Day 2 of Modular Training Part 2

Phew! Another day of hearing from some incredible minds and discussing ideas and dreams with other church planters. Personally, I am exhausted and I'm not sure I can go much longer sitting in chairs that clearly weren't made for pregnant people, but it has been worth it! We were up early again this morning and head deep in note taking by about 8:30 a.m. Pastor Bob Roberts shared with us again this morning, this time on the topic of "The Church that Changes Communities." David and I loved this lecture because that is exactly what we want to be. The last thing Columbia, SC needs is another church building that fills itself with white, middle-upper class Christians for two hours every Sunday to do the church thing. We desperately desire to establish a group of people, Christians and non-Christians who are genuinely and primarily concerned with the state of the community we live in. In fact, it might be more appropriate to say that we want to become community developers. Anyways, we loved this lecture.

The remainder of the day was spent hearing from a guy by the name of Todd MicMichen. Todd is a consultant for churches in crisis, but he is also a church planter and currently the lead pastor of The People's Church in Birmingham, AL. Side note- I love Birmingham - end side note. This man is incredibly gifted in decision-making and directing. He is very strategic and pragmatic. We loved hearing from him. David and I are praying that God will connect us with someone with his kind of decisiveness and pragmatism in Columbia as we continue to develop our vision and strategy for this church plant. We could really use this kind of giftedness.

After this, we did a few activities that involved each individual person developing a one page summary of what our church plant will look like in 3 years if everything goes perfectly. David and I presented separately and got some really great and affirming feedback from the group about our strategy. Little did we know that this was actually Northwood's way of having us present our Prospectuses? Prospecti? We had been dreading what we thought was going to be a formal presentation of our Church Planting Prospectus and it turned out to be a 3 minute explanation of a 10 minute sketch... ha!

At the end of the day, we all headed out to dinner at a local restaurant to unwind and relax... no church planting talk!

Day 1 of Modular Training Part 2

The church planting training is broken up into two sections- Modular Training Part 1, which David attended in August, and Modular Training Part 2 which is what we attended today (Tues., Nov. 9th) and will attend Wednesday and Thursday as well.

We loaded up the van this morning along with our 5 new Australian friends... I just love their accents! They all work together at an established church in Melbourne and are looking at leading their church in an effort to begin planting churches both in Australia and other nations- possibly the Philippines or India.

At Northwood, there were about 20-25 of us (church planters or Northwood staff) gathered in a room together for about eight hours of training and discussion. Northwood Pastor, Bob Roberts, started off talking with us about "Starting Right." Basically talking about being a church that focuses on a Sunday event vs. being a church that focuses on transformation of people, cities, and countries. We want to be the latter. He encouraged us as church planters to think of ourselves as community developers instead of church planters. He was fascinating to listen to... totally a unique Christian. He has alot on his plate this week as he prepares for the Global Faith Forum that is taking place over the weekend. Go to the website to learn more about it.

The remainder of the training we discussed small groups that take place in homes, otherwise know as discipleship groups, home groups, cell groups, etc. David and I have both been huge believers in the power and purpose of "small group" meetings and are definitely wanting to see this done, and done well, in the church. After the discussion on small groups, we heard from a guy by the name of Todd McMichen. He talked with us about stewardship and the financial piece of church planting. He was another dynamic and informative speaker. What I liked most about him though was that he lives in Birmingham, AL! He is the pastor of a church plant there called The People's Church at Oak Mountain. Oh how I love Birmingham!!! Finally, after a day of soaking up information, they put us to work with something called Wild Works. This is a series of small group activities centered on brainstorming, problem-solving, and vision-casting. At the end of it all, each person had to take 15 minutes to draw or write out how their church plant would look in three years if everything was perfect and then present it to the group. David and I did ours independent of each other and we both got some great feedback and affirmation from the group. Thankfully, we both had a very similar vision! After this, everyone's brains were fried and stomachs were hungry. So, we went to a fabulous Mexican restaurant to solve one of the problems : ) So far, I think the best part has been being with and talking with other people who are in the same boat as us. It's nice to know that there are other crazy couples who are also raising support, starting families, moving to new cities, and trusting God. It's nice to not feel alone.

Lindsey

Trip To Texas

We've mentioned before about a church called Northwood in Keller, TX. Well, these next few posts you will be getting an earful about them because we have just spent a week in Keller, TX for Part 2 of a church planting training as well as an incredible once in a lifetime event called the Global Faith Forum. We didn't post much about the training and forum leading up to it because we didn't want "weird people" knowing we were going to be out of town for a week. We tried to write a blog post after each day so that the day's events would be fresh in our mind.

Monday was mainly a travel day for us. We left Columbia around 8:30. Dropped our Sugar Baby off at a new kennel for the week and drove up to Charlotte to catch our flight. We have really been looking forward to this trip not just for the training and Global Faith Forum that we would be attending, but also looking at this like our "babymoon" or last little travel adventure for awhile anyways. Of course we would've loved to revisit our honeymoon site of Cancun, Mexico and Hotel Le Blanc but I suppose that will just have to wait.

I have to tell you one story from our flight that day. David and I had just boarded the plane- last I might say because we didn't hear our zones being called, and we sat down in our window and middle seats. There was a woman seated on the aisle seat of our row. David, in a very loud and unfiltered manner says, "What is that smell? It smells like popcorn and butt." What a combination, huh? Disgusting, I know, but that was his description of this smell. As the word "butt" was coming out of his mouth he turns his head and realizes that the lady next to us has just pulled out a small bag of popcorn from her purse. Awesome. Well, I start laughing uncontrollably which leads to tears streaming down my face which then leads to me having to cross my legs tightly so as not to spill my bladder. Its the strangest thing, in the past couple of months of being pregnant I cannot even moderately laugh without crying and then of course their is the bladder issue. So, David is now laughing uncontrollably at me in my ridiculous state and he is crying and we are just a mess. We just can't go anywhere together anymore without causing a scene.

Three hours later we land at DFW airport and Brian Hook of Vision 360 and Northwood is waiting to pick us up to take us to the church. David and Brian have been communicating for some time now and he has been a major source of encouragement and guidance for David. I was glad to finally meet him. He took us to the church where he entrusted to David a 15 passenger van that David was put in charge of to help transport people between the airport, hotel, and church. We also learned that a group of 5 church planters from Australia would be staying at the same hotel as us and we would be transporting them back in forth. David met 3 of them at the Part 1 training and really enjoyed them.

After that, David and I headed over to our hotel for dinner and sleep since we knew it was going to be a busy week ahead.