I’m at the Whiteboard Sessions today. I’ve been waiting for this day for months now. I’m just gonna jot notes all day long (as long as the battery lasts!) and share them. Hope they bless you.
Mark Batterson: pastor of National Community Church)
Props to his team: see them do things that he can’t possibly take credit for (what a great role model)
the farther from home you are the more of an expert you are ☺
I’m not here to prescribe what we do – but to describe it
Being in the marketplace is part of their DNA; being in a theater is part of their mission
National Community Church wasn’t 100 by year 1, not 200 by year 2
The favor of God is Him doing something for you that you can’t do for yourself
Isaiah 55:8 & 9
“My thoughts are not your thoughts …” His ways & thoughts are so much greater and grander than ours.
“If we are in the right spirit, God can do amazing things through us …”
It would take us 163 years to drive to the sun, it take light 8 minutes to get here; the expanse of the universe is the distance from our thoughts to God’s thoughts.
“Your best thought on your best day is about 13.2 billion light years short of God’s thoughts on any given day.”
“Is systematic theology an oxy moron or what?”
We need a degree of critical realism: our best theories will be amended because we will make new discoveries that will require us to expand our thoughts.
1 Corinthians 8:2 “He who thinks he knows does not yet know what he ought to know.”
Everyone walked in the door today underestimating God by 13.2 billion light years.
Your dreams are too small; we confess our sin all the time, but when was the last time you confessed the smallness of your dreams to God?
Sins of omission (what we could do for God) break the heart of God; we live like God is not a part of our daily lives.
Climb up in a watchtower like Habakkuk with no agenda; seek God and pray; God will resurrect dreams that are deep inside; you will come back to life; God will reveal new dreams
Our dreams are way too small.
At some point, we stop doing ministry out of imagination and start doing it out of memory.
God’s dream is that imagination begins to overtake memory.
How do we avoid the shift from imagination to memory?
It always starts with a dream that God puts into our heart.
We need dreams that God places in our hearts that if he doesn’t do it, we’re going to look foolish.
When you let God conceive these dreams in our spirit and you pray those ridiculous prayers, that’s when we’re doing what God intended.
Lee McFarland’s prayer: God, give me one soul for every stock option he gave up (he was a Microsoft Exec, elementary Sunday School teacher) – their Easter service was in an NFL stadium
I would rather have one God idea than a thousand good ideas.
We need to believe that God wants to tell His-story through us.
I need to continue to seek the Lord so that my dreams get bigger and bigger and bigger.
Preach the gospel to everyone everywhere: I want you to climb the highest mountain, I want you to sail the widest ocean … tell everyone.
If there was ever the “greatest” dreamer, it was Jesus.
How does God accomplish the redemption of humankind? Through us; planting dreams in us.
I can’t do it; of course you can’t do it. That’s the point. We can do all things through Christ who strengthens us.
My favorite:
“God’s dream is that imagination begins to overtake memory.”
Reminds me of kingdom living…