My brain is pretty much fried after a week of LCI. But what an absolutely amazing experience! What made the experience powerful for me was having the chance to share about the vision for ministry we have been implementing over the last two years with pastors and church leaders from many different contexts. It is pretty easy to lose perspective when you stay inside the walls of your own ministry context too long. The frosting on the cake for the week was being able to do this while learning even more from some of the most gifted minds in ministry. Will Mancini's pre-conference workshop on Monday affirmed the clarity of our vision and challenged me to find continued clarity and do a better job of sharing the vision. It was even powerful to hear Pastors Ryan and Charles share the about the vision map and pathway in the keynote. I live in the trenches of that every day and to hear it presented with clarity and from a distance was great. From then on, the keynotes just seemed to sing harmonies. We heard the same big idea from many different perspectives. If you didn't hear at the conference that you need some level of intentionality, some clarity in what you are doing, some ability to articulate your vision and mission and method for carrying it out, you likely weren't paying attention.
One clear learning experience for me was on the periphery of the conference. A significant number of our University "red-shirt" volunteers came up to me, the staff and other pastors throughout the week to ask about our pathway to discipleship. This is exciting and clarifying. It is exciting because it is causing a new wave of interest in the way we make disciples. It is clarifying because we have been talking about this for two years now and active participants in the life of the church are still just hearing about it for the first time. It makes it clear to me we still have a long way to go in articulating our vision to our own people. And from my experience at LCI, it is a worthy vision to articulate.
If you have any comments or questions about the conference or the Pathway to Discipleship, feel free to post them below.
peace,
will
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