Unedited notes from the afternoon session.
(I missed a chunk of this session)
Dave Ferguson
A big part of this is establishing apostolic culture.
Dave Watson
We need to put aside the structure of our church and connect to the structures we live in. Some populations will require us to not be at the church on Sunday mornings. Our strategy has to be defined by the structures we’re trying to reach. Could you take a job in a sweat shop to work with sweat shop workers in order to reach them? They cannot be reached through the standard means. Somebody had to give up a good paying job and take a bad paying job in order to reach that group.
Do you know the structures in your community? Do you have any concept of what it will take to penetrate that structure? We have to be able to talk to people in those structures and find out what their needs are so that we can become friends with the right to share the Gospel rather than interlopers who interject the Gospel?
Hopefully, you see in these writings a man who is staying The Course and pursuing The Path amidst the pitfalls and selfish ways of being a son of Adam. I pray earnestly that my writing would encourage some of you by showing you that this journey - though arduous and sometimes tragic - is a journey of great satisfaction. A satisfaction greater than our greatest imaginings. The trials and refining fire of tribulation are to be recognized as a small shadow of the suffering of our Savior so that we can rejoice, as Peter and the disciples did, to be counted worthy to suffer for the sake of the Name.