I am posting today being part of the National Outreach Convention blog tour. They are going to different blogs of the various speakers to have some blog-dialog and today is the day at this one. The focus of their convention naturally by what they call it is "outreach" (evangelism/mission/compassion). They have a strong social justice and global compassion theme in their convention as well and motivating local churches this way.
I have spoken at the Outreach Convention every year since it started - so I have not missed a single one. I also have been reading Outreach Magazine since it started and served on the editorial advisory board for several years. So for me to blog for a day for the Outreach Convention is something I am honored to be able to do. Lindy Lowry who is the editor of Outreach Magazine is also a very dear friend and she has just joined us to be on the Connecting Team for the Origins network as well. Lindy and Kim from Outreach will be interacting here on the blog today as part of this.
I will be part of 2 things at the convention this year, one is a pre-convention forum that I will be doing along with two others from the Origins leadership team - Eric Bryant and Marlon Hall - about the realities of evangelism in our world today. And the other one that I will be leading is called"The Art of Listening to Twenty-Somethings". It is interesting that in our culture we have people in their twenties who developed Facebook, MySpace, Google etc. and have been innovative and their ideas and voices now influencing the world. But in the local church, often the voices and influence of 20-somethings is often restricted to their department they serve in, usually in youth ministry or the college ministry. I believe that us older leaders not in our twenties need to have ways to be including the voices of those in their 20's to be major influencers of how our churches are run and especially evangelism.
So I am greatly looking forward to being with my friends at Outreach in November again as it is a place where the focus is on what I think is the most important thing we can be focusing on right now apart from prayer. Prayer is the most important - as it is the Spirit of God who moves in peoples lives. And Scripture of course is important, as it is from Scripture that we read about Jesus and what evangelism and outreach even is. But I titled this blog post what I did - because I can think of nothing more important that our churches need to be developing its core driving decision-making factors around than being on mission. The Outreach Convention brings in a holistic gospel as well where the focus is both the massive thrust of urgency about salvation through Jesus and the core gospel message but it is also flooded with rallying around social justice and compassion issues.
So, all this is to say I think there is nothing more important today than for our churches to see mission as why we even exist. But that means changing almost everything we structure and in our churches and how we even think of ourselves, our buildings, our roles as leaders etc. The Outreach Convention is a gathering which focuses on this very thing. It's the reason we birthed the Origins network as well. But there is urgency in this to me - and I know for my life this is what I want to focus on with however many days God gives me here on this earth.
