Together on a Mission

Heather and I just returned from the Newfrontiers leadership conference Together on a Mission in Brighton, England. Here are some of the highlights:

1. Simon Brading (I think he's about 20) lead us in worship throughout the week and did a fantastic job. We received a number key prophetic words in our worship times and Simon helped this flow through his sensitivity of song choice and leading us in responding.
2. I got to interview an old friend of mine Steve Whittington who is a church planter in England. It should appear on this blog in the next few weeks.
3. I am so proud of my wife who sang a prophetic song from the stage.
   
4. Terry spoke on Stephen and Philip from the book of Acts. On his Philip message he effectively taught on two stages of Philips ministry. He was proven in character and submitted to the apostles even in the midst of phenomenal public ministry success. Terry wonderfully showed how to preach in word and deed. Preaching Christ and seeing miracles.
   
5. Dinner with Mark Driscoll. In conversation I learned that he is always funny, humble (he genuinely wanted to learn from us) and the most missiological person I think I've met.
6. After a series of positive remarks about Newfrontiers Driscoll said from the platform "And now I will hurt you". This is my favorite quote from the week because it's humorous, masculine and greatly beneficial. He had A LOT of helpful insights into our movement. Encouragements and corrections.
   
7. Increasing our fruitfulness through more kinds of church planting. Introducing multiple services and multiple campuses in addition to new plants. Driscoll effectively destroyed the misconception that to BE the church we need all the same people worshiping together in one room at the same time. We need to start more services not so that our existing members have more options, but to reach new people and those who are not going to make it to a 10am Sunday meeting. The same thing goes for new campuses for those who live further away. Brilliantly obvious!
   
8. Targeting the cities. Cities are the culture forming wombs of our societies and the further upstream we become the more we affect the regions within our nations. And then the nations to the world.
   
9. Newfrontiers UK is currently planting about 10-12 new churches a year. We need to be planting 70-100 for the size we are.
   
10. We need to be on the look out for more men in their 20's as a source for church planters. Yes, they will be arrogant, foolish and risky, and yes they will be perfect for church planting!
11. Heather and I received a powerful prophetic word from Julian Adams. We attended his seminar entitled "Things Above" and he picked us out of the crowd and spoke of leadership gifting, church planting experiences, more synergy in our marriage and too many other things to mention. Download message 12 on this page. You'll find it at time signature 16:00 - 19:00.

This was the leadership conference NOT to miss. However, if you did miss it then you can download all the Together on a Mission main sessions here. Use the nav on the left to see the seminars, training tracks and mobilise sessions. I'd specifically encourage you listen to Mark Driscoll's messages -- even if you have heard a lot of his stuff before.