The RightNow Conference: The Final Installment

Throughout the event, I was fortunate enough to emcee certain break-out sessions for different pastors/leaders/authors we brought in for this year's Dallas event. On Friday, I emceed a couple different break-out sessions for Mac Lake, Leadership Development Pastor at Seacoast - a multi-campus church in South Carolina. Mac is a dude that's fired up about Jesus and helping everyone come to grips with the call on their life to step out and fulfill the job they've been called to do - and everyone's been called to do something!

Every single one of us has something we're passionate about. Moreover, there should be things in this world that tick us off and move us to action - often times, we don't know how to put our faith in action and if we'd really even make a difference in the first place. Mac walked us through 4 signs of a calling - signs to look for that confirm God is indeed pressing on our hearts to do something.

1. A Call You Can't Resist - A Pull You Can't Deny: it's the feeling that you cannot NOT do something

2. A Passion You Can't Manufacture - you constantly lay awake at night so fired up about it

3. Confirmation You Don't Solicit - people are forever telling you how good you are at something, and you aren't even looking for compliments or confirmation

4. The Feeling You Can't Do It - feeling ill-equipped or insufficient to get the job done

For me, I know God has a calling on my life to lead worship - furthermore, I know God's calling me to be a worship pastor. All four of these signs have come true in my life - especially the last one! I'm 24 - what do I know about pastoring? Feeling ill-equipped though has led to a beautiful reliance on Him. Actually, feeling insufficient has become the fun thing - it's what draws me closer.

For you it might be creating and selling a product for a good cause. There's a discontent you have in your life for something in this world - and that discontent isn't there on accident. You're extremely good at conceptualizing, branding, marketing, etc... however you feel like this dream you have could never become reality. I don't know what it is for you - but you've got it. What is it God is calling you to do? As Mark Batterson put it, 'use your assets to glorify God or they'll become liabilities!'

The RightNow Campaign is a non-profit here in Dallas that is all about helping you put your faith in action. They'll help you take your discontent and do something about it! RightNow partners with 75 different mission organizations and service agencies here in the States and around the world. they literally have thousands of opportunities for you to search through and get involved. Check out www.rightnow.org for more info. They'll also have the talks from this year's event available to purchase - they're well worth it!

The RightNow Conference: Part 2

Among the list of challenging speakers/gut-checkers at this year's RightNow Conference was pastor and author Francis Chan. He spoke to leaders Friday morning about a couple things: seeking out the OBVIOUS message in the Bible and not giving up, but continuing on to fight the good fight.

In first addressing us about looking for the OBVIOUS message that's in the Bible, I realized that often times I'll look for scripture to defend my point of view - we can absolutely twist scripture to reason with our opinions and relay whatever message we want it to. But Francis challenged us just to simply seek out what it OBVIOUSLY says and do it! He painted the picture that we have this narrow road leading to life, a wide road leading to destruction and a pretty good sized road we've made up to just be able to coast and do good sometimes.

He challenged us with the idea of Simon Says vs. Jesus Says - we remember the childhood game of Simon Says. But when Jesus says to do something, how often do we simply study it or memorize it rather than actually doing it! What if we told our co-workers or employees to go do something and they came back saying, "I memorized what you said...I can even say it in the Greek!" Like Alan Danielson said, "we're so far educated over our level of obedience it's disgusting." It was a simple yet bold call to quit scheming and start doing.

Using the text from 1 Peter 4:12-14, he then encouraged leaders to keep pressing on. He shared personal experiences of when he came so close to quitting - literally leaving his church and his ministry because he just couldn't take it anymore. But 1 Peter tells us to not be surprised when we get tired of doing good or when we go through trials, 'as if something strange were happening to you.' In ministry, we should EXPECT suffering, resistance and struggle - not benefits, salary or popularity. Bottom line, Satan is in the business of division and wants us to stop loving the Church and God's people - he wants us to write a book or a blog posting about how stupid the Church can be. But we should be concerned if we don't go through trials - not bashing the Church for it's shortcomings but restoring with love what's gone wrong. As for Jesus, 'passion for God's house burns within me' (John 2).

Verse 14 rocked my world, mentioning that it's when we go through those trails - when things aren't going well - that we'll experience Jesus and His grace and love the most. It says, 'for then the glorious Spirit of God will come upon you.' Francis asked the question, 'who needs a comforter when we're comfortable?' Walk boldly with Christ knowing that in the bad times, He'll reveal Himself the most.

Shine on. Fight on. Stay thirsty my friends.

The RightNow Conference: Part 1

Before I joined staff at Bent Tree about a month ago, I worked for BluefishTV & the RightNow Campaign - two branches of one amazing non-profit. One of the things they do is annually host a national leadership event called the RightNow Conference (formerly LeadNow). This past week, I had the privilege of serving alongside my Bluefish+RightNow buddies at this year's Dallas event. We heard from amazing speakers/pastors/authors/visionary leaders who challenged us, humbled us, and encouraged us. Over the next couple of posts, I wanted to share some take-aways from the event:

Tim Ross, young-adult pastor at the Potter's House in Dallas, kicked off Thursday with a ridiculously challenging message to today's leaders. He boldly asked, 'we all want to be leaders but are we worth following?' Using the text from Philippians 3:17-19, he pointed out how Paul had the audacity to say, 'if you want to be like Christ, if you want to get to the Cross, follow/imitate me.' It made me wonder, if people followed me 24/7 and imitated my lifestyle, would they become closer to Christ - would they get to the Cross - or would they get to self-centeredness or perversion or arrogance?

Verse 18 mentions that many Christ-following leaders display conduct showing they're really enemies of the Cross - as a worship leader, it challenged me to search my own heart and ask tough questions to see if I'm an ally or an enemy of the Cross. Am I leading for the wrong reasons? Because it's cool to be up on stage, leading a band in front of thousands of people, traveling the region to lead at other events, etc...? Do I have an agenda other than leading people to have an encounter with the living God? We've all got to ask ourselves why we do what we do in the name of Christ - do we sponsor children to have a photo on our fridge or to provide hope and relief to a desperate kid? I see a generation on TV that's all about relief efforts and social action but what's our motives behind it all? As Kay Warren put it, who's the hero in the story - Christ or ourselves?

Verse 19 warns us about harping on shameful things - often times we see success in numbers. We feel like we have influence if we have a huge following. Tim challenged us that if we want to see the level of our influence as leaders, we shouldn't look to the numbers but rather to an authentic testimony of a changed life through Christ.

Do we have agenda's or are we in the business of changing lives through Truth in the Cross? Who's the hero in the story? We all want to be leaders but are we worth following?