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Today was my first day at the Exponential Church Conference in Orlando, FL, a church conference for church planters. I almost came to the conference last year and at the last moment, decided to come this year. Having my family living in Orlando made it an easier decision, since I can stay at their house instead of driving an hour and a half back and forth from Tampa.
The conference offered a number of different tracks, depending on what focus a church planter might want to take. I decided to go with the Reproducing Churches track, but likely would have gone with the Missional Living track if it wasn’t totally booked.
Besides the different tracks offered, everyone at the conference attended a number of main sessions. Today’s main session was kicked off with Ed Stetzer sharing some statistics about church planting…his PowerPoint from his talk available on his website (at least they should be). Ed then talked with a number of church leaders who are involved in planting churches: Randy Pope, Neil Cole, Bob Roberts, and two other people who I can’t remember. Their dialogue was good, but I didn’t hear anything earth-shattering.
Andy Stanley was the speaker for the second session and he who talked about Vision. He basically summarized the main points of his book Visioneering, which is an excellent book. His talk was a great reminder of how incredibly important vision is in a church. As the proverb goes, where there is no vision, the people perish.
After Andy spoke we all broke out into our various tracks. Bob Roberts spoke about Visioning for an Apostolic Movement Locally & Globally. I took notes as he talked, and though he shared some interesting ideas, I walked away from the session wondering “What was that all about?” I probably need to go back over the notes again, but nothing stuck out to me.
I also met up with my friend Dave, who is planting a church in Springfield, OH this fall. It was good to catch up with him and so exciting to see him getting ready to start a church. I’m looking forward to seeing what tomorrow brings, hopefully it will be a little more insightful than today
Keywords: life church planting
