From O-town

Hello all, Daddy Dukes is dialing this one in from The Exponential Conference in Orlando, FL. Exponential is a network of church planters and the conference is all about planting churches. I'm currently having lunch with the rarely seen but greatly loved Rob Hartley who is a fellow blog husband like me. His wife Danielle has a lovely blog called Lancaster Living, which chronicles their journey which has included micro-financing in Rwanda, contemplating Amishnish, and now exploring church planting. You should definitely check it out. It's smooth like American Honey.

Anyway, in honor of Rob's endevor and this conference, I'll give you what church would look like if I planted one:

1. Learning to become like Jesus

YAWN, you probably read that and think boooring. Doesn't every church already do that? Well maybe they have that idea somewhere in there, but practically the goal of most churches is to get people to attend church and try to teach them, albeit terribly. Imagine a school that taught like church. Classes once or twice a week, for an hour, or less. No tests, no measurable goals, several sentences of required reading, optional homework and no grading system. Sounds like Clayton County schools. This is because for most churches there is no end in sight, no real goal or measure of success beyond staying open. Self preservation. The big problem with that is the guy we claim to follow sucked at self preservation. Jesus was always making terrible career decisions, killing momentum and bucking conventional wisdom. But the crazy part is when things died around him, they came back to life. So I want to see what a church looks like that takes serious the commission to actually become like Jesus and puts in the time and effort to measure if it's actually happening, rather than just if people are attending.

So that's #1 and I'll keep posting as the day goes on, but what about you guys, anyone tired of church as is?


-- Post From My iPhone