Trinity is a remarkable school and I am quite pleased with my time here. I will be talking more about the school and why you should come here!

Here are some of my notes from class today.

I would like to suggest that what evangelicals need is an adequate ecclesiology if they are to discover resources to deal with the longstanding problems that the critics have identified and quite ably analyzed... Now, many evangelicals are aware of their ecclesiological deficit. In fact, one of the recurring criticisms of evangelicalism is that it has no adequate ecclesiology (p.11 Liturgical Theology The Church Worshiping Community, Simon Chan, InterVarsity Press Downers Grove Ill, 2006)

Two quotes from Husbands and Treier

Both the best and worst of evangelical ecclesiology are rooted in the passionate evangelical commitment to mission. This engenders flexibility that contributes significantly to the accusation that evangelicals do not have an ecclesiology. We do - but our ecclesiology is so flexible that it is difficult at times to identify an effective one. (p.70, The community of the Word; toward an evangelical ecclesiology Mark Husbands and Daniel J. Treier, editor. InterVarsity Press, 2005).

The strength of evangelicalism is its willingness to adapt its practices to the demands of Christian mission. The weakness is its willingness to neglect our identity within the people of God. An improvisational ecclesiology recognizes the demands of adaptation and faithfulness, committing us to both. We must learn properly to confess in word and deed that the church is one, holy, catholic and apostolic. But what those marks mean in particular times and places requires discernment under the guidance of the Spirit. (The community of the Word, p. 71).

From my fellow Southeastern faculty member John Hammett:

A great number of churches in North America are undergoing radical changes as they take new forms and new approaches and move in new directions. But the new forms, approaches, and directions are anything but monolithic. Formerly, if a church identified itself as Baptist, or Presbyterian, or Methodist, one knew pretty much the stance of that church. Such labels are no longer sufficient, or even that helpful. Is the church traditional, contemporary, seeker driven, postmodern? Is it a megachurch, a house church, a cell church, a metachurch? (John S. Hammett, Biblical Foundations for Baptist Churches. Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, page 302-303.)

And, one from Shelley who cautioned two decades before the most recent explosion of evangelical innovation:

It should be a source of deep concern to evangelicals that while professing faith in an infallible Bible, they have produced so few worthy books on the Biblical doctrine of the church. (Bruce Shelley, Evangelicalism in America (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1967), p. 124.)

And one more for good measure from Howard Snyder:

In Paul's thought the body is not a simile for the church. The church is not merely like a body. The church does not merely resemble a body in its diversity, unity, and interdependence. It is the body of Christ, who is its head. Every member of the body is, in a mystical sense, a part of Christ. (Christianity Today Magazine, online article: Editor's Bookshelf: Biology Class for the Church, Howard Snyder maps the genome of the body of Christ, David Neff, posted 11/01/2002).

Have a great Wednesday.

http://blogs.lifeway.com/blog/edstetzer/2008/11/one-of-my-favori

One of my favorite troublemakers is Frank Viola. When George Barna "entered" house church world (through his writings, at least), one of my comments was that he had not actually connected with any of the people in house church world. In other words, Barna was saying all the things house church people say, but not providing any solutions or awareness of the house church movement. And, I found Revolution to be a relatively unhelpful book for that reason (and several other theological reasons I have stated elsewhere).

In the follow-up book, Barna seems to have jumped whole hog into the house church world with none other than Frank Viola. Together they published Pagan Christianity which riled a lot of people up (me included) and not just because of the not-so-subtle title. For what it is worth, I think New Testament scholar Ben Witherington did a great job in his series on the book (starting here) and Frank was gracious in his response.

I like Frank. Sure, there are some areas we differ, but I like people with passion. He just sent me a copy of his new unpublished manuscript for his next book. So far it is really good and no mention of how just about everything I do in church is pagan (grin). Frank and I have been emailing a bit and it got me thinking about some research I did a couple of years ago to see if there really was a big movement of house churches out there.

You see, I am pro-house church (largely because I believe God uses all kinds of churches). I want house churches to "work." But, if you listen to some house church people, it sounds like there are movements everywhere in the states. And, I was pretty excited about them... but I could not find them. So many leaders say, "no, not a movement here yet, but check with Denver" (or Long Beach, or San Antonio, or Rhode Island). Anyway, you get the point.

I believe that God can and does use house churches, but the over-statement of their prevalence and effectiveness does not help. People like Frank know there is an uphill battle here, but I think an important one. And, I see people like Neil Cole and others working hard to advocate and demonstrate house chuch effectiveness. And, if and when it does break through, it could bring a huge change.

But, when Revolution came out (along with some spectacular headlines) we wanted to do some research and find out just want was going on... and here is the article we published a couple of years ago at the Center for Mission Research.

The Rise of House Churches and Alternative Faith Communities
from the Center for Missional Research

The "revolution" has recently become big news-- many committed believers are rethinking (or leaving) the established church for alternative forms of church and/or community. The term, "revolution," popularized by George Barna in the book by the same name, describes many trends, but the main focus is on the move to non-traditional expressions of church (marketplace faith communities, house church, arts, etc.).

Rabbi Gellman (who has some positive things to say about evangelicals in general), wrote about the move away from traditional, organized church in Newsweek as one of the top religious trends for 2006. (His excellent article is here.) Though this trend has not yet been noticed by many in the evangelical church, it is growing in prominence and reputation.

Barna explains in his October 24, 2005, Barna Update:

Millions of people are seeking God without going through a local church. This controversial movement of people seeking to "be the Church instead of just going to church"...

Barna explains here:

In 2000, most of the nation's organized religious activity took place at or through local churches. Today, Barna's research points out, the action is shifting to newer forms of corporate religious commitment. In a typical week, 9% of all adults participate in a house church. An even greater proportion--22%--engages in spiritual encounters that take place in the marketplace (e.g., with groups of people while they are at their place of work or play, or in other typical daily contexts).

In one chart, he describes the transition to a Christianity that is less connected to a local established church:

Put simply, there is a significant group of men and women leaving the established / institutional church but holding to a form of Christian devotion. According to some, this has led to a dramatic increase in alternative faith communities, which in turn has led to some major theological and ecclesiological concerns. Although this is not the focus of our polling research, see here, here, and my own here for theological responses to Barna's book and the trend.

Who Are These Revolutionaries and How Many Are There?

This house-church trend has attracted the attention of even the secular media. Time magazine recently featured an article on the subject, NBC news did a television segment, (Since ecclesiology--the theology of church--has become such a big issue among our churches, we, at the North American Mission Board, have created helps that explain what a church is through some ecclesiological guidelines.) These issues will continue to grow in prominence, forcing us to evaluate what a biblical church is. And we can and must evaluate in the light of scripture, not just in the history of our history, tradition, and, for that matter, polling data.

What about the Numbers?

The numbers have made quite a splash--one headline declared "1 in 5 American Attend a House church." At the Center for Missional Research (CMR), we wanted to go deeper to help inform our churches about what this trend means for them. Over the last several months, we commissioned Zogby International to survey more than 3,600 people (1200 interviews on three occasions) about several issues, but particularly about their involvement in spirituality and alternative expressions of church.

We asked, "Do you meet weekly with a group of 20 people or less to pray and study scriptures as your primary form of spiritual or religious gathering?" Remarkably, 26.3% of the 3600 Americans who were asked that question indicated that they did--as their primary form of spiritual or religious gathering. Comparatively, in one of the three surveys, we cross-tabbed the number to those who considered themselves "born again." In that case, 42.1 % of those who identified themselves as born-again Christians said that they met weekly with a group of 20 or less people as their primary form of spiritual or religious gathering.

It should be challenging, exciting, and concerning that one out of four Americans consider their small or house group / church / synagogue / mosque to be their primary source of spiritual training. However, most of those who consider their small community to be their primary place of spiritual encouragement still attend church at a significant rate. Only a smaller percentage of those who attend a small spiritual community do not also attend church--but that is still a large number:

When we cross-tabulated the "small group" question with the "church attendance" question, we found that 50 out of 3,600 adults attend both a group of 20 or less and "rarely" or "never" attend a place of worship. If extrapolated, this is almost 1.4 percent of the American population and may represent the purest measure of those who are not involved in an organized church, synagogue, or mosque but still are involved in some alternative faith community like, in the Christian faith, a house church. That is about four million people--not a small number. Barna's people have estimated that a million Americans are involved in the "house church," or the Christian expression of the above trend.

This trend toward home based faith expressions may also explain the significant number of people who identify themselves as "spiritual but not religious." According to an earlier CMR/Zogby poll, 22% of people consider themselves "spiritual but not religious," particularly those who rarely or never attend church. The less frequently they attend church, the more likely they are to consider themselves spiritual, but not in a religious way. The chart below illustrates:

What Can We Learn?

While we don't celebrate the revolution if it means people leaving biblical churches, we need to recognize it is happening and ask "why?" A few years ago we were upset that so many from our churches were turning from us to Islam or Mormonism. Now things are different. They have not been recruited to another faith, many have been repelled by the practice of ours.

We need to look more deeply into the Word so we can lead our churches to be more biblical--with biblical covenant community, biblical leadership, biblical church discipline, biblical preaching, and other biblical, foundational characteristics. It does not matter if a biblical church meets in a cathedral or a coffee shop. That's not the point. But it must be a church because God has chosen the church to make known His wisdom (Eph. 3:10).

New biblical forms need to be welcomed and affirmed, particularly those that evidence more of the true community that many are finding in alternative faith communities. We need to bless all forms of scripturally-sound churches. Why? Because the church is essential. The church is not the center of God's plan-- Christ is. But the church is central to the plan of Christ for His name and fame to be more widely known.

http://blogs.lifeway.com/blog/edstetzer/2008/11/at-trinity-evang

Sitting in the faculty lounge at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and getting ready for my class.

I am glad to be part of the team, but I need to give them an updated picture.

I will be teaching "Becoming a Missional Church" (class syllabus is here) On Thursday, I will be spending the morning with uberbloggers Bill Kinnon and David Fitch (and David also moonlights as a professor and a church planter). We will be shooting video and I will share more details on that later.

Thursday I will lead a conference at Trinity from 3:15-6:45pm. I must admit to being confused about it so when I get more info, I will post it here.

http://blogs.lifeway.com/blog/edstetzer/2008/11/at-the-american-

Right now I am sitting in a meeting listing to my friend Chuck Hunter speak from his paper, "How We Evangelize Pre-Christian People; Four Strategic Themes." It is part of his forthcoming book The Apostolic Congregation: Church Growth Reconceived for a New Generation (no links because it is not out until Sept. 2009, but you can see his earlier writings here).

Here is a picture of Chuck (George) Hunter talking with Carl George.

While I am at the meeting, let me share a little about the group, its situation, and its future.

The American Society for Church Growth meets every year. But, the last few years have been a challenging time and they are rethinking some things. The incoming president, Bob Whitesel, proposed last night to change the name ot the "Network for Great Commission Research."

I am one of those who believe that the Church Growth Movement lost much of its way from its original missiological and research roots (along with some theological concerns I have shared elsewhere). While doing my Ph.D., I specifically chose not to study Church Growth and did my Ph.D. in missiology because I thought missiology was the tool we need today.

So, I was a little surprised when two years ago, Gary McIntosh (pictured here talking with Dan Reeves) asked me to speak on this at the celebration of the 50th anniversary of Donald McGavran's book, The Bridges of God, at Fuller Seminary in Pasadena.

Gary asked me to present both my concerns about, and my challenge to, the Church Growth Movement-- and I did so here in this paper, "The Evolution of Church Growth, Church Health, and the Missional Church: An Overview of the Church Growth Movement from, and back to, Its Missional Roots"

The introduction shares a bit about how I felt while presenting my paper right after Gary McIntosh presented an overview McGavran's life. So, I wrote about that challenge in the intro to the paper:

I felt challenged because the American application of the Church Growth
Movement has, in my estimation, moved away from McGavran's original emphasis of
mission. While still valuing the approach and learning much from it, I desire to honor the
request of those who invited me by sharing a personal journey out of mainstream Church
Growth into a more missional approach.

I think there is much we can learn from research and hope that the missional church emphasis (with which I more closely identify) does not abandon well-done research as it rejects the excesses of the Church Growth Movement. Simply put, I pray we have the wisdom and discernment to learn the best from the Movement-- and I believe that includes its missiological and research roots. And, for that matter, I hope the movement returns to those roots.

Back to the meeting... there are some remarkable thinkers and writers here (just look at the pics!) and I look forward to learning from them. My shelves would be much lighter if it were not for their books!

http://blogs.lifeway.com/blog/edstetzer/2008/11/conversations-wi

If you have been following my Twitter feed (or Al's for that matter), the you know we met this morning in California to make an attempt at reconciliation. (I am here to speak at Biola and present a research paper on understanding younger evangelical views of justice and the Kingdom of God.) Al is here, it appears, to meet with important pastors in Southern California to tell them that he's kinda' a big deal.

For those of you new to the conversation, you can watch the first part first to see how the split began. As you can tell, Al is opinionated, arrogant, a know-it-all, and clearly misunderstands all things missional. Hmmm...

Check out the first video here:

Here is the video from our talk today. Seems to me things have gone from bad to worse:

I am not sure we are making much progress getting reconnected to God's mission and am hoping Al learns his lesson and can't build his ministry around his ego.

http://blogs.lifeway.com/blog/edstetzer/2008/11/small-church-res

We just released some new research on small churches in Facts and Trends. You can read it here.

In the last week, I have visited with hundreds of pastors of small churches-- and I love their passion and appeciate their service. Even though many seem to forget, the vast majority of churches are small. We did this research at the request of a group of SBC small church pastors. We think it will be helpful to small churches of all kinds.

Here are some excerpts:

Most pastors of smaller-membership Southern Baptist churches see what God is calling their congregations to be and do and have laid the groundwork for accomplishing the mission, but their efforts to lead are frustrated by "turf" battles and a failure to clarify and evaluate plans.

According to a new study by LifeWay Research published in the November/December issue of Facts & Trends magazine, those pastors could see their congregations make progress by evaluating church ministries, organizing to reach their goals and planning for the future...

"The effectiveness of local church ministry often is jeopardized by poor organization," said Scott McConnell, associate director of LifeWay Research. "Understanding God's calling and the context of the church is important, but leadership requires knowing where you are, knowing where you need to go and knowing how to get there. Most small church pastors actively pursue the first two but many struggle with the third."

The study, which surveyed 350 pastors of congregations that average fewer than 100 in primary worship attendance, was conducted in March 2008. It found, among other things, that 67 percent of small church pastors are frustrated with how slowly progress is made at their church.

The inertia, however, isn't for lack of trying. According to the study:

Most pastors of small churches have assessed their church's cultural context. Three-fourths have studied their communities. Ninety percent have examined trends in their congregation. Seventy-one percent say they try to be actively involved in their community.



Most pastors of small churches see what God is calling their church to be and do. Ninety-four percent say they clearly see the needs, hurts and problems God is calling their church to address. Eight out of 10 have shared with the congregation a clear, compelling picture of what God is calling their church to look like several years from now.

The obstacles to missional progress, however, are familiar to every pastor. While two-thirds of the pastors surveyed indicated their church makes regular changes to improve their effectiveness, 49 percent said lay leaders in the congregation often resist change to protect their area of responsibility. A full one-third of them said their church had experienced disruptive conflict in the past year...

There are many more charts, a PowerPoint, and other information here.

http://blogs.lifeway.com/blog/edstetzer/2008/11/central-and-east

Here is a Wordle of my recent Twitter activity while in Europe. I'm wrapping up my blogging series by providing all the links in one place and sharing and few more things (including some downloadable resources) that may interest you.

You can get some background information here in an excellent story written by Natalie Kaspar.

On to Europe...

First, here are my Central and Eastern Europe Mission Posts (in order).

Why We Are In Europe

Vision and Video from Europe

Planting Churches in Budapest and Beyond

OneApp

More from Poland

Teaching English and Telling the Gospel

When the Mission gets Lost in the System

Planting Churches in Moravia with Steve Brown

Second, here are some Central and eastern Europe Videos.

Church Planting in Europe

Vision for Budapest: Trey Shaw

Mission Strategy for Churches in CEE

Interview with Trey Shaw and Ed Stetzer

On Global Missions

Interview with Jeff Noble: Krakow

Interview with Polish Professor of English

Interview with church planter Steve Brown

And here is a pretty neat new video to add to the bunch:

Fourth, here are some links to help you connect with the people working in CEE:

Sebastian and Erin Vazquez

Shea and Rachel Massengale

Doyle and Karen Fletcher

Allan and Sue Weaver

You can find several on Facebook as well.

And, be sure to follow Natalie Kaspar and Larry McCrary on Twitter as well. If you want more information, be sure to interact with them.

Finally, are are some "Concept Papers" for Europe Planting

This is from Leadership Network's European church planting strategy teams. All are worth downloading.

Preparing to Plant

Midsized Missional Groups

Models of Missional Engagement - Europe

Church Planting within Historical Reformation Churches in Europe

I will be discussing these papers and other things at Leadership Network's Innovation3 gathering which, as best I can tell, has more speakers than 10 normal conference combined. It looks pretty amazing, so click the link above and register.

Anyway, back to Europe: thanks for following a long. Thanks for all of you that have expressed an interest. And, I hope you will consider it a place you can partner in church planting!

http://blogs.lifeway.com/blog/edstetzer/2008/11/the-barnabas-fac

J.D. Payne has written a valuable book that shines some much need light on church planting teams. Having taught church planting and evangelism courses in evangelical institutions for nine years and served with several church planting teams, Dr. Payne is aware of the lack of quality church planting resources, particularly resources addressing church planting teams.

In The Barnabas Factors: Eight Essential Practices of Church Planting Team Members, Payne examines the life of Barnabas in Christianity's first church planting efforts. He uses this as a model for contemporary church planting team members. Each chapter of this work addresses a particular "Barnabas Factor, " a healthy aspect of Barnabas' life that assisted in Kingdom expansion. The is broken down into eight practices and chapters that include:

1. Walks with the Lord

2. Maintains an Outstanding Character

3. Serves the Local Church

4. Remains Faithful to the Call

5. Shares the Gospel Regularly

6. Raises Up Leaders

7. Encourages with Speech and Actions

8. Responds Appropriately to Conflict

Payne's book also includes a guide to assist church planters in selecting and

developing team members according to the Barnabas Factors. Each chapter

includes an application section, "Points to Ponder for Team Development."

I was happy to write the forward to this book, and have included that here below.

Foreword

In this book, The Barnabas Factors: Eight Essential Practices of Church Planting Team Members, J. D. Payne addresses the desired characteristics of team members in the context of church planting teams. He does this by examining the life of Barnabas in Christianity's first church planting efforts.

This book is different from anything I've seen in church planting books. While it is generally expected that a book will start with a concept and then move to the use of scriptures to back up that concept, J. D. takes a completely different approach. This is a very straightforward, non- glitzy look at what the Bible has to say about team ministry in church planting. The principles laid out and explained in this book are taken directly from the scriptures through an in-depth look at the life and ministry of Barnabas.

It's not really a revolutionary idea to draw one's understandings from the biblical text, but it is a foundational principle that we often miss in our quest for effective leadership and exponential growth. The primary reference point for J. D.'s book is a candid look at biblical references to Barnabas. To put it simply, the primary case study for this book is the life and ministry of Barnabas.

Case studies can be powerful. They give us insight into the motivations, principles, and goals of the one being studied, while allowing us a window for viewing our own circumstances through the filter of someone else's experience. By looking at the biblical principles in Barnabas' life and ministry, this book has a high scriptural component that provides an even clearer window into your own church planting experience. After all, nothing is able to speak to the soul like God's Word. Similarly, when we think of church planting in the Bible, we might easily be drawn to the more-famous Paul. Yet as you read the words of this book, you will find that Barnabas's experiences aren't too far removed from your own planting journey. He wasn't the star. He was more like most of us--an ordinary guy who surrendered to a great call to simply do his best to assist in the greatest mission enterprise ever.

Barnabas probably lacked some of the oratory skills or apologetic artistry of more famous guys like Peter or Paul, but Barnabas's faithfulness provides a glimpse into how we can be better church planters in a calling that is often trying and always in need of greater staying power, faith, and steady determination.

Through an examination of Barnabas's life and ministry, J. D. has identified eight characteristics of successful church planting team members. He applies these characteristics not only to the individual church planter, but also to the church planting team. He then examines each of these characteristics in detail and helps the church planter apply them to the everyday needs of the church planter and his team.

As you read this book, you will come to a greater understanding of these biblical qualities. This understanding will aid you in either building an effective team from scratch or in reforming your present staff to function and live as a team.

Although The Barnabas Factors is not a how-to book or a strategy manual for the team approach in church planting, J. D. has provided a very nice and concise application section at the end of each chapter entitled, "Points to Ponder for Team Development."

I personally believe this application section is one of the best features of this book. These questions are designed for the church planting team members to use in sharpening their own application of the principles taught in this book. It would greatly benefit you and your team to systematically study and discuss these "Points to Ponder for Team Development" during your weekly training/staff time. Another good option might be to use these reflection questions in a retreat or weekend training event for your team.

As you read this book and continue along your church planting journey, let me encourage you to always center all that you are and all that you do on the gospel. As you prayerfully strategize on how to employ the knowledge gained in this book in your own team setting, keep the message of the gospel front and center. J. D.'s methodology for extracting his material straight from the scriptures is a good reminder for us to always, always, always keep the proclamation of the gospel as our chief purpose.

May God greatly bless you and work through you as you assemble and grow a team for a great harvest.

You can order the book at Amazon.com.

http://blogs.lifeway.com/blog/edstetzer/2008/11/weekend-wrap-up.

It's Saturday night and I am home working on my message for tomorrow. We are working through Ephesians and cover 1:7-14 tomorrow. I am taking a break from reviewing to share a little update from the last couple days.

First, let me say that the National Outreach Convention in San Diego was, as usual, well done and challenging.

It inspired me to write my Catalyst Monthly article on the need for "change" movements to work to convert people to Christ, not just to another (albeit perhaps important) agenda. If I publish it as written, I anticipate complaint mail from emerging, reformed, Baptist, contemporary church, charismatic, denominational, and missional people (except the ones in those groups who are actually reaching lost people-- they will forward it to those who are not which will then generate more mail.)

But, that is OK. I will probably tone it down a bit. But, honestly, I am tired of hearing about everything but evangelism from some movements. Or, when I do hear about evangelism, it is attacking, mocking, or criticizing how others do evangelism. So, bring it on. Send the mail. If saying that we need more converts makes people mad, I say, "Let's get 'em mad!" I am mad that people are going to hell.

Rant over...

Anyway, here are my presentations and other bits of info from the conference yesterday. From my church planting session early yesterday, I promised I would post all the research I cited. Well, you can find it here. Everything I mentioned (and much more) is there.

During my afternoon session, "Learning and Discerning from America's Largest and Fastest Growing Churches," I referenced this article about how we can learn from each other. And, here is the PowerPoint I used. Feel free to steal it and pretend you came up with it.

Just before Francis Chan spoke in the final session, they showed a couple of videos. I told some folks I would post them here. Unfortunately, I can't find the one for the Compelled By Love small group study (sorry), but I do have the one from Sent: Living the Missional Nature of the Church. You can see the video here:

By the way, if you want to follow along with all the videos from Sent (there are several more coming), you can do so by adding this widget to your blog (it is already on the right sidebar on this blog). The code to embed is part of the widget and it will automatically update with the new videos as the Threads Media people load them. The first of our Ed-vs-Al videos are already posted here. I promise you will enjoy the Al videos. It is funny how the name "Al" comes up in so many missional and theological debates, so you can expect to hear more.

You can follow Al on Twitter here and participate with the widget here:

Grab the Embed Code

Thanks for saying hello at the NOC. I hope it encouraged you to reach more people for Christ. It encouraged and challenged me.

Gotta' get back to working on my message now!

http://blogs.lifeway.com/blog/edstetzer/2008/11/friday-is-for-fr

Well, when this is posted I will be in sunny San Diego at the National Outreach Convention. The annual convention is the largest gathering in the country for the purpose of outreach every year. I have been for the last several years and am glad to be back again. Let me share some good things and some bad things about today.

First, the good friends...

My schedule starts early with a church planting session at 7a.m. (Since that is 9a.m. my time it does not seem so early.) It will be a dialogue time with those interested in "Church Multiplication -- Planting & Daughtering New Churches." We meet in the Town and Country Boardroom.

After that I have a few meetings. One of them is with my friend Dan Kimball, who gives me hair advice. We have called our meeting here the "annual Kimball / Stetzer NOC meeting." I am hoping to get more info about their not-so-secret new emerging church network that is explicitly evangelical and intentionally missional. More on that later, I think. I will also ask Dan why he does not follow me on Twitter. I used to follow him, but I stopped because he was not reciprocating. Just sayin'.

I also will get a chance to hang with Greg Ligon, publishing guru of Leadership Network where I hope I will be offered a huge book contract to take back to LifeWay and B&H Publishing. Now, I would not sign with any publisher other than the one that has a book at #1 on the NY Times bestseller list (Love Dare) but I can use it as leverage for future negotiations. Think big, Greg, really big, because you won't have to pay it.

Now, the main reason I am going is my workshop. It is a "featured" workshop which means, "we want you to come to the conference but not be a keynote speaker so will this be enough?" It appears that I and several others meet that distinction, though personally I think the "non-featured" look better than my workshop in several cases.

My workshop is from 1-2pm and it is called, "Learning & Discerning from the 100 Fastest Growing Churches" in the Town & Country Golden Room. I will be presenting some information about the churches on the fastest growing church list. It will be practical and include some practical takeaways. Now, if you are an angry Calvinist recently graduated from seminary with grave concerns about, well, growing churches, then this seminar is not for you. (However, happy Calvinists are welcome.) Since this is right after lunch, it may be 5 people and me, but we will see. I will probably post my notes later here at the blog.

Finally, Ron Forseth and I will hang out. Ron is a friend and has been for a while. I am a hotel guy, but I have actually spent the night at Ron's house. I can only say that for about 3 people. Ron is the King of all things Sermon Central. I have written about them before in what become a much debated post about plagiarism. Anyway, we are doing some preaching research in partnership with them and we will talk about that and catch up a bit.

And, lastly, there is a book signing. Book signings are very lonely when you are a D list celebrity like me, so please come by the Atlas lobby at 2:30pm and ask me to sign a book.

In between meetings, I will walk around a bit and lament the fact that all the world does not have San Diego's weather.

Then the former friend...

It appears that my simmering conflict with Al has now gone public. The video is below. I am not quite sure what to say, but I think it points out just how confused the missional conversation has become. Seems like everyone wants to be missional but what when they say "missional" they really mean "edgy," "innovative," or "contemporary."

But, Al wants to take ownership of the word. He thinks there is no mission without him.

This is not the first time that has happened. I have seen several key missional leaders get offended at how others use the word and Al seems to be one of them. But, I think I there are important issues here and you will see the dialogue played out over several episodes. If seeing my misery makes you happy, feel free to post on your site as well.

Many people asked who Al was when I twittered about his misunderstanding of missional, his ego, and his attitude. Actually, many suggested who he might be. Now, the truth must be told...watch here for the first of three episodes:

You can also embed the widget on the right sidebar that will stream all the videos.

This could get ugly.