All of the messages presented at Catalyst this year were on target.  Some more than others.  There was one in particular that seemed to be more about the speaker than Jesus, but even then he had some good things to say.  It was one of those 'eat the fish, spit out the bones' sort of messages.  I had to learn how to do this while I was in seminary in order to value Sunday morning messages because I was trained to dissect a message's exegesis and weigh it in the scales of academia (often ignoring the Spirit's action).  However at the risk of quantifying the immense value of all the messages I want to pick out three that were particularly on target.  The first is Andy Stanley's message entitled "Liberating Your Organization" that wrapped up the conference on Friday afternoon.  

In this presentation Andy's basic premise was that organizational systems control the behavior of its members.  This is seen in the way we act among different groups of people (ie. work, family, friends).  One way I like to illustrate this by observing what you do on a Sunday morning that you probably do not do the other 6 days of the week (make sure you and your family look good).   Andy illustrated this by commenting on the fact that pastor's come to him and say, "How do you get your people to fill in the blank?   Our people just won't fill in the blank".  These sort of pastors, says Stanley, just do not understand the importance of systems.  "It isn't like the people of North Point are from another species."

Andy stated that we must constantly be looking at the systems we have in place in our church.  Systems that encourage things, and systems that discourage things.  Oftentimes we discourage much needed things.  For instance, on the way back from the conference we were discussing some things that we unintentionally discourage and we realized that we discouraged mental, spritual, and emotional brokeness while embracing those with physical diseases or ailments. Likewise we can't blame church members for not inviting guests when we do not have 'guest-friendly' systems in place.  However, I believe it is harder than he made it out to be to balance between pandering to the whims of church members and just telling them to suck it up and do the things they need to do.  This struggle reminds me of a conversation I had with Wil a week ago while cleaning up at a local company picnic.  We were talking about the differences in the last few generations as we laboriously packed up those giant blow up games for kids.  One of the volunteers that was helping along with us mentioned that he would not be coming to church the next day.  This made me wander about previous generations who probably would have said that they were going to be there no matter what.  The resulting question was, "Are we lazy or was the last generation legalistic?"  To which, Wil replied, "Yes".  

Overall Andy's message was not a preachy type of message but was more of a lesson in leadership.  One that is well worth hearing

Posted In: catalyst church

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