I am prepping today for a sermon in "The Clash" series I am teaching this Sunday. The topic is "Satan" and I will raise issues such as whether Satan is based on mythological evil personas of pre-Christian religions, and what the Old Testament and New Testament does or doesn't say about Satan (despite what Christian culture, may have created about Satan). I will be doing some deconstructing of both the pop culture version of Satan as well as decsontructing what the Christian sub-culture version of Satan is and then reconstruct from Scripture. So it will be interesting.
Something I love about Vintage Faith Church is diving into topics like this and also not being afraid to directly teach about the reality of hell and in this case the reality of Satan. This topic about Satan was a question that was part of the survey results which shaped our current series.
Last night, Josh Fox and I just got back from Los Angeles where we had a 2 day meeting with Erwin McManus, and Eric Bryant. Dave Gibbons from New Song Church also met with us for part of it. I will write more about it later, but it was a great, great time together and talked through many issues about what this new network Scot McKnight and I have been blogging a little about. We met the past two days to further focus on what it is and isn't, some basic plans and rough timetable etc. I could not be more thrilled seeing evangelism and mission as what is motivating us and pulling this network together. And as repeatedly was stated in our conversations the past two days, how there will be a strong focus on a high view of Scripture, a passion for evangelism. We all agreed again about having the Lausanne Covenant as our theological common and agreed upon basis and statement since it is globally created and multi-denominationally created. I will post more more soon about the the meeting and the network. We will even have a place to sign up for email updates for those interested in getting news about it's development and giving input and asking questions etc. (which you can always do here). But it was humbling hearing Erwin and Eric's heart the past 2 days for evangelism and it is very, very contagious.
Speaking of mission, we launched an additional morning gathering at Vintage Faith Church this past Sunday. Josh told me we had an additional 100 people show up. It is weird how that works with opening up a new gathering like that. We also baptized 5 people on Sunday in our portable, nifty baptismal tank. Baptisms are one of the highest joys to listen to stories of how God worked in their life and what led to their baptism. So it is an adventure. I find myself using the word "adventure" alot, when people ask me how the church is going etc.
With conferences, I am very happy to be part of two upcoming events in the next 3 weeks which are focusing on evangelism and mission.
Outreach Convention which is in San Diego on November 5-7
Conversational Evangelism in Kansas City on November 14-15
I love these events as the people going have a passion for mission and evangelism and I don't have to spend time "winning" them over so to speak to be taking risks and having a heart and passion for those outside the church.
I also learned of my friend Darrin Patrick's Lead For The City conference, which I would have loved to have gone to. But you can watch the sessions here. I got to hang out with Darrin there in St. Louis recently and attend one of their worship gatherings at Journey Church which was wonderful seeing what God is doing there.
I am procrastinating now preparing the Satan sermon. So I shall get back to that now.....
