time with Erwin McManus

I just spent a great 2 days with Erwin McManus in Charlotte, NC at Origins. I am continually focused on the mission of the church when I hear and read Erwin. Jack Michael was with me who is an Eden Sem grad and is awaiting ordination in the United Church of Christ pending a call to ministry.

Some of my notes (but I mainly just lisentened):

The best way to take care of immorality and heresy is mission. (He was seeing this from scripture. Erwin thinks too much of the church is focused on "rules" couched in the context of "morality.")

The church now in the US needs to shift from institution to movement.

Instead of "joining" a church you rather should be commissioned as a missionary.

Obedience to God is about a posture of the human heart.

The ethos of the culture of the church is more important than its rules.

We need to seek to change more what people care about than than what they "believe."

The following leadership actions shape ethos - language, choosing which battles to fight, telling the stories of your life and the world around you, communicating through the person you are (authenticity, sincerity)

The tension today in the church is not trying to understand the Bible but being obedient to it.

There is a difference between loving ourselves (love your neighbor as yourself) and being in love with ourselves (self-centered).

Love is an unendless resource of unlimited power.

God created us to be in relationship with God.

The ethos of the church is servanthood which is the model of Jesus.

Gerardo Marti spoke who was a member of Mosaic LA and now in Mosaic Charlotte, who is a prof of sociology at Davidson College:

Every aspect of church structure today is borrowed from pagan life.
The denominations are a creation of the late 19th and early 20th century Western focus on organizational efficiency through bureaucracy. That model no longer serves or reaches the culture we are in.
The cathedral/sanctuary model is based on the original Roman basilica.
19th Century Protestant churches were modeled on the Victorian home of having a fellowship area and and an entrance area beyond what the Puritans had of simply a 4 walled sanctuary.
The sanctuary became more theater like in early 20th Century to enable better sound projection.

People today begin to choose to use their based on feelings rather than obligation or loyalty.

It is not simply what we say these days, but how people hear us. (I made add more notes from Gerardo in the future...as I write these they don't seem that strong, but I remember how excited I was as I was listening to him...very helpful).

Back to Erwin:

Creativity = freedom from constraint & development of new capacities

Acts 17:16ff - is the church trying to reach Peter and Martha or Dionysius and Damaris? an apostolic church is focused on the latter 2.

the inverted bell curve of the Diffusion of Innovations has across it: innovators, early adapters, early majority, late majority, late adapters, laggards(nostalgics). Most of the church today is focused on the last two groups and they have lost the first three. Right now the institutional church is trying to hold on to or recapture the late majority. A sign of its lost focus of mission in our culture.

When we fall in love with Jesus we will really grow.

This is only a brief synopsis of what was communicated. Great rock/blues band from Mosaic Charlotte. Visited a very creative neighborhood art gallery called Area 15 which is a group of Christians reaching out to a recovering neighborhood in Charlotte.