LeadNow Conference in Dallas

About 15 of our Shepherds and Ministry staff attended a conference last week in Dallas called LeadNow. The theme was: The Mission of the Church Matters.
I was expecting this to be a good time for us to spend together. And I was looking forward to hearing more of Francis Chan. He’s the guy that said: “If Jesus were here today, MY church would be bigger than His.” (Basically saying that Jesus didn’t care about the crowds as much as we do.)

I was surprised that most of the speakers are also authors (since I hear so much about how young people today hardly read books).

Francis Chan - Crazy Love & Forgotten God
Donald Miller - Blue Like Jazz, Searching for God Knows What & Through Painted Deserts
Mark Batterson - In a Pit WIth a Lion on a Snowy Day & Wild Goose Chase
George Barna - Barna Research Group

Francis was good (he spoke several times), but the most encouraging part for me was hearing such strong teaching on Christian discipleship from so many young leaders in their 20’s and 30’s. And they expected you to both have and use your Bible! (I really liked that.) Over and over, the speakers stressed personal devotion to the Lord, commitment to the local church, and personally serving others. One speaker told this gathering of 2,200 people that “to serve others without evangelism is to pervert the Gospel; and to evangelize without serving others is to pervert the Gospel.” (I was very impressed!)

Here are some comments from Matt Chandler (Village Church in Dallas) part of his lesson on “Getting the Gospel Right”: Only Christ reconciles all things. We think we are smarter than God. We want to live life our way and do what we want with our stuff; and then we expect God to accept it because we go to church. The Gospel is NOT that you are a better person today than yesterday. (Self-help books can do that.)

“for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!" Gal. 2:21