Unleash, Session 1

It's currently 6:00 am and I'm up watching a live feed of Newspring Church's UNLEASH 2009 conference. I love Perry Noble's heart for the lost and for investing in church leaders. Newspring is an exciting ministry in South Carolina. Perry announced the other day that they would be streaming live the 2 general sessions. For those of you who know me, you know I'm not typically an early morning person, but I couldn't pass up an opportunity to learn from a leader I respect so much. So here I sit, wiping the sleep boogers out of my eyes ready to be inspired. I thought I'd blog the highlights. (By the way, if you're interested, they'll be streaming live the 2nd general session at 3:30 pm EST at http://www.newspring.cc/unleash/2009/.)

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• Kicking everything off with some incredible worship. Turns out if you're up this early, this isn't a bad way to start the day.
• Band just played Newsboys song, "In Wonder". Awesome song!
• Perry just took the stage.
• 2 Kings 7
• I believe in the church today there's been a major breakdown in communication between the church and Jesus.
• Instead of trying to build His church, we're asking Him to build our church.
• 3 questions for the church we need to wrestle with:
• 1) Are we willing to embrace change?
• The gospel doesn't change, but the church has to.
• God always picks people who are falling apart to do his best work. (re: lepers in 2 Kings 7)
• I believe every church in America is one or two changes away from doubling in size.
• You will never be comfortable hearing the voice of God, if you're not comfortable with change.
• Everybody here can look at another church and call the change they need to make, but can you call it for your own church?
• Some churches need to die. Change or die.
• If what's going on in your church is manageable, God's not there. You can't manage a movement of God.
• Don't ever let the money drive the decision. Let the voice of God drive the decision. If it's God's will, it's God's bill.
• Churches, we've got to get out of the business of competing with one another, and start completing one another.
• 2) Are we willing to work?
• If you want change in your church, you've got to do more than pray about it.
• Investigate the obvious. Is there anything in your church going on that if you weren't on staff, you wouldn't be excited about? Are you manufacturing energy for anything in your church?
• Ignore the jackass. Don't let difficult people distract you from casting the vision.
• When a move of God is happening and people are getting saved, who would criticize that - God or Satan?
• 3) Are we serious about reaching the world?
• 4 terms overplayed in today's church: contemporary, blended, missional, emergent (Perry gives great definitions of each. Funny stuff.)
• If numbers aren't important, then why are they all over the book of Acts?
• The church for years has just been cruising around, but they've got so much power under the hood, that if they would just stomp it, they'd be amazed at what God could do.

Perry is such a great communicator. Funny, funny dude! He talks too fast for me to type all the jokes, though. Glad I got up early! Thanks for making this available to all of us who couldn't make the trek to S.C., Perry!