Spanky's Place :: I could sing of your love forever...

Category Ministry

Yesterday was the first day of the Acts 2 Conference 2005 hosted at Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, IL. I don't know what the official attendance figure is, but I'm guessing somewhere around 5200 Christian church leaders & volunteers from around the world have descended on this suburb of Chicago.

Yesterday's sessions were great. Unlike many of the software conferences that I've attended, there are no separate "breakout" sessions. Every session is held in the main worship center, and is a general session for all.

The first two sessions were taught by Bill Hybels, founder and senior pastor of Willow Creek Community Church. Session 1, "Building An Acts 2 Church" set the tone of the entire conference. In this session Bill examined exactly what and how the first church (as described in Acts chapter 2; verses 42 - 47) was and worked; and how we can take this example and apply it to our churches today. The major point I took away from this session is there is no reason not to model todays church on the first church.

Session two, "Reaching Seekers" helped explain what evangelicalism should be verses what it should not be. Evangelicalism is spreading the Good News of salvation because of Jesus Christ's love and grace. It is NOT the you're gonna burn in hell if you don't change your ways you VILE, FILTHY SINNER!! message that is, sadly, all to common. This session helped emphasize the following four points:

listening for the prompting of the Holy Spirit, and being willing to act on them.
recognizing an unsaved person's ignorance, pain, feelings of separation, or misunderstanding about Christ
stepping out of your comfort zone in order to carry your message to them
taking a walk of faith to go to the person and begin a relationship.

Notice that nowhere in those four points is Saving Souls listed. That is not our job as evangelical Christians. That's God's job. Our job is to simply to:

act on the prompting of the Holy Spirit,
share the Good News of people's salvation through Jesus, and to
trust that GOD will do his part.

Session three, "Building Believers", was taught by Gene Appel, associate pastor at Willow Creek Community Church. Gene is the co-author of the book How To Change Your Church (without Killing It). Gene is a great speaker, and this session was fantastic. I came out of this session really energized, and ready to be 100% devoted to Christ.

Session four, "Creating Moments of Transformation", was sort of an open panel presentation of "how Willow Creek does things." For those of you who do not know, Willow Creek Community Church relies heavily on the arts (music, poetry, dance, drama, etc.) to help spread the word. They are not a "4 songs, message, prayer, see ya next week" church. (NOTE: I am NOT bashing that kind of church. If that is the way your local church works; fine. I am NOT advocating any one way of spreading the word as better than any other. If your church is part of the body of Christ and works for you, then we are brothers and differences of opinion about whether or not dancing in the aisles is appropriate or not really aren't that important in the "big picture." Anyway, this session presented some examples of music and drama done at Willow Creek, and it was really good.

Speaking of music, the worship band & singers (worship music starts every session) absolutely rocks!! I can't really do justice to how good they are. The best review I can give them is simply: "well done, good an faithful servant". Let me tell you, 5000+ people openly weeping with joy while singing at the top of their lungs is quite the moving thing.

Anyway, that's my first day's impressions. We went to the regular worship service also. Because that was a "regular service" and not part of a conference; I'll not review it here other than to say I enjoyed the message and music very much.

In Christ,
-Devin