Unedited notes from the morning session.

Has to do with the organizational structure of movements. A starfish has a structure where any segment has the possibility to reproduce the entire structure. There’s a movement in every one of us. Begin with the end in mind – plant a movement, don’t just plant a church.

Neil Cole

Mark 4:

Three parables about the Kingdom that are organic in nature.

Sower sows seeds that lands in four different kinds of soil. The Gospel is not just a “Get out of Hell free card.” The Gospel is “The King has come.” The message of the Kingdom is Jesus. I’ve stopped telling people to plant churches. I tell them to plant Jesus. He’s the core of everything else. You can plant a church and not make disciples. We need to learn to trust in the seed. Church is the fruit, the outgrowth of the message of the Kingdom. The way to do this is to plant Jesus first. The world is more interested in Jesus than they are the church.

The man doesn’t know how the seed grows, but he knows it does and knows to harvest when it’s ready. This is the spontaneous growth of the kingdom – the seed sprouts and grows all by itself. When is this man busy? Sowing and Reaping, he’s not busy during the time of growth. When are we most busy… during growth – look at any Christian bookstore. We commit so much time, energy, and resource trying to make things grow that we don’t plant the seed. We need to see the church more like a farmer and not a CEO. We need to realize that we need to plant the seed. Curriculum is not the solution to changing lives. Books don’t change lives. The Bible does. We can’t just read the bible asking “What do the people need to hear.” We need to read it to hear God speak directly to us through His word. We make disciples by planting the seed, not a seed substitute. You can’t make something grow any more than tugging on a plant will make it grow. The growth comes from within. We need to trust that Jesus will bring the growth. Let’s bring the message of Jesus right into the darkness of our lives… take the Gospel to your drug dealer. If we trust in our methods and message more than the Seed itself, we fail.

David Watson

Have you ever caused someone to die?

I will not do this until You show me from Your Word how to start churches. After six months, the how started to emerge. Let people discover God on their own from His word. Show them the scriptures, ask them what it says to them, ask them what they’re going to do about it?

I still cause people to die, but instead of dying for a system of religion, they’re dying for a savior. The power of forgiveness has been given to us. In order to withhold forgiveness, we must simply do nothing. By doing nothing, we’re saying, “You’re not forgiven.” This isn’t easy because this isn’t about religion.

What are the paradoxical differences? You have to go slow in order to go fast. You have to start with the right people… sometimes the right one person. Each effort has 2-4 years of mentoring leadership. Focus on the one in order to win the many. Jesus told His disciples to find the one person and stay there.

Jeff Vanderstelt – Soma Communities

Eph 1 – a people who exist for the praise of His glorious grace.

There is no other Senior Pastor except Jesus Christ. Jesus building a church in and through us. Most people think of the church as a building people go to. People give money to fund the activities. These serve almost like containers to hold people in. It’s almost like we’re extracting people from the world…

You are not going out to be Jesus to people, you’re going out with Jesus for Him to fill people with Himself. We’ve been saved by grace and saved for God’s work. The five-fold ministries are to equip and train the people to minister. Every member of the church is a full-time paid minister for Jesus Christ. The saints need to be doing the ministry and the pastors should not be doing the ministering for the church. “The mercenary mentality of the church.” We have to call the church to be the church.

It’s not the pastor’s job to feed the saints. It’s the job of the saints to feed others. If volunteering at the service is your highest view… it’s event volunteering.

Have we structured things so that everyone is a declarer of the Gospel and that they see all of life as the ministry they’re called to? The best place for equipping is in life. MC is a family of believers living life together – all of it. It’s the whole deal. How do you know someone is faithful to what you taught them? By seeing them live it out. The only way to disciple is life on life in the midst of everyday life. Let’s not put on programs that extract people from life but we equip them for life.

We have to help people know what their mission is. Who are they called to? Can you imagine if you were sent to another part of the world – what would you do? We ask them to realign their whole life to make disciples of a specific people group. Let’s launch and commission people. You don’t plant a church – a church emerges. Our elder track is not sitting in a classroom, but we train our elders by having be the elder of small group of people. You’d be surprised what the church can do if you believe Jesus is in them.

Alan Hirsch

Jesus sneezed. Viral movements. Viruses can teach us many things. Pretty resistant, marvelous creatures. Really good ideas always spread like viruses. The more complex you make it, the harder it is to pass it along. Simple is reproducible.

Pay it forward. If we simply stayed with that methodology, in 11 iterations of pay it forward, we would reach every American. I’m going to disciple three people into the kingdom. Discipling them all the way through. In 11 iterations with all the people in this room, we’d reach the entirety of America. Expand this to a church – each church plants three churches. We’d saturate America with churches.

Two elements to an exponential movements. Apostolic Mission – traditional – won’t be enough. Mission of the People of God – every person and every domain has their role to play. It takes both to create an exponential movement. [over-k-dover]

Whatever you do has to have the capacity to reproduce itself. If it can’t be – you have to call that into question. If your idea of church is so complex – that is not easy to reproduce. Paul planted a church in 9 days. Your baptism is your commission – it shouldn’t take 7 years to train someone to be a leader. It’s a people movement.