While we were at Catalyst I had to step back and ponder what all goes into using material gain to fuel ministry connections.  About six different 'vendor' booths at the conference were giving away Apple products with the hopes of getting all your information to later fill you mail box and inbox with their materials.  I am all for the church giving gifts to display a welcoming spirit, but I have to wonder about all the implications of using material gain to fuel interest in your ministry.  Are we validating our culture's incessant pursuit of elite gadgetry as a means to happiness?  Below are several snapshots of lottery-type contest kiosks.  The really excited looking guy is Binji.  He was working the Dave Ramsey booth.  The card he is holding shows a number of Apple products that can be won by filling it out.  

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Last but not least in my top three messages from Catalyst 2007 is Shane Claiborne. If you have kept up with my blog you can tell that Shane is one of my favorite thinkers because he is just so dang radical.  At Catalyst, a conference birthed by very conservative baptist men and which hasn't ever had a woman on the ticket to speak at the main event, he wears a t-shirt that reads, "God loves women preachers"!  I love it.  That along with the following liturgy puts him in my top three for catalyst 2007.

This responsive reading was read by Shane (the One) and the 11,000 of us (the All).  But I have a feeling that some people probably remained silent on some of these.  

One:  Lamb of God, You take away the sins of the world
All:  Have mercy on us
One:  Lamb of God, You take away the sins of the world
All:  Free us from bondage to sin and death
One:  Lamb of God, You take away the sins of the world
All:  Hear our prayers prince of peace
One:  For the victims of war
All: Have mercy
One:  Women, men, and children
All: Have mercy
One:  The maimed and the crippled
All: Have mercy
One:  The abandoned and the homeless
All: Have mercy
One:  The imprisoned and the tortured
All: Have mercy
One:  The widowed and the orphaned
All: Have mercy
One:  The bleeding and the dying
All: Have mercy
One:  The weary and the desperate
All: Have mercy
One:  The lost and the forsaken
All: Have mercy
One:  Oh God have mercy on us sinners
All:  Forgive us for we know not we do
One:  For our scorched and blackened earth
All: Forgive us
One:  For the scandal of billions wasted in war
All: Forgive us
One:  For our arms makers and our arms dealers
All: Forgive us
One:  For our Caesars and our Herods
All: Forgive us
One:  For the violence that is rooted in our own hearts
All: Forgive us
One:  For the times that we turn others into enemies
All: Forgive us
One:  Deliver us oh God
All:  Turn our feet to the way of peace
One and All:  Hear our prayer, grant us peace
One: From the arrogance of power
All:  Deliver us
One:  From the myth of redemptive violence
All:  Deliver us
One:  From the tyranny of greed
All:  Deliver us
One:  From the ugliness of racism
All:  Deliver us
One:  From the cancer of hatred
All:  Deliver us
One:  From the seduction of wealth
All:  Deliver us
One:  From the addiction of control
All:  Deliver us
One:  From the idolatry of nationalism
All:  Deliver us
One:  From the paralysis of cynicism
All:  Deliver us
One:  From the violence of apathy
All:  Deliver us
One:  From the ghettos of poverty
All:  Deliver us
One:  From the ghettos of wealth
All:  Deliver us
One:  From the lack of imagination
All:  Deliver us
One:  Deliver us oh God
All:  Turn our feet to the way of peace
One:  We will not conform to the patterns of this world
All:  Let us be transformed by the renewing of our minds
One:  With the help of God’s grace
All:  Let us resist evil wherever we find it
One:  With the waging of war
All:  We will not comply
One:  With the legalization of murder
All:  We will not comply
One:  With the slaughter of innocents
All:  We will not comply
One:  With laws that betray human life
All:  We will not comply
One:  With the destruction of community
All:  We will not comply
One:  With the pointing finger and malicious talk
All:  We will not comply
One:  With the idea that happiness must be purchased
All:  We will not comply
One:  With the ravaging of the earth
All:  We will not comply
One:  With principalities and powers that oppress
All:  We will not comply
One:  With the destructions of peoples
All:  We will not comply
One:  With the raping of women
All:  We will not comply
One:  With governments that kill
All:  We will not comply
One:  With the theology of empire
All:  We will not comply
One:  With the business of militarism
All:  We will not comply
One:  With the hording of riches
All:  We will not comply
One:  With the dissemination of fear
All:  We will not comply
One:  But today we pledge our ultimate allegiance to the Kingdom of God
All:  We pledge allegiance
One:  To the peace that is not like Rome’s
All:  We pledge allegiance
One:  To the gospel of enemy love
All:  We pledge allegiance
One:  To the kingdom of the poor and the broken
All:  We pledge allegiance
One:  To the King who loves His enemies so much he died for them
All:  We pledge allegiance
One:  To the least of these with whom Christ dwells
All:  We pledge allegiance
One:  To the transnational church that transcends artificial borders of nations
All:  We pledge allegiance
One:  To the refugee of Nazareth
All:  We pledge allegiance
One:  To the homeless rabbi who had no place to lay his head
All:  We pledge allegiance
One:  To the cross rather than the sword
All:  We pledge allegiance
One:  To the banner of love above any flag
All:  We pledge allegiance
One:  To the one who rules with a towel rather than an iron fist
All:  We pledge allegiance
One:  To the one who rides a donkey rather than a war horse
All:  We pledge allegiance
One:  To the revolution that sets both oppressed and oppressors free
All:  We pledge allegiance
One:  To the way that leads to life
All:  We pledge allegiance
One:  To the slaughtered lamb
All:  We pledge allegiance
One:  And we together proclaim His praises from the margins of the empire to the centers of wealth and power:  Long live the Slaughtered Lamb!





 

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Probably the most dead-on needed to hear message of the whole conference.  Francis Chan has a way of being very transparent, funny, and serious all at the same time.  "I loved these people... then I got into ministry" was one of his most real statements as he spoke about his passionate love for his friends and his desire for them to know Christ before he became a minister.  

Many of the things we often take for granted in our ministry Francis Chan dusted off and helped reveal their meaningfulness.  Why do we pray during services?  Is there something really happening when we do it?  Chan reminds us that in prayer and preaching there really is something spiritual and supernatural happening, and that, "the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus Christ from the dead" is in us!  God knew who we were going to be before he formed us and he has called us to be His and to do His will.  And He has given us that Spirit to accomplish these things.  

One of the most important things that I took away from Chan's message was that it is OK to push the church beyond 'lukewarmness' to a true discipleship.  Chan spoke of this in his own ministry when he told the story of his decision to let his church meet outside instead of spending gobs of money on a new building.  They may get rained upon, they may get a little chilly, but they will be using the money to bring people out of poverty and providing clean water in communities across the globe - a much better option than being spit out of God's mouth.   Are we calling our churches to the same commitment that Jesus is calling us to? 

Favorite Quotes:

"What part of the body are you?  Are you the appendix?  I mean you don't really do much and you could explode and kill us."  

"I want to bring these people before God and say, 'Lord you saw that the way these guys lived on earth, they were crazy about you'." 

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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

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What a trip.  Like a youth conference on crack.  We knew it was going to be pretty crazy when it started out with an orchestra conducted by the cooky Lanny Donahue.  The overture they began playing was accented by various instruments spaced throughout the 11,000 people in the Gwinnet Arena in Duluth GA.  To the right you can see (well sort of see, he is really small in the picture) a man playing a digareedoo.  OK - I know my photography is horrible, use your imagination.  

Right behind the violins was a man with a long gray beard playing the banjo. He was spotlighted when the overture broke and they began playing 'Dueling Banjos'.  My favorite spotlight was probably the Japanese drums that were right behind us.  There was one guy playing a huge drum the size of a refrigerator and two women playing smaller kettle drums.  And right behind them was a guy playing what looked like a silver anvil.  The best thing was that they all stared very intently in front of them.  It was kind of intimidating if they were staring at you.

However, Catalyst 2007 had much more to offer than crazy music.  The speaker line-up was as follows:  Andy Stanley (x2), Patrick Lencioni, Shane Claiborne, Francis Chan, Rick Warren, Craig Groeschel, Tim Sanders, and Dave Ramsey.  The emphasis was on Social Justice throughout the world.  This was emphasized by many of the speakers and ministries showcased during the conference.  Land of a Thousand Hills Coffee was featured on Thursday.  They are a coffee company that pays almost double the Fair Trade standards to Rwandan coffee bean farmers.  They also promote reconciliation between the Hutu's and the Tutsi's and provide micro-loans to widows of the genocide to help bring them out of poverty.  

You can check out all my Catalyst 2007 photos here. 

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