Perry Noble shared this yesterday.
“God almost never calls His people to a fair fight.†George Otis
This is great! If what God has called us to was easy or ‘fair’, we wouldn’t need Him.
The focus of the conference was “Questions”—asking the right people the right questions to get the right answers. Ed Young discussed crucial questions that church leaders need to ask, such as “Is your church structured for growth?” To illustrate why so many churches around the country are set on a fatal flight path, Ed called on Perry Noble, Senior Pastor of New Spring Community Church in Anderson, SC:
If you operated an airplane like you operate most churches, you’d have a pilot and his crew in the cockpit, and they know how to fly that plane, they know every instrument – that’s their job. But if it was run like most churches, these pilots, or this crew, before they needed to make an important decision, would have to come out of the cockpit and go into first class and meet with a plumber whose cousin was a pilot at one time, an electrician, a housewife, and a doctor and then after they met with those guys, they would take it back to the coach section for a “business meeting” and a vote. Then after they voted they could go implement what the coach section had told them to do. Now my question to my congregation is, “How many of you want to fly on that plane?” But you want to go to that church? That’s why so many churches are crashing and burning – because they are not properly structured.
I stayed up late last night and watched “V for Vendetta.” The movie was made by the people who did the Matrix trilogy.
V is Set against the futuristic landscape of totalitarian Britain, V For Vendetta tells the story of a mild-mannered young woman named Evey (NATALIE PORTMAN) who is rescued from a life-and-death situation by a masked man (HUGO WEAVING) known only as “V.†Incomparably charismatic and ferociously skilled in the art of combat and deception, V ignites a revolution when he urges his fellow citizens to rise up against tyranny and oppression. As Evey uncovers the truth about V’s mysterious background, she also discovers the truth about herself – and emerges as his unlikely ally in the culmination of his plan to bring freedom and justice back to a society fraught with cruelty and corruption.
After watching the movie (by the way, there are some great fight scenes and explosions) I thought about the church global. We are Plateaued and declining across the board, but we go on as if there is some totalitarian entity making us just live with it. As in the movie, sometimes we don’t act because we don’t know better. Folks, if we will open our eyes, we’ll see that there is a revolution going on around us in churches that are fighting the status quo and making an impact. We need not go on just to go on. We need to be renewed, by what God has done, and is doing, and then join the fight to change the church as we know it into the Army God intended it to be.
The following was also posted on the New Journey Church Blog
If you’ve been spreading the word about New Journey, you certainly have at least once heard the word why. I’m hearing why more and more as the main promoter of New Journey, but to stop the why person dead in their thought, respond with Why not?
Why not a New Church? You see there is not a lot that separates most of the churches in Laurens County. Most of the Churches are doing the same thing at the same time in different locations with the same kind of people. Now, there is nothing wrong with that, I guess. But, God is always doing a new thing. These are different times and it takes “different†churches/approaches to make a marked impact in the community.
New Journey intends to be a “purple cow†Church. Author, Seth Godin, states that “You’re either a purple cow or you’re not. You’re either remarkable or invisible. Make your choice.†Cows, after you’ve seen one or two or ten, are boring. A purple cow, though…now that would be something. Purple cow describes something phenomenal, something counterintuitive and exciting and flat out unbelievable. Purple cow should describe the church, but unfortunately it doesn’t. Mostly we are a bunch of brown cows. I pray that from the onset of what will become New Journey church that we will always strive to be a purple cow. Let’s stop trying to be perfect and start being remarkable.