In case you are interested, I will be speaking at a few conferences this Fall. I’m honored to speak along the other speakers.

September 15-16: Acts 29 Bootcamp

October 9-10: LEAD ’09

November 10-11: Missional Network Gathering

North American Mission Board (NAMB) we will be hosting a Regional Missional Network Gathering on November 10-11, 2009 in Kansas City. The conference will focus on the topics of Missional Church and City Networks. It will begin on Tuesday, November 10 at 1:00pm and conclude on Wednesday, November 11 at 4:30pm. The two primary presenters will be Eric Swanson and Jonathan Dodson.

Check out the new website for the upcoming Houston Bootcamp. Here is the schedule:

Austin City Life is sending a team of five to Uganda tomorrow. We will be training church planters and working with orphans and street kids. Although some of us have traveled quite a bit, none of us have been to Africa, much less Uganda. We expect to learn a lot from the kids and the adults, Christians and pastors. We also hope to forge a long-term partnership with an orphanage and church there. We also have partners here in the U.S.:

We are partnering with Acts 29 on the field by connecting with J.D. Senkbile, Africa          Director for Acts 29. The international mission of Acts 29 is expanding significantly. We are glad we get to be a part of this very important part of God’s Mission.

We are partnering with DGM to take theological resources to under-trained pastors in rural areas. DGM generously donated about 600 books.

I serve on the board of H.E.L.P. and we hope to partner with them to promote long-term orphan care.

As we made our way down 6th street around 6pm, things were just starting to pick up. More people. More sounds. More cars. Well, at least more than when we were there hours earlier for our church gathering at The Parish. We made our way up the stairs to The Parish to find a transformed venue! Candle lit, draped tables, merch tables, and a booth for the Austin Children’s Shelter (all door proceeds went to ACS).

People slowly made their way to the Austin City Life EP Release Party. Lamar Stockton and the Resonate Band opened with folk style worship, followed by an energetic set by J.J. Plascensio and the Gateway band. More people kept coming. By the time the ACL  band took the stage, we had about 100 folks there. The whole night was worshipful, from cokes and conversation to violin and vibrant singing. But the next six songs were intensely worshipful. What was relaxed and fun became serious and reverent and joy-filled.

I worshiped by watching and by singing, by reflecting on God’s remarkable grace poured out in downtown Austin, filling a club with worship, community, and a sense of mission. Just two years ago there were eight people in my living room dreaming about what it would look like for a community to address the brokenness of the city with the hope of the gospel. As I looked around, I saw changed lives, worshippers of Jesus, and a remarkable counter culture of light in a dark corner of our great city. God has done so much in such a short amount of time.

Listen to the whole Austin City Life EP for free. Produced by Andy Melvin.

Check iTunes to purchase the album. If you can’t wait, email Miranda to have a cd mailed to you for $10.

Robie provides a stirring reminder of the humanity of church planting, especially for planter’s wives.

The upcoming Acts 29 Texas Regional will be a highly strategic meeting for A29 members and candidates only. We will share vision for the Texas region and ask you to participate in pioneering strategic initiatives to “develop reproducing, gospel-centered churches that engage all the peoples of Texas.” If you are A29, I hope you can make it!

Acts 29 Regional | Texas

Monday, May 11, 2009, 9:00 AM – Tuesday, May 12, 2009, 2:00 PM

Title: Acts 29 Texas Region Gathering

Description: A time for Acts 29 members and candidates in the Texas region to gather together to network, fellowship, worship and pray with one another. It will also be a time to discuss the direction of the region and what part each planter plays.

When: May 11th-12th

Where: The Village Church at the Highland Village Campus

Schedule:
May 11th – 9 am to 8 pm
May 12th – 9 am to 2 pm

RSVP: churchplanting@thevillagechurch.net

Some of Mark Driscoll’s most recent talks have been packed with pastoral wisdom. Do not miss his talk A Call to Endure which deserves to be heard or watched by pastor and wife together. He calls us to endure: emotionally, physically, spiritually, parentally, spiritually. Some of his insightful points include:

• The only person that can truly pastor you is your wife.
• Your personality calcifies as you get older apart from the gospel you will become a calcified version of yourself.
• The one idol your church will let you worship is ministry. Don’t lose intimacy with Jesus.

In his 1 Timothy address at GC, Driscoll lays out three types of people pastors are called to interact with: positives, negatives, neutrals. He reaches deep into his own experience to bring pastoral empathy and ministry wisdom.

Read his notes here.

Acts 29 just published my new article on Conversion and Contextualization: Re-examining our Expectations of Gospel Change

The Seattle A29 bootcamp was one of the best I’ve been to. Here are a few highlights:

Preach the Word

With intoxicating passion Matt Chandler exhorted us, text after text, to be the unlikely people who proclaim the gospel and encounter opposition for being faithful to the Word of God. A standby message that can’t be preached enough in an age of theological fads, cultural fascination, church planting tricks, and the very scary American church industry.

He reminded us that when God wants to work, he repeated comes to a man. He met Moses on a mountain instead of dethroning Pharaoh by himself. He likes to use the unlikely to accomplish his redemptive purposes in history. What hope for us. But calls us to preach unpopular messages, like Isaiah’s sensory malfunction message in chapter 6, or Jeremiah’s message to “uproot and tear down,” without very little experience of “building up.”  And it is this kind of embodying and preaching of the gospel of Christ crucified that, though unpopular, actually changes the whole world!

Progressional Dialog

Matt was a little hard on progressional dialog/dialogical preaching. The crux of his point was that the Bible repeatedly shows people “preaching” not “dialoging” the Word and therefore that should be our method too. I think people will probably mishear Matt on some of this. In explaining the progression of dialog Matt summed it up as going from “nothing to nothing.” To be fair, his explanation came from Preaching Reimagined by Pagitt which carries a whole host of theological baggage with it. But I wonder if we can separate the method out and celebrate the dialogical homiletic a bit more? I have friends who use diaological preaching that is robust, gospel-centered, and far from “nothing to nothing.” Matt, do you think there’s room for this method provided the content delivered is biblically faithful?

A Call to Endure

Mark Driscoll’s message on endurance was jam-packed with wisdom for people, pastors, and planters alike. Focusing on the practicals of running the Christian race well and to the end, Driscoll highlighted a number of areas in which we need to endure: spiritually, physically, maritally, parentally, pastorally. His call to “love Jesus not use him” should pierce the armor of self-made ministry significance. Every pastor battles this—significance by ministry—instead of significance by Jesus. He reminded us that: “ministry is the one idol the church will let you get away with.”

Additionally, Driscoll’s comments on our wives being pastors to their husbands was rich. People used to scathing Mark for his complementarianism will do well to heed his words on this. Far from bull-headed masculinity and chauvinism, Mark pleaded with pastors and their wives to move together in ministry. How? By a pastor allowing his wife to minister to him emotionally, spiritually, relationally, etc. The calling of a pastor’s wife is not to some fanciful, exalted position of “first lady” but to the all-important place of strengthening her husband. Mark commented regarding this role of pastor’s wife: “everything else can be delegated in the chruch.