Last week my friend and Young Life College director Brian Ferguson and I attended the Acts 29 Boot Camp in Dallas, Texas. It was a packed 2 days of good and bad stuff. First the bad, it was the stomach virus that overtook me the night before the boot camp started. We had dinner with Chad Vegas of Sovereign Grace Church of Bakersfield who shared with us some great insight into his church plant and its development. Following dinner I started to feel pretty crappy and it was not too long until I was having some good talks with the La Quinta toilet.
I was not feeling that great heading into day 1 of the boot camp but decided to try to suck it up and go. Upon arriving to The Village Church I immediately regretted that decision. About half way through Matt Chandler's first message I had to get up and head back to the hotel. I slept for most the day, waking up in time to make it back to the church for Darren Patrick’s message.
Darren is a pastor from The Journey Church in St. Louis. Darren’s message was on leadership and what being a church planter will cost and require of the planter and his wife. It was a great message and the phrase that still rings true in my mind is when Darren said “You will let everyone down at some point.” This little phrase struck home with me because I think I have a fear of letting people down and I need to repent of the pride that fuels that fear. He also recommended the book “Leading with a Limp” by Dan Allender which I just got in the mail today I hope to read over thanksgiving vacation. I appreciated Darren’s genuineness and honesty in his message, it was not a pep talk but was in fact like a warning call to those running into the battle. Darren also had wicked beard that has inspired me to grow mine out during the month of December.
After some soup at Applebee’s we headed back for the final nights message from Mark Driscoll pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle.
Mark spoke about what Acts 29 is about and what type of planters they are looking for. It was great to hear Mark’s heart for church planting and his priority for Acts 29 to not become about anything other than just that church planting. That is one of the reasons for the creation of The Resurgence website where there are resources and books. Many in the blog world seem to get their Hanes bunched up over Driscoll’s use of strong language, but upon meeting him he is a nice and cool dude. Driscoll is one of those guys that you want to have over for some wings and brews to watch the UFC fight, in other words my kind of dude. In fact following his message a few of us headed over to a local sports bar where we got to meet Mark and some other planters that were at the boot camp.
to be continued....
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