Exponential Follow Up

The Exponential Conference was amazing, but it has taken me two weeks to really work through all the great information and inspiration gathered there.  Boiling it all down, I think this is what I learned…

God plants churches, we don’t!

Now, that’s not how it was presented.  All the speakers, including famous Pastors, Christian authors, leadership gurus, and successful church planters had their own spin on this.  There were vision frames to work through, crazy love to experience, and a church plant whose first Good Friday service had 12,000 people attend – I suppose it does help to have Chris Tomlin as your worship leader!  But in the end, all the famous & not so famous speakers came back to the same point: “Yeah, we tried to use common sense and put ourselves in the best location possible to reach the community, but…

God planted this church – I didn’t!

God moved the hearts of people to receive his grace – the worship leader didn’t!

God has sustained us through times when attendance dropped, finances were tight, and staff left – feelings of despair didn’t win!

God grew this church – fancy technology and marketing gimmicks didn’t!

In the end, it was encouraging to hear all of the church planters end up communicating the same message:  ”God – let your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven!”

“We Go, He Grows”…as relevant as ever…