These conversations are about issues that are relevant to the future of the church and are being held in strategic cities across the US prepping for the Lausanne Congress in Cape Town in October of 2010, where over 4,000 global church leaders will convene to discuss issues facing today’s church.

Instead of posting an entire transcription of the Saddleback Conversation, I’ll be posting the key issues addressed during the conversation and include quotes from each of the panelists, which included…

• Rick Warren, Pastor and Founder of Saddleback Church
• Skye Jethani, Managing Editor of Leadership Journal
• Kay Warren, author and activist
• Jim Belcher, author of Deep Church and founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church, Newport Beach
• Dr. Michael S. Horton, professor Westminster Seminary
• Jena Lee Nardella, Executive Director, Blood:Water Mission
• Miles McPherson, Senior Pastor of The Rock Church, San Diego
• Dr. Soong Chan Rah, author of The Next Evangelicalism

Justice has emerged as a strong value among younger evangelicals, yet sociologists Christian Smith and Patricia Snell in their book Souls in Transition state: “Few emerging adults are involved in community organizations or other social-change groups or movements. Not many care to know much of substance about political issues and world events…. Almost none have any vision of a common good.” And young adults today are less likely than their parents or grandparents to volunteer or engage.

Is the rhetoric about justice among the young really a core value or just a fad?

We have a tendency to segment or isolate our churches by age or generation. What is the best way for younger leaders to learn from the wisdom of older generations?

What about the younger generation of church leaders makes you most hopeful?

Dr Michael Horton: Youth in our culture tend towards a moralistic deism. Today’s church leaders have defaulted on their responsibilities to the next generation. It’s increasingly easier to get people behind fads, but we’ve got to give them a solid grounding.

The Church shouldn’t exist as a peace and justice center – it should, rather, incubate, grow and water Christians so they can go out be healers.

In the Church we are made Christians to be ministers in the world.

Miles McPherson: There are people in all of our churches that are hurting. We need to ask them what they care about.

Kay Warren: We’ve got to make it clear that there’s a Scriptural basis for justice. Failing to provide a solid Scriptural mandate for justice will lead to it becoming another fad and not a holistic ministry.

Jena Lee Nardella: Most of the younger generation aren’t looking for a fad. They are tired of fasts and are thirsty for something more authentic. Because of how American culture has formed us we’ve had a hard time getting outside of our own selves. There is so much passion in the next generation and it makes an incredible opportunity for church leaders to offer their wisdom and experience. We’ve got to show them what it means to live the Christian life on a sustained basis because they live in a short-term commitment culture.

Jim Belcher:  Our culture doesn’t like to suffer at all. The only thing that allows us to go through suffering is a strong sense of God’s calling. We’ve got to help younger generations understand the calling on their lives. There is nothing that can keep them from following it.  When you talk about justice the world loves you. When you talk about Jesus the world hates you.

We have a generation that’s drawn into justice issues for good reasons, but what about the proclamation of Jesus… how can we make sure that doesn’t get lost in our good deeds?

Soong Chan Rah: The unbiblical divorce between justice and evangelism has left us reeling 100 years later. We don’t’ have a strong theological definition of justice. Jesus is justice. Justice is what God is moving all creation towards… compassion is what drives us towards justice and evangelism. We’ve taken a western concept and inflated a lot of definitions. What is our theological definition of justice?

Miles McPherson: When the world hears Jesus they think “Christians.” And justice is largely viewed as tolerance. The problem is that most Christians are not seen as being tolerant. If they experience Christ when we go and when we leave, then it works. If they experience Christianity [what we don’t believe, what we are against] we need to adjust.

Dr. Michael Horton: There’s a lot of unhealthy talk of living, being and doing the Gospel. Jesus Christ is the only Gospel. He did it. He fulfilled the law in our place. We keep running away from the Gospel in the name of mission.

Can you share your thoughts on the keys to discipleship in the next decade for emerging leaders?

Miles McPherson: Pain. To include conflict. To include differences. It’s one thing to have the information, it’s another thing to use it. Don’t worry about being politically correct, be biblically correct.

Kay Warren: Spend time with the next generation relationally. Discipleship has got to go into the depths of who we are so it changes who we are. It has to change us. Setting doctrine right is key, but we need to make it affect our lives and be changed by it, not just know it.

Jenna Lee Nardella: We have to have permission to fail. We are terrified of doing anything wrong. We’ve had prescribed rules. So much of our faith has been lived out in fear.  We need intergenerational relationships and community. Our world is much bigger. Step into those questions with us. Our understanding and vision of the world is very confusing.

Jim Belcher: What things keep kids in the church? We’ve got programs, camps and entertainment. The two things that are consistent in kids who stay in church are that they see a pattern of scripture reading in their home and that they are a part of an intergenerational church. We put so much time and energy into developing programs instead of the two basic things.

Soong Chan Rah: There has to be uncomfortable element added to what’s been comfortable discipleship. You’re being discipled to be missionaries for the next generation. You won’t be an effective missionary, you’ll be a colonialist if all you’ve ever known is your own kind. Where are people experiencing discomfort?

Skye Jethani: We’ve been taught doctrines and been active in our faith but do not know how to pray. Not prayer as in petition, but in how to be silent.

The next generation is increasingly wealthy. What should wealthy Christians do with their money? Is money important to spiritual renewal?

Kay Warren: Money is important. We are to invest in things that are going to outlast us, that’s a fundamental part of Scripture. We’ve got to use it and invest it wisely.

Soong Chan Rah: If we aren’t giving up the money we aren’t giving it up for Christ. We will truly experience revival when we surrender our wealth and our affluence.

Jim Belcher: We are called to give a portion of our wealth back to God. It helps us to remember it’s all from Him and He uses it to bring renewal and to help people. We have passion fatigue because we’ve stopped giving and allowed the government to take up those needs. The church used to take care of the needs of their communities. Money is a resource to powerfully impact our world for the Gospel.

More to come!

Follow the Conversation by visiting 12cities12conversations.com or follow it on Twitter@12Conversations.

Photo courtesy of Randy Chen.

Instead of posting an entire transcription of the Saddleback Conversation, I’ll be posting the key issues addressed during the conversation and include quotes from each of the panelists, which included…

• Rick Warren, Pastor and Founder of Saddleback Church
• Skye Jethani, Managing Editor of Leadership Journal
• Kay Warren, author and activist
• Jim Belcher, author of Deep Church and founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church, Newport Beach
• Dr. Michael S. Horton, professor Westminster Seminary
• Jena Lee Nardella, Executive Director, Blood:Water Mission
• Miles McPherson, Senior Pastor of The Rock Church, San Diego
• Dr. Soong Chan Rah, author of The Next Evangelicalism

The first portion of the evening focused on the future of the US and Global Church:

In 1900, over 80 percent of the Christian population was Caucasian and over 70 percent lived in Europe. Now, according to historian Dana Robert, “The typical late twentieth-century Christian is no longer a European man but a Latin American or African woman.”

What are the implications of this shift for the North American church’s mission strategy?

Kay Warren: One of the major implications is that the issue of women being in the majority is going to create interesting conversations and could make people uncomfortable. However, if the Church doesn’t draw in her daughters we are going to lose them.

Miles McPherson: We need to ask, “what can brown do for you?” We need to look at how white Christians presented Christ to the brown world and question how the brown world could reciprocate. Demographically, America is changing. People who feel uncomfortable with brownness have to deal with it. They need to ask people who are a minority what it’s like. We need to have relationships with people who are different than us. We can learn and offer much to one another.

Soong Chan Rah: By 2023, the majority of children born will be non-white. It’s a reality. We are going to see a multiethnic America. The Church is moving faster towards diversity ahead of society at large. The concern is that given these demographic changes globally and in the US, are we going to see a corresponding shift in power? Will this impact whose leadership we follow, books we read, etc. We still find that the books, theology and ecclesiology that are influencing churches are driven by white Americans. There’s a disconnect in the Church between the global reality.

Although the North American church still has an abundance of resources, statistically it’s not growing as rapidly as the church in Asia, Africa, or South America. What can we learn from our sisters and brothers in these parts of the world about mission?

Miles McPherson: Other cultures don’t have the distractions we have. Although the North American church has many resources, statistically we’re  not growing as rapidly.

Michael Horton: In churches in other cultures, we’re finding that they are no longer taking every movement and fad coming from North America. They’ve figured out that they have got to have a more deeply- rooted faith. One of the greatest challenges to evangelism in our own churches and the rest of the world is our consumerism.

Jena Lee Nardella: We have a lot to learn from the global church. Why is the Gospel so real to them? What is it about not being the most educated, wealthy or powerful? What does it mean to be a western Christian and look at my relationship with God not so individualized but as a community? What does it mean to live and worship God with a community…a “you all” not a “you.” We are so hyper-individualized in American culture.

Jim Belcher: Once the Gospel gets connected in culture, revival takes place. We’ve learned to out of the way and let the nationals lead their own churches and movements. We say it happened by accident in China. Missionaries were pushed out, but the church thrived because of indigenous leadership. Home churches, underground churches, etc. We often forget that how the Gospel moves and spreads. What would it mean for us to connect with our culture with the mindset of being a missionary? We need to think like missionaries again because we’re living in post-Christian America.

Miles McPherson: In America we’ve created a “you can have your way” mentality when it comes to Christianity. We don’t want to confront pain, conflict, and instead focus on being politically correct and accepted. We’ve created many conditions we have to meet before we are going to live for  God. When you go to a poor country, people will take what you can get. When you have money, you have options. We have too many options and too much arrogance to think we can have God as we want it..

Soong Chan Rah: We have an incomplete view of the Gospel in North America because of our affluence. We have an incomplete gospel here in North America unless we are in conversation with people who are suffering

Jena Lee Nardella: Africans pity Americans as much as Americans pity Africans. They see our consumerism and recognize what they have is a gift from God.

Kay Warren: Kay shared the story of an exchange she had with a Kenyan woman who said she felt sorry for Kay. When asked why, she said, “When you need something you buy it… when I need something I pray.”

Our faith is really so shallow.  We don’t know what it’s like to believe that God really is our source. Millions of people know God in ways we don’t know Him. They have a dimension to their walk with God that is different.

Our affluence has decreased our dependence on God.

We need the church around the world to show us what it’s like to pray and depend on God in ways that we don’t. The North American church doesn’t need another fad or program… the Church around the world to teach us to pray.

Skye Jethani: We need to do a better job of distributing to those in need. We need them for their simplicity of faith and their ability to live in dependence in their faith in God.

The Lausanne Congress is meeting in Cape Town this October. 4000 delegates from 200 countries will be there to discuss the issues facing the global church. What do you hope comes from this gathering? What do you hope will be the impact on the US church?

Jim Belcher: We need to focus on being more unified around the core elements of the Gospel and spend far less time arguing and being divided. Until we experience the unity God is calling us to know we aren’t having the witness God is calling us to have to the world.

Miles McPherson: The Gospel is not information,  it’s a person… Jesus Christ. So many people miss that.

Jena Lee Nardella: Shared this quote, “If you’re coming to save me you are wasting your time. But if you believe my liberation is found in your liberation, let’s struggle together.”

–

Obviously, some great thoughts and ideas here… to sum up my take on the first part of the Conversation…

• We are now living in a post-Christian America, which is going to call for a radical redefinition of what it means to be a Christ-follower and will dramatically change the Western Church.
• Our affluence and resources have become a hindrance to us in Western culture, we need to spend time learning from believers in other, under-resourced countries of what it means to live a life completely dependent on God.
• We don’t need to export programs or even charity… we need to lose our “savior” mentality when it comes to engaging in missions, we need to rather take a posture of learning and share what we have freely and learn as much as we can from the global church.

More to come!

Follow the Conversation by visiting 12cities12conversations.com or follow it on Twitter @12Conversations.

Photo courtesy of Randy Chen.

Admittedly, I had no idea what Lausanne was until they announced they were hosting the Chicago Conversation at Park, and when I found out what it was I was pretty blown away.

This little video will explain more…

At Park, we welcomed panelists…

• Bethany Hoang of the International Justice Mission Institute
• Soong-Chan Rah of North Park Seminary and author of  The Next Evangelicalism: Freeing the Church from Western Cultural Captivity
• Jackson Crum, Lead Pastor of Park Community Church
• Andy Crouch, editor-at-large of Christianity Today and author of the book Culture Making: Recovering our Creative Calling
• Skye Jethani, editor of Christianity Today and author of The Divine Commodity: Discovering Faith Beyond Consumer Christianity, served as moderator.
• Os Guinness, senior fellow at the EastWest Institute,a and founder of the Trinity Forum, closed the night with some final thoughts.

Below are a bunch of different sound bytes and one-liners from the Conversation that centered around issues of social justice and the Church’s response.

Skye Jethani’s Opening Comments

• The world has changed significantly.
• Within the last 50 years, the global Church has changed.
• The Church in America has radically changed.
• More people have immigrated to the US via LAX than Ellis Island.
• The average Christian walking the face of the earth today is an African woman.
• We need to think differently about the impact of the Gospel.
• It’s a new world and a new church… we need a new conversation.

There’s been a lot of talk in the Church about issues of justice and compassion. Recently, Christian Smith studied the faith of young adults and concluded that their engagement in justice is a mirage. Few emerging adults are involved in movements of justice, not many care to know much, and few are intellectually engaged. As a whole, we are less likely to volunteer or engage in issues of social justice. Is this assessment true within the church?

Andy Crouch

• There’s a tremendous unfocused passion for justice the Church.
• We are interested in a general way.
• The models we have of an engaged life are becoming detached from real human begins.
• Creators of video games, films and social media have created a world that’s so engaging that it’s more willing to go.
• We’re willing to be virtually engaged with justice but aren’t willing to do something.

Bethany Hoang

• There’s a significant desire for action.
• It’s an opportunity for us to help guide where engagement goes.
• There’s a lot of frustration and passion to do something.
• There’s a shallowness to the passion… and an impatience.
• We need to help develop a persevering passion in people.

Soong Chan-Rah

• We  like cheap acts of justice.
• There’s a lot of confusion around terms.
• Compassion isn’t always justice.
• We’ve created systems that allow us to do small acts.
• Justice is a systemic issue.

Jackson Crum

• Justice has to be an apologetic.
• We’ve got to speak about justice and what it means.
• We’ve to have justice defined in your language.
• Justice is something people want to do but aren’t fully willing to engage.

We’re failing to give people outlets to engage. We can talk about justice but don’t give people an outlet for them to engage. What can the Church do to match the desire with an outlet?

Andy Crouch

• Churches don’t need to do more than they are already doing.
• What if you did what you are already doing differently?
• Instead of doing more, can we do the things we’re doing in a new or better way?
• What if going to the soup kitchen wasn’t a monthly task but it was reconfigured to be spent engaging with people.
• 2 Million Americans leave America on a short-term trip each year.
• What’s the affect of our going into an environment where we have more wealth and power into  a community where we go and do what they were already doing? Christians in America are good at painting walls in foreign countries, and in most instances, we do a poor job so they end up re-painting them ourselves.
• What if our posture in going on short-term trips changed to going to learn from the people?

Bethany Hoang

• Justice and compassion are core to the Christian life and discipleship, not a side product.
• We’ve got to help people understand it’s implication in everyday life.
• Understanding justice begins in understanding the character of God.

Jackson Crum

• The Gospel doesn’t just mean “you’re saved…”, it’s a new value system.
• It’s not just activity it’s why… it’s motive.
• We always talk about salvation but fail to talk about its implications in everyday life.

Soong-Chan Rah

• It’s a struggle for churches to think through practically.
• There’s a need to find concrete ways to make this work.
• Are we willing to pay the price to make it work right?
• Are we willing to give the time it takes?
• There has to be a shift in power that occurs in the actual practice of justice.
• Most evangelicals don’t want to go there.
• We still want to maintain our comfort, power and privilege.
• When we talk about giving it up, we become communists and socialists.
• Some of justice is based on a skewed power.

Bethany Hoang

• So much of life is about making our lives more secure.
• Yet, the Scriptures talk about spending ourselves for the sake of others… taking up our cross, which are the opposite of comfort and control.
• We need to spend ourselves, Isaiah 58.
• How do we teach people what that means?
• It’s uncomfortable.

Soong-Chan Rah

• How many non-white mentors have you had in your life?
• American Christians are a minority, so why do we still maintain significant levels of power?
• Are we willing to be in submission to those who are different than us.

Andy Crouch

• What if the influential people in your life were non-western?

On race, Lausanne has been intentional that the participants reflect the reality of the global church. How are we doing with that in the local church in the USA.? Cory Edwards at Ohio State University says evangelicals have been the most purposeful in racial integration. Are we moving toward it? What do you see?

Soong-Chan Rah

• Statistics say we haven’t changed dramatically.
• In 2005, less than 8% of American churches were considered to be multiethnic.
• If any institution had the same stats[colleges, universities, etc] there would be a riot.
• For some reason, We’ve allowed it in the church.
• There’s a lot of rhetoric and talk, but it’s not being lived out in the Church.

What is the most important factor that needs to be addressed so we can make progress?

Jackson Crum

• We’re trying to figure that out at Park.
• You have to be willing to change your leadership.
• Park is doing that with their staffing and in their eldership.
• People need to see people like them in power and in authority.
• How diverse are your closest friends?
• We all have to buy-in to the vision on a personal and corporate level.

Andy Crouch

• My understanding is that most racially integrated institution in American life is the military; the least racially integrated institutions are country clubs. Why?
• In the military power is transparent. You wear the emblems of power on your uniform. People know where your stand what the symbols mean.
• Who knows how to get into a country club?
• The structures of power are completely opaque.
• Country clubs are like jellyfish; the military is like a lobster.
• Things won’t change until there is visible leadership, power and authority.
• Unless people know how to get it you won’t know how to get it and give it away.

Soong-Chan Rah

• The power issue is an important issue.
• When you do community organized among those disenfranchised there’s no problem ttalking about power.
• But when you go to the powerful it’s hard to talk about.
• Those without power are more willing to talk about than those who don’t.

On justice and race… most conversations about these issue tend to be emotionally driven… saying,  ”It’s not fair… it’s not right. How do you address these issues?

Bethany Hoang

• It starts with the character of God.
• Reflecting on who God is changes who you are.
• He makes you look more like Himself.
• There’s no shoulds about justice… it must become a natural part of your life.

Soong-Chan Rah

• Guilt tends to be individualistic.
• In order to get rid of our feelings of guilt, we feel like we have to do small, individual acts of justice.
• As the Church, we have corporate responsibility, deeper than one act to make that bad act right.
• None of us have owned a slave, personally… but we have benefited from a system that has.
• There is power in corporate confession.

Jackson Crum

• Some of it shakes out of our understanding of the Gospel.
• The Gospel redeems us to restore and reconcile us into a right relationship.
• When that happens, our thinking changes and realigns and we begin to take on new values.
• We recognize something isn’t right … and we rescue, redeem, restore and reconcile.

Andy Crouch

• Don’t just critique at what we’re bad at.
• Criticism doesn’t change people.
• People change based on hope, not on criticism.
• People change when you give them a better alternative.
• When you tell people what to stop doing they don’t know what to start doing.
• You’ve got to give them an alternative to the way they are living.

BH:

• There’s a simple act of reminding each other to ask God to give us the desire to do justice.
• It’s a gift God can give us to join with Him in His work.
• We need to ask God and remind each other.
• It’s a lifelong sanctification process, of growing in Christ.

In UnChristian, people shared how they viewed the church and in most instances, it was quite negative. What can we celebrate about what the Church has been doing?

Bethany Hoang

• Shared about Trafficking Victims Protection Act that was started out of the Church.

Andy Crouch

• ½ of the people behind Pixar are Christians.
• They are people who are culture-changing and altering the way we write..
• Not everything that we do has to have an Evangelical stamp on it.

Soong-Chan Rah

• That fact the National Association of Evangelicals made a statement on immigration was huge.
• It made a statement that we are a part of the majority, not just outsiders.
• It was a great way of acknowledging our bothers and sisters in Christ.

Jackson Crum

• Tony Campolo and many others dragged the church in the right direction and emerging leaders have taken the work they were doing and embraced it as a calling.
• People have realized they can make a difference.

Martin Noel talks about how the global church is growing like crazy and how strikingly similar in style those global churches are like the American church. What’s the cause? Are these churches rising up in the same conditions as the American church? What do we need to warn emerging churches in emerging countries about what we’ve done? What should they avoid?

Bethany Hoang

• Slavery has ended in our country but it was ended poorly.
• We still experience, deeply and painfully, in the African American community, the repercussions of slavery and how it was handled.
• It has significant bearing on how American leaders are thinking about justice issues in other countries.
• As we work with other governments, we would do well to make sure there’s a social mandate from within the communities to help bring an end to the structure, and that the church would lead the way in ending these injustices.
• It shouldn’t just be imposed.
• We would do well to do far more time listening and learning from the church in the majority world and treating them as the leaders and followers of Christ that they are.
• We need to learn from them and work with them.

Soong-Chan Rah

• The temptation we have is to “go fix the problem” which goes back to how the problem started in the first place.
• The power we can exert is the power of setting the example of doing confession.
• We need to repent for Westernized Christianity that we’ve imported to them.

What warnings would you give to the developing church?

Soong-Chan Rah

• The prosperity theology is horribly dysfunctional.
• Allow the culture to translate some of these forms into the culture.

Jackson Crum

• Don’t make rockstars out of your success cases.

Andy Crouch

• I’d warn them, you are going to have celebrities, but find a way to have accountable celebrities.

Why should we care about Lausanne? How are local churches going to be involved in this and will they?

Soong-Chan Rah

• Historically, it’s had significant impact.
• It was one of the first places where the important conversations took place.

Bethany Hoang

• This will be one of the first times in history that this many Christian leaders from around the world will be together.
• This is the first time an event like this has happened in the age of the internet.
• It will be an experience that will be extended beyond the 4,000 that are gathered.

Skye Jethani

• I’m naturally suspicious of superlatives.
• This is the first time in the history of the church that this many Christian leaders form this many countries will be gathered together to talk about the mission of the church.
• It won’t be 2 weeks in a one location, but because of communication technologies it has power to go far beyond.
• It could be a moment to catalyze the global church to work together in partnership. This could spring board into something huge.
• The impact could be enormous.

What does cultural integration do for the movement of justice?

Jackson Crum

• When you learn someone’s story it raises your level of engagement.

How do you balance social gospel/justice and the gospel without watering down either?

Andy Crouch

• Why it that when the prophets speaks of what God hates they always peak of two thing: idolatry and injustice?
• Are these two intricately connected?
• The real issue in poverty isn’t lack of money, it’s that someone has played ”God” in the life of the poor.
• When the image of God in the life of the person who has become poor is crushed; their view of God is a parody.
• The reason God hates injustice is the same reason he hates idolatry.
• God hates idolatry and injustice because both distort His true image.
• His image is being erased and defaced.
• His goal is that His image is reflected in creation.
• The image of God needs to be properly seen in the world.
• God has been misrepresented.

Soong-Chan Rah

• We separate discipleship and evangelism just like we separate justice and Gospel.
• We disconnected the Gospel and justice.
• God is reconciling everything that’s broken in creation though the cross.

Doesn’t’ changing culture give you more power?

Andy Crouch

• Culture changes… no one has enough power to change the culture.
• Creating culture does sometimes lead to certain amount of power.
• Do we seek dominance?
• Are power and dominance are different things?
• Anyone who gains dominance is most likely going to misuse it.
• The last thing Christians want is to dominate culture, and the good news is that we won’t.
• The reason we’re given power by God is to put it at risk for the Kingdom.

Soong-Chan Rah

• There is no such thing as Christian culture.

Os Guinness Closing Remarks

• When people ask me which generation, of all the generations in human history, I’d want to be a part of, I answer: YOUR generation.
• We are the crunch generation.
• Many of the titanic cultural issues are coming together to raise the most profound questions the human race have ever faced… including its extinction and a post-human future.
• We, who are followers of Jesus today, are a part of the first truly global Church.
• We are the most numerous faith on the earth.
• The Scriptures are the most translated and translatable works.
• We are the fastest-growing faith, not through demography and growth, but through conversion.
• Our ideas are the most influential in the world.
• We as evangelicals are, by definition, people of the Good News.
• Our defining principle is the Good news of the announcement of the Kingdom.
• We are as only strong as we are true to the Gospel.
• Conversation is a postmodern word.
• Evangelicalism in the west is in deep confusion.
• We need a renewed vision of evangelicalism.
• The global south is largely pre-modern.Our captivity to the modern world that we helped to create is what’s keeping us from fully being the church God has called us to be.
• Are we so faithfully following the way of Jesus?
• Historic Christianity never divorced the Gospel and justice… some have just rediscovered it.
• We need to get beyond our postmodern challenges and get back to the Gospel.

As you can tell, this was an awesome conversation. Check out 12cities12conversations.com to learn more about the Conversation Gatherings — and if you live in or near Chicago, be sure to check out the Micah 6:8 Conference coming to Park in June, where we’ll discuss more practical ways of living out this conversation.

Photos courtesy of Barlich Photography.

It doesn’t take much to notice that the world we’re living in has changed dramatically over the past few years. 9/11, our nation’s economy, advances in technology, the emergence of social networks, the globalization of the world and the heightened awareness of human need around the world has come to a crucial tipping point… things need to change.

The old systems and old means that the Church has depended on for years is showing its fractures and an entire generation is now growing tired of a church that is focused more on itself and less on the needs in its community and around the world.

The next generation of church leaders is moved by key issues of human need: poverty, HIV/AIDS, human trafficking, injustice, diversity, race, etc. They are also concerned about fundamental issues facing the church: consumerism, relativism, postmodernity, and the proclimation of the Gospel.

While the message and truth of the Gospel is unchanging, the means and methods in which we communicate and demonstrate it need to change. Oftentimes, though, the conversation surrounding the change that needs to happen can be tricky to navigate.

Well, I’m stoked to say that there’s an awesome conversation about all of these issues that’s going to be taking place in 12 key cities around the US in one-day events called the Conversation Gatherings. The Conversation Gatherings are sponsored by Lausanne, which is hosting The Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization in South Africa this October.

The Conversation Gatherings will bring together some of the church’s best thinkers and leaders for a conversation about the future. The Conversations will feature a diverse group of panelists, from those who have faithfully led in the past and those who are innovating new ideas and applications.

Park is hosting the Chicago Conversation Gathering on Wednesday, March 17 starting at 6:30 PM. Guests include:

• Andy Crouch – editor of Christianity Today International and Culture Making
• Skye Jethani - managing editor of Leadership Journal and author of The Divine Commodity
• Peter Furler – musician and former lead singer of the Newsboys
• Bethany Hoang – Director of the International Justice Mission Institute
• Peter Cha – associate professor of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School
• Os Guiness – author
• and will be moderated by Jackson Crum, Park’s Lead Pastor

As someone who is involved in thinking through how the church is communicating and innovating to reach emerging generations, I couldn’t be more excited about this conversation and am excited to be a part.

Two key people in the Conversation Gatherings are Andy Crouch and Skye Jethani.

Andy Crouch’s book Culture Making was one of  my top 5 reads of last year. In it, he challenges the way we, as the Church approach culture… he says, “It is not enough to condemn culture. Nor is it sufficient merely to critique culture or to copy culture. Most of the time, we just consume culture. But the only way to change culture is to create culture.”

Another of the top 5 was Skye Jethani’s The Divine Commodity. I first heard Skye share at Story and then picked up the book. Woah…that’s all I have to say. It’s an important message, especially to those of us who are out trying to live and create in a world [and church] that is motivated by consumerism. It exposes how consumerism has distorted different elements of our faith and challenges us to have our imaginations captivated by Christ.

If you can make it to Chicago for the Conversation Gathering, get here… if you can’t check out www.12cities12conversations.com to learn about other gatherings or follow them @12Conversations.

In the meantime, I’m going to give away two sets of Culture Making and The Divine Commodity.

Here’s How to Win:

• Tweet This: I just entered to win free books from @12Conversations! Comment here and RT to enter:  http://bit.ly/bSwKIV
• Comment Below: With your Twitter handle [so I can verify you did step 1] and the issue you think the church needs to talk about the most.
• Check back at 5 PM CST Wednesday: I’ll randomly choose two people to win!

Congrats to @greg__ferrell and @stgoebel2, you’re the winners!

2 Fatal Flaws of Instructional Preaching

1 – It doesn’t work.

• The worst way to teach anyone is by gathering large groups of people and lecturing them for 40 minutes.
• People don’t retain information.
• Lecturing to audiences is not an effective way to communicate.
• Small, relational community environments is the best place for teaching to happen.

2 – It doesn’t challenge people’s perceptions of reality.

• People have spent 6 days marinating in the both of the world of consumerism.
• This worldview shapes everything about us.
• We have a consumer worldview that teaches us we are the center of the universe and that everything [jobs, marriages, etc] revolves around us and value is found not in what things are, but in what they bring me.
• It teaches that the goal of life is to satisfy our desires.
• It teaches us there is a pill, program, or person to solve their problems.
• It reduces Jesus Christ to a commodity.
• We have spent decades convincing
• We’ve inoculate people to the Gospel.
• We’ve made it our mission in life to make people feel like Jesus Christ is the relevant answer to their unmet needs.
• We’ve made Him an end to our means, not an end.
• We’ve made Jesus into the equivalent of a DuctTape, WD40 Combo pack… just about all you need to fix anything.
• We’ve made Him into an instrument to fulfill our desires.
• Christianity is the most irrelevant but most beautiful worldview.
• The call of the Christian life is to deny yourself and follow Him.
• We’re not challenging the presuppositions people have, we are just reinforcing them.
• People who are walking in darkness don’t just need a cane to help them cope; they need to see a Great Light.
• They don’t need to see how to live in this broken world, they need to see another world, another reality.

Teaching is important; but when you give people how-to’s, they have no vision for why they should.

VIM – Vision, Intention, Means

• Teaching how-to fulfills the Means
• When people have no vision – the reality of God’s Kingdom – they won’t implement the means.
• When people have a means and no vision, it’s like unused home gym equipment.
• When you have a vision, the means take of itself – when there’s a will, there’s a way.
• A culture in which you have a ton of means and no vision is the culture of the church today.
• It’s a generation that has more access to teaching and Christian resources than ever before, and yet has a moral decline.
• We don’t lack instruction, we lack a vision for why it matters.
• Our people do not intend to follow Christ.
• Nothing in the Church is challenging their consumer values, it’s just reinforcing them.

How Do We Help Them See the Other Side?

• When the Kingdom of God is preached, it breaks the darkness of the world and let’s people see a vision of another reality, a place of peace, righteousness, wholeness and justice.
• We get enraptured in this beauty.
• It doesn’t happen through instruction, it happens through inspiration.
• It happens when we don’t see preaching as an act of informing but an act of inspiring.
• There’s an alternative way to preach, preaching as illumination model.

The Illumination Model

• Targets the imagination.
• Turns on the lights.
• Helps people see the reality.
• Solves the problems of remembering and challenging.
• Recognizes there’s a difference between preaching and teaching.
• In the NT the most common word for preaching meant “to announce.”
• Jesus came “preaching” the Kingdom of heaven was at hand.
• The word of teaching in the NT was “to instruct.”
• They are used differently.
• Jesus told His disciples to go out and PREACH, then He told them to TEACH.
• Teaching expects you to be competent with a set of knowledge.
• You don’t have to know jack to preach.
• Preaching is not about conveying information; it’s about announcing a new reality you have experienced.
• Peter and the disciples has experienced the Kingdom of God through the presence of Christ.
• Preaching is announcing flight 500 from Denver has landed; teaching explains how and why a plane landed.
• I can’t tell you how, but I can tell you it happened.
• Preaching requires experiential knowledge of the reality of the Kingdom of God.
• Our job is to help people see the reality of the Kingdom of God illuminated through the ancient words.
• Teaching engages intellect; preaching is an experience that illuminates.
• Preaching alters our vision – it helps us see beyond the darkness.
• Nothing Jesus taught made sense until people had their way of thinking altered… once you see the alternate reality, it makes sense.
• Once you see the Kingdom, things that don’t make sense, connect.
• Their vision of reality has to be altered.
• Vision has to come before instruction.
• Most of the people in our churches don’t need more Biblical teaching, they need their minds set free from the mindset of consumerism to see the beauty of the reality of the Kingdom of God.
• Jesus told people to “go back and tell what you have seen.”
• That’s our call… to help people see the reality we have seen.
• To help people see with new eyes.
• Our role isn’t to help people cope, our job is to help them see what’s unseen.
• We do that through our lives, stories, experiences and illuminating the ancient Scriptures.
• An awful lot of the verbs in the NT Greek are in the present tense.
• It’s not “Jesus went to Jerusalem…” it really is “Jesus goes to Jerusalem…”
• It was a literary device used to help the listener enter into the reality of the story.
• Don’t just share information, lift people’s vision.

What are you doing on Sunday morning?

• Are you getting people to DO the Christian life, or to SEE the reality of the Kingdom so they will want to DO the Christian life?
• We need to ravish people with the power, beauty and wonder of His Kingdom.

Preach in season and out of season, don’t just teach. Don’t just instruct, inspire. Don’t just educate, but take up your divine calling and illuminate.