Catalyst One Day

Catalyst One Day- a one day leadership package with innovative church guest speakers Andy Stanley and Craig Groeschel. This conference was held at Grace Community Church in Fulton, Maryland. I had the opportunity to spend a day as a wide eyed student ready to learn! Craig and Andy used their time at Catalyst to discuss momentum. They talked momentum in the church and personal spiritual momentum. Thank God they handed out an extensive note taking packet because I would've been crippled if I had to do it on my own. Some key notes I got out of the day's speakers:

• New things create momentum
• Be sure to tweak your programs, but know that tweaking doesn't create momentum
• "The quickest way to forget what God thinks of us is to concern ourselves with what ohers think of us."-Craig Groeschel
  
• Limitation breeds innovation
• Instead of asking someone who is successful what they do, ask why and how they do it to get insight on their leadership strategies
• "The secure and confident person is attractive. The secure and confident church is attractive."-Craig Groeschel
• The longer something is established, the more stagnant it becomes
  
• Create systems that promote the mission of the church. Avoid systems that work against the mission of the church
• Create artificial ministry deadlines to cut back on time and force people to be productive
• Don't delegate responsibilities, delegate authority
• "I'm the only one who can seek God on my behalf." -Craig Groeschel
• As culture changes, many of the questions remain the same, but the answers don't

I know I only have quotes from Craig. Andy was an incredible speaker, I just happened to jot down more of Craig's quotes. The day really hit home when talking about personal spiritual momentum. I feel that sometimes in the clutter of trying to put on programs in a church I can loose sight of why I am doing these things in the first place.

Reaching A City

More than half of the world's population live in cities and it is estimated that in 2050 more than 2/3 of the world will live in cities. Cities have been the epicenter of human growth. As a port of trade, cities facilitate different cultures, ideas, goods, and people to interact with one another. I think that it is interesting that the flocking towards cities seems universal as a uniting human characteristic. The incredible flow into cities will call for massive reforms in energy consumption, waste management, transportation, education and health. An initiative known as 19.20.21 will gather and organize information regarding the growth of cities and the impact of consumers around the world.

Understanding global trends in and towards cities is imperative to grasp future trends and how as followers of Jesus we can respond. Blogger Jon Tyson proposes that urban christian communities adopt the city parish model. The city parish model is an urban church community composed of several neighborhoods working together for the common good of the city. This kind of community should have a missional focus with each member of the community using his or her gifts to build the ministry. In turn, each member of the church community will have intimate relationships with smaller groups within the larger community. Every so often, these separate church communities would meet together for worship and to share stories. To prepare the Jesus follower in an urban setting it is important for them to know that within a large city there will be innumerable subcultures and once those subcultures are recognized, how to integrate them to create a large christian community. While people will flock to one city, the mashing together of so many diverse people will result in tribal communities, each with their own values and methods of doing things. Finding veins of similarities between people groups will find a common goal that all people value.