I know that downloading and watching video is a time consuming task, so I won’t give you hours of video, but I do want to show you what I see when I go overseas in just over 5 weeks.

As a result, I have set up to video blog. Below is the opening video, which you can dowload or stream, whichever you choose. I have also loaded it to youtube.com/12witnesses, but the quality bottoms out significantly. Of course, WordPress and YouTube don’t always play nicely together, so I won’t depend on them to get you the videos.

I intend them to be short and worthwhile. Here’s the index for this one:

• Why I’m doing it
• Future pre-trip posts – tech and travel
• Run Time: appx. 2:31

Vietnam Video Blog Opening [ 2:31 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

BTW, if you are picking this up in a feed and want to stream the video, click the “enclosure” link at the bottom of the feed. If you want to download it, right click the link and then select the “save as” option in IE and the “save link as” option in Firefox. It is a .mov file which you can import to your iPod, should you care to take me with you. :) All you have to do is import it in iTunes, right click on it to pop up a menu and then select convert for iPod.

[edit] Future videos will, I hope, be in mp4 format, which is what iPods use, so you can skip the conversion proces as I’ll do it myself. Your Quicktime player (which plays .mov) will play mp4 as well, so you should notice no difference on your computer.

Final overview of Reggie McNeal’s day with us.

First, he was so full of one liners that pointed out the things that we have as core values that are not biblically based. I wish I could have kept up with him, but I was typing with my thumbs on my Treo.

Secondly, McNeal was not critical of the traditional church, but did pointedly point out that we seem to be tied to things that are not getting the job done and are not commanded us by Scripture.

Thirdly, you kind of have to be there to get him. He has a dry wit and even when you are there, if you aren’t paying attention, he will say things that won’t make sense to you because you either miss something else to which it was related, or you miss that he is being sarcastic (not bitterly sarcastic).

Finally, McNeal was so full of stories that illustrated his point, hearing the points alone can leave you without the punch that being there does.

The day was taped, though I saw several flips of the cassette (yes cassette, not digitally recorded) so I know we missed several things. I don’t know if the tape will be made available. If so, you should get it.

Using the 5 Questions is a great way to talk to anyone: church, family & lost.

Meaningful engagement will take place through shaped conversation.

An apostolic version of engagement is to send out people before they are ready and debrief them after. We’ve turned it into training, discipling and working that they never get out of the building.

If we do not change the scorecard, we will never change the result. We do what we reward. Conversions will not go up until conversations go up.

3rd shift

Church-based Leadership to Apostolic Era Leadership (AD 30)

We are in a pre- Christian Culture again. Less than 10% of bridgers/millenials have any connection to church.

In AD 30, you don’t have a church job, you are the leader of a movement.

It’s messy and you can’t organize it. You follow where God is leading.

Apostolic Era leaders are Kingdom Minded. No fiefdoms. Don’t have a call to a church as much as they partner with the church to reach the area to which they are called.

They are visionary. Willing to do what has not been done and see what others have not seen.

They are developers of people.

They are Spiritual. The stink of Jesus is on them.

They are Entrepenurial. They see opportunity. Only church people lament the disintigration of churched culture. These people shout that it is great because light shines best in darkness. Missional Church doesn’t limit itself to the money in the pew. There are pagans with money who want a better city and will help finance our engagement and we build a relationship with them as well.

We think money follows meetings. House churches make us nervous because we don’t know how to take the offering.

Money follows Mission. You start Mission, and Money will find you.

You’ve got teachers, you’ve got grant writers in your church. Get them to write grants for your engagement.

In AD 30, people don’t have a single income stream. Missionality creates ways to get people engaged and will find a way to get them through.

They are plural or team oriented.

Program Driven to People Driven

In a program driven church, people exist to staff the programs and ensure their success. It makes people miserable.

Willow Creek just released Reveal where they studied their church members. They found that the more involved with their programs, and they are the best at programs, the less happy they were & 25% were thinking about leaving. the bad thing was that the conclusion was that they said they weren’t sure what to do but they suggested a whole chart of new program centered changes.

(He praised them for the willing introspection.)

Tailoring church to people, 5 Questions we asked our church members.

1 What do you enjoy doing?
2 Where do you see God most at work?
3 What would you like to see God do in your life over the 6 – 12 mos & how can we help?
4 How would you like to serve other people and how can we help?
5 How can we pray for you?

Break. Con’t soon.

Points 2 & 3 coming.

Still talking about change.

Don’t go back and try to program a shift. Churches will never vote to go Missional. They will always vote to go back to Egypt, because they like the problems they know better than the problems they don’t know.

What you want to do is get the virus started. Be Jesus yourself and share it. When someone else catches it and starts ministering to people, shine a light on them and spread it to the congregation.

Q: Is there a point when you call people to salvation in the missional engagement? A: Absolutely. As soon as the Spirit leads you MUST give an answer for reason for the hope.

Q: Shouldn’t the church be the ones creating these Missional Communities? A: Absolutely. Every church should have many Missional Communities within them set loose to do what needs to be done – not fettered by the church organization, etc. It will cause your church to explode.

Coming Shift: Program Driven to People Driven

Because of a challenge that the HS resides only in Christians, Reggie takes off on a tangent of speaking to God being at work beyond the church.

People who were not part of our “line” …

Melchezidek – who taught Abraham to tithe? Where did he get it?

Jethro – who helped Moses organize, gave him a wife and a job? Where did he get it?

Jonah mad at God over Nin. – God asked, “how could I ignore so many people?”

Followed by several stories of God at work in the middle of people’s lives who are lost.

God has not surrendered his mission to us. He is still at work whether we are promoting the church or working His mission – they are not the same thing, necessarily.

John 4:34-35

Open your eyes, the fields are ripe for harvest.

Surveyed room: 2 people in leadership Christians for less than 15 years. Chrisianity can’t survive with the leadership this mature.

We are pharisees: come and get it church culture.

Across denomInations, missional people have more in common with other missionals than those that don’t. The great divide in America is among those that “get it” & those that don’t. You are going to self opt in or out.

If you are going to be a part, you must make three shifts.

First shift from an internal, church-centric focus to an external focus. We try to export the church because we rhink the church saves people. We don’t take God to people. God is already there.

We have Muslim Imams coming to our M’s saying that Jesus is appearing to them in their dreams. Blackaby is right, we need to join God where He is working.

cont’d momentarily

The Tulsa Metro Association of Baptist Churches is perhaps the most forward thinking Association in the nation. Let me assure you, it was that long before I ever heard of it. We have become the focus of study from around the Southern Baptist Convention.

The overarching theory in our organization is that the association exists to benefit the work of the churches, and the gifts given to our association are reinvested in the churches in various ways – a small portion of which is the salaries of just three employees, who work to facilitate the reinvestment of everything else.

One of the things that our Church Staff Support Team is doing is bringing in excellent leadership to speak to our churches’ staff members. Today, Reggie McNeal is spending the day with us, courtesy of the Church Staff Support Team and the TMABC.

Don’t be jealous. Move to Tulsa. :)

Nevertheless, do not fear.

I shall live blog.

You are welcome. :)

A little over a year ago, I struggled with Steve McCoy. On the one hand, I found him insightful and challenging as I was growing in my understanding of being Missional and leading in a Missional way. On the other hand, he had begun to decry some of the political discussions in which I was beginning to invest myself. I would only later find out that I had come late to the party and Steve, Joe Thorn and Marty Duren were among the first to begin to blog about the SBC and its struggles. Someone recently called them the original “Big 3.”

I mentioned that I was struggling with Steve. Really it was more of the concept he was putting forth. The concept with which I struggled was that political engagement would not significantly move the SBC where we all thought it needed to go.

At this point, Steve was on his way out of blogging the SBC and I was full of vim and vigor – just starting. Obviously our takes on the subject were heading in very different directions. His leading SBC blog, Missional Baptist, is now gone from the net. So, we were passing one another in the blogosphere, heading in different directions. I didn’t, at the time, realize that he had been one of the first voices for reform in the SBC in the blogosphere.

This all matters because Steve said a few times, and in various places, that real Missional reform in the SBC is not going to be accomplished by the making of political moves within the SBC. There can’t be anything such as a Missional Resurgence, in other words (mine, not his), because being Missional is about specifically breaking from traditional/political structures and being a more organic source of light in a very dark culture. Steve was saying that the long lasting impact will be from Missional minded pastors and other leaders getting out front and leading by example in engaging our lost culture. Politics would be a short run and ineffective fix.

Well, I went on my journey over the last year and then some, helping to write (I added a couple of words – so that counts :) ) and host the Memphis Declaration. Of course, I blogged regularly about the IMB policies and then posted what one of my friends called the “definitive tome” on how to do business within the convention in a series called, “The SBC Primer.”

The convention was big. Frank Page was the first President elected not backed by either Patterson or Pressler since the Resurgence began, oh those many years ago [edit] with the obvious exception of Jim Henry. Bobby Welch wasn’t their first choice, but they didn’t try to thwart him either.[/edit] Debate on the floor over resolutions was unprecedented. The nominations from Bobby Welch’s committees were excellent with only one or two personal objections. The Executive Committee took reform into its hands and dealt with several by-law issues that were of paramount importance to many of us.

Looking back, I can definitely say that the convention is different because of some of the things I have said and done over the last year. “Politics” has had some positive impact. But how much and for how long?

At the Baptist Identity Conference held at Union University, I sought out Steve McCoy to tell him I had come to some conclusions about his earlier statement. I had come to the realization that he was right. The best effect we are going to have in making the SBC into a convention for the future is leading by example – politics will not ultimately get us where we need to be. He asked what led me to say that. I responded that it was what I had failed to see thus far. After a year of pouring my life into dealing publicly with Convention issues, I have realized that we are not much closer to the overall change that we need to have in the SBC.

Since that time, we have now had the convention adopt the report from the Executive Committee that calls for agencies and institutions to keep from going beyond the BFM in areas of doctrine. Nevertheless, we have also heard from seminary presidents (and at least one professor) who have told us that we didn’t know what we were doing, and that they would do as they saw fit. The issue is still not resolved, though I have done all I could.

Openness towards conservatives who disagree on tertiary (or what SHOULD be tertiary) issues is still a far way away from us now. Are we closer? Sure. But not much.

Instead, I have observed the IMB BOT change its restrictions on missionary candidates just enough to say that they actually changed them, but not enough to make one shred of actual, practical difference in the way they are interpreted or enforced.

It was at this point that I finally realized the End Game.

I have repeatedly said that I could fight for ten years over the authority of the Bible. Who gets to steer the SBC ship is not that big a concern for me. Yet it is now clear that for the institutions that have placed tertiary restrictions on Southern Baptists who wish to serve through their ministries, loud complaints on blogs just won’t cut it. Backroom meetings might cut it, but then you just replace one group with another, and I need no part of that.

Ultimately, lasting change will come from two things that are available to me: As Steve once said, it will come from young leaders living out Missional Leadership as an example for others to follow and it will come from the election of a succession of presidents that are more interested in cooperation than controlling the minutiae of every SBC entity’s theology.

In other words, the Trustees of those organizations will not change their minds nor their actions because they alienate conservative Southern Baptists. They were choosing to do that last year and nothing has changed on that front. The IMB, in particular, has made it clear that they are listening to their own counsel and the rest of us must simply deal with it.

No, to reverse the policies, the trustees at the two mission boards and the one seminary are going to have to be replaced with people who will choose not to alienate their fellow Southern Baptists. To do that, the SBC will have to elect Presidents that mandate that action through the appointment process over the next eight years. It could take less for the mission boards, but it is my evaluation that it will take a complete overhaul of the SWBTS trustees to make the difference there. This is assuming that the BFM report, now adopted by the convention, has little or no effect. I pray I am wrong, but I will wait and see.

Yes, my voice for inclusion has just called for the exclusion of some who currently serve in leadership. I am saying that those who would exclude fellow conservatives must, themselves, be excluded from leadership for the well being of the Southern Baptist Convention.

I say again, I just don’t think I care to do what I’ve done over the last year and a half for another nine years.

Along with others, I have sounded the alarm and raised the issues. It is time for those leaders who are able to rise up and press the issue of cooperation at the national convention level. I have repeatedly said that I wasn’t seeking national appointment. I realize that I have said some things that may exclude me from service that I might otherwise been privileged to enjoy. Among many, because of my vocalization, I have wounded my own reputation, and I deeply regret that. Not that I think it was wrong to speak, but that I dislike being a person of division, especially when my cry has been for unity.

Ultimately, the more cooperative natured among us, especially those already in leadership, are going to have to step up to the plate and move the convention in the direction that portends a healthy future – given my understanding of what a healthy future is. If not, I am afraid that the politics of exclusion, because it is so ingrained in some of our leaders, will lead us to a future of irrelevance and ineffectiveness.

The SBC is a good thing. I think we may have a bright future, but it is dependant on cooperative minded people showing up at the convention and making sure that their willingness to cooperate with their fellow conservatives is the majority view when we do business.

Instead, I see many of pastors and churches beginning to cooperate around the convention. They are building bridges with other churches and forming networks of their own through which they do missions without the exclusionary politics that they despise.

It’s easier to form new networks than to try and secure the future of the one we have.

I brought a couple of church members with me to the convention. They are former church planters who have a heart for engaging the lost and are doing great things in that area with the Sunday School class they now teach. They are coming because the future of the convention matters. I can honestly say, though, that the thought of worrying about voting and being at all the business meetings just isn’t appealing to them.

So here’s the deal. If those who think that restrictive mindsets don’t belong in leadership don’t start being leaders themselves, showing up at the convention to make a difference in the business of the convention and leading out as an example, then we might as well stop talking and look for another way to do missions, because the talking isn’t doing anything of extended value.

If you would ask me now about the BFM motion now adopted, rest assured, I think blogging contributed a small number of votes to the total. Rather, that vote was won on the floor and Dwight McKissic did more for that than anyone else.

As for me, I am tired of haggling over every detail of convention controversy. Close observers of my blog will be able to note that I have cut back on convention business severely up until the convention arrived this week. It used to be that I wrote daily and the convention was my daily source of opinion – even when I was no where near the SBC. It has been a long time since that happened.

I am continuing down that road, as well. I am going to attend the SBC and I will try to bring messengers for several more years. I will continue to blog here at this website. The substance of my blogging though, will be less and less political in favor of being more and more inspirational (I hope) in my desire to be an example of Missional engagement. I will continue to deal with this convention for another couple of weeks, and then will only blog about the SBC when it directly affects my ministry.

As I make that move, I expect readership to drop. There is nothing like watching a train wreck. Political infighting has made my blog one of the most well read sources in our SBC Blogosphere. That is something that I have no problem giving away.

I expect that my Phriday fotos will get better. I expect that my church will become prominently listed on my blog and that my blog will be prominently listed at my church. They have been separated now out of deference to those in my church who may not feel that I represent them in the political arena of SBC life. I expect that the details of our church’s journey to Missional engagement will be chronicled with more regularity. I expect my picture, along with the pictures of my family will be posted here more often. I expect that I would begin to mend fences with some that are on “other sides” from me within my own convention. I expect we will still vote differently, so long as we are both still in the same convention – which I hope is a very long time.

Sorry for the “Wade Burleson length” post. Expect me to be talking more about other things. If that is not what you’re after, then I am not all that sad to see you go, though I am sad that that’s all your after.

1-4-3!

Ed’s sermon was devastating. I was personally crushed in my spirit being convicted of my distraction from the message of hope to the lost.

Ed also devastated the convention, addressing the BFM, division on tertiary issues and putting the misson first.

The video is a must.

Again, this is another leader among us who has stepped to the plate and called us to unity and mission.

My favorite line (among sooooo many):

Wasn’t the promise of the Conservative Resurgence that we could all agree on the same basic things so that we could all go together to win the lost?

(or some approximation of that)