This is like so late because the internet connection at the Gwinnett Center was worse than dial up. 

Orange 2008 is over.  It was such a great thing to see so many gathered with a heart for families and a heart for those who still don’t follow Jesus.

Day two and three reflections:

• Lanny Donaho and Reggie are so uncannily funny it’s still surreal.
• The worship was soul-stirring.  I loved seeing people caught up in Jesus.
• Apparently I say "amazing" a lot.  Thanks Fred.  That’s so completely amazing to know!
• Francis Chan went for the jugular.  A former gang member who Francis baptized quit his church after six months. His observation: he could find more community in a gang than in the church.  Do we really care for each other? Do we have each other’s backs?
• Donald Miller:  leaders speak something beautiful into the nothing, the way God spoke something beautiful into nothing to create.
• Andy Stanley forced my notebook open (every time I’m with him I get fresh insight).  I took copious notes.  Then I lost them after his talk.  Darn. I’m such a bonehead.  Good thing I’m at Drive next week. Andy did make me realize how unbelievably influential and important small group leaders are.  And every time I’m even near Andy, his deeply pure character shines through. Thanks Andy!
• Louie Giglio spoke passionately about the church needing to lift up the transcendent Jesus.  Bang on in saying relevance, worship and justice can easily become the golden calves of our generation, and this from the man who brings us the Passion movement.
• Reggie Joiner…I just love this man who not only won’t quit on the family, but who deeply pursues innovative ways to partner with parents across North American and the world in the name of Jesus.  Thanks Reg!

Hey Orange people, what did you love and what did you learn?

So it seems like right after going to bed last night, it’s time to his the shower and start again. 

Today we’ll hear from people like Francis Chan and Donald Miller.  I’m teaching on how to simplify your church ministry model and doing  breakout together with Reggie Joiner about what it was like to work with Andy Stanley and what we can learn from that (which is kind of interesting, since I’ve never worked directly for Andy Stanley, but I guess that means’ I’m the ‘here are the principles we can learn about this’ kind of guy.)

Plus, today our friends from Global TV are hanging out with me all day today.  They are filiming today as part of the one hour Kevin Newman special they are creating on what churches are doing to reach people who don’t go to church.

Hey, Connexus friends – once again your story is being told at Orange to encourage other leaders to take bold risks.  There’s a two page write up in the Orange Conference book about your incredible faith in starting Connexus.  Reggie also had fun explaining why we left a building we built to move into a theater church so that, like a loving father, we could reach more people who were missing.  I’m so grateful for you and proud of you!

If you want pics, check out Dan Scott’s blog.

Hey, one last but most important thing – happy birthday to my completely sweet bride, Toni! It will be great to hang out together again today.

Tonight’s opening main session at Orange was completely over the top and downright inspirational.

Worshipping with 3700 other people is pretty awe inspiring to begin with, but have Steve Fee lead us tonight was incredible.

I am so grateful for God sending Reggie Joiner into my life. He’s more than just a great leader to me – he’s a great friend.  Reggie hit it out of the park tonight with a message that was far more than just well-prepared and well-delivered, it was completely inspired. 

He talked about living in the midst of prodigal generation — a generation of people who grew up and ran away on God. (Read the original story here.) Many wish they could come home. Here’s the problem: they just don’t know who they are going to meet when they show up — a loving father, or their older brother.

Reggie encouraged every church leader to repudiate the attitude of an older brother when it comes to dealing with prodigals, and adopt the posture of a loving father. Among Reggie’s insights:

• Loving fathers are preoccupied with whoever is missing.  Older brothers are preoccupied with themselves.    
• Loving fathers forgive. Older brothers shame.

There was so much more in the talk than that, but as I thought about those two alone, how would they change our lives and our churches?

Reggie imagined church after church turning from an older brother mindset and becoming loving father churches.

Tonight rekindled my passion in a very personal kind of way.  As a former prodigal, I remember being greeted by grace, not judgment. I remember a loving father who welcomed me in my rebellion.  And I know that there are thousands of people within a heartbeat of every church on the planet who would stampede back in a second if they thought a loving father, not an older brother, might greet them.

I want to snuff out every last bit of older brother out of me. I want my life – and our church – to be the kind of environment that prodigal can’t wait to get home to.

It made me think of people in my life I really need to open up to completely – zero judgment, just grace.

It’s day one at Orange.  Said hi to so many people.  The morning workshop went well, I think. Talked about starting ministry using a simple model. That is so close in my heart.

Sitting in right now with Mike Clear and Todd Clark from Discovery Church in California who are talking about developing Orange Roots.   Orange strategy seeks to combine the influence of church leaders (symbolized by the colour yellow for the light of Christ) and parents (symbolized by red, the colour of the heart) around a common strategy to shape children spiritually and morally.  At Connexus, we are pumped about what’s ahead for families.

The roots you plant today will determine the plant you grow and the fruit you’ll bear tomorrow.  A lot of this is applicable to way more than family ministry, so I’m hoping it’s helpful for everyone at some level.

Some insights that lit me up:

1.  Who you hire determines where you’re heading.  And how you recruit determines determines how people will exit your ministry.  Recruit by email, people will step back via email.  Making deep personal contact with with people means at all points in the future, they are more likely to make personal contact with you.

2.  It is impossible to say that you believe in a ministry or cause and not support it financially.  Show me your budget and I’ll show you where your heart is.

3.  If family is first, and you give your family ministry production the crappiest timeslot, then family isn’t first.

4. Orange churches don’t do much, but what they do, we try to do well. It’s next to impossible for an Orange Ministry and smorgasboard ministry (every thing goes).

5.  Priority determines capacity. Devoting a little of yourself to everything means devoting a great deal of yourself to nothing.

Great stuff from Mike and Todd!  Thanks guys.  Looking forward to all that’s ahead at Orange.

I’m teaching again at 3.  Would be so grateful for your continued prayers.

Okay, I saw the weirdest thing today for a Canadian boy on the road.  Remember, I come from a country where 85% of people don’t go to church and the other 15% lie (okay, well, I still don’t believe 15% actually go to church).

Toni and I went to Buckhead Church this morning (awesome service!!), which is in the Buckhead neighbourhood of uptown Atlanta.  I saw the most disorienting thing.  The line up of cars to get into the Buckhead parking lot went on for a block, which was cool.  I’ve seen that kind of thing before at North Point,  Willow Creek, Kensington and other great ministries I’ve been to on Sundays (a few times over the years it even happened in our neighbourhood).  But Buckhead is not a suburban church on 100 acres of land.  It’s urban. There are other buildings and shopping malls and stores all around it.

As Toni and left Buckhead church this morning, here’s what killed me — the rest of the streets were empty.  The mall parking lots were empty (even though the stores were open).  The MAIN thing happening Sunday morning was that people were gathering to worship God in a relevant environment – and they were inviting their friends.   (Buckhead has  ton of people who didn’t used to go to church.)

I dream of that day in my country.  Malls empty.  Churches full. People being sucked out of the malls and beaches (and hockey rinks) to experience the life change that only Jesus brings.  God, bring it on!

In my morning reading this morning, I was in the book of Judges checking out the story of Gideon.  I forgot how much I love Gideon, and how much power there is in his story.

Times were bad. Real bad. The question du jour was "if things are this lousy (and they were really terrible), how can God be with us? And whatever happened to the good old days when God seemed near?"  Gideon’s bold enough to ask the question directly.

God’s answer? Here I am Gideon, and I’m sending you. Gideon’s got a thousand reasons why God would be wrong about that (I’m not good enough, nobody knows me).  But God calls him a mighty warrior.  Then God does this crazy stuff with Gideon (you have to read the whole story), and God’s power and rescue is released.

My thought this morning: how many Gideons are there right now?  Too often we are experts at saying "man, if God were with us…if things were better….".  What if God was waiting for us to talk to Him instead of each other about this stuff.  What if God was ready to move right now and He was just waiting for you?

Tomorrow many people with gather at Connexus and other churches around the world to encounter this same God. As thousands gather for the Orange Conference Monday and the Drive conference the week after, how many Gideons are there?

Are you one of them?  Is God ready to release you?  I mean, seriously.   I love God’s words to Gideon before Gideon opens his mouth way back at the beginning of the story – before Gideon has even met God.  Mighty hero, the Lord is with you.

What’s keeping us from believing that this might be a moment like that? 

So we have to catch a 7:30 flight to Atlanta, and I’m with my best friend and bride, Toni.  Hungry, I promise her that when we get to the gate, there’s a Second Cup.  Now, friends, if we can talk honestly for a minute, Second Cup makes the best killer vanilla bean latte in the world.  It creams Starbucks for sure.  It’s just #1 with a bullet. 

So I get there, all anticipatory, excited.  The person behind the counter tells me they are all out of vanilla.  The last time I was at that Second Cup, they were out of latte.  Yep.  Their machine was broken.  Now this is an airport kiosk, but I couldn’t believe it.  It’s like going to church and being told that sorry, we’re all out of Jesus this week.

Actually, it made me wonder how many people come to our churches looking for Jesus only to find we didn’t point to him that week.  Got to think about that one.

And there are no Second Cups in the US.  Guess I can’t wait to get home to Canada.

Still thinking about that David Crowder line… "I’m so tired of little gods while on the edge of something large."

I love that in several days 4000 church leaders are going to gather north of Atlanta for the Orange Conference.  Think about that – 4000 people who if deployed in their communities with a fresh passion and hunger for Jesus could turn things upside down.

I love having much of my life consumed by a big mission – one too big for me along to carry out.  I love being swept up not only by a HUGELY loving God, but by millions of others who know Him and love Him and want to change the world.  Otherwise, I fear I would retreat into my little selfish cocoon and make my whole 70whatever years about me and my wishes.  Blech.

Where are you today?  On the edge of something large?  Do you sense the hugeness of God’s love (were talking about love, baby, at Orange this year)?  Do you sense God is calling you to be part of something HUGE – His plan for the world?

God, let my life get consumed by YOU.  Somehow at Connexus, we get to play our part of that much bigger whole.  Somehow at Orange (and a week from now at Drive), we’ll get another glimpse into how LARGE our God really is.

"I’m so bored of little gods
    While standing on the edge of something large."

                – David Crowder

So Toni and I are leaving tonight to go to Atlanta for a couple of weeks.  So it’s that crazy "work twice as hard before you go and work twice as hard when you get back to make up for being away" kind of deal.

I woke up exhausted today. My temptation was to run into the office at 6:30 a.m. and just plow through all the writing I need to do for Connexus before I leave (some key documents and oh, yeah, that preaching stuff that’s going to ROCK in May). But I took some time with my one year Bible and took some time to pray.  Then I jumped on the treadmill and ran for 30 minutes, iPod on and David Crowder loud.  At first, I thought "there’s no way I can run for half an hour".  But the end, my pulse was racing, I increased my top run speed and I felt great.  Fantastic.

Martin Luther said it well hundreds of years ago when he said "I have so much to do today I can’t imagine not praying for 3 hours before my day begins."  I wasn’t at the three hour mark today (or most days, honestly), but he’s so onto the right stuff.  God gives you energy.  Incredible energy.  And since I’m sure Martin Luther chopped wood or something and I mostly eat chop suey, the treadmill thing is more necessary in my life than in his.

God gives me energy (incredible energy).  Fitness gives me energy (admittedly this is very new in my life).  And people give me energy. I get particularly energized by volunteers who are on-mission and living it out and leaders in general who are sold out to the cause of Christ.

I’m excited to be able to share some talks this year at the Orange and Drive Conferences in Atlanta.  The leadership community that gathers for those events is nothing short of dynamite.  I would appreciate your prayers for Toni and I as we head out, for our Connexus team here (great things are lined up for the next two weekends here at home — don’t miss them!!) and for those from Connexus heading down, for all the speakers at the events and for the leaders who will gather. I’ll blog the happenings. In the meantime, I continue to pray this:  God, move.

A few weeks ago I looked in the mirror and was surprised to see something I had never seen before.  I’m not one of those guys who buys all kinds of "product" and tries to stay young, but it still took me back.

What did I see? One, full gray hair.  I yanked it out.  Then I saw a few more, and realized I should be grateful I have hair and not pull them out.   

I’m just a bit north of 40 this year.  By the time my dad was 40, he was almost completely gray (obviously his son gave him far more stress than my kids have given me.)

I wondered for a minute how much of my brief encounter with graying is genetics and how much is stress.  As I reflected on the last year of ministry, I realized there has been unprecedented stress, exiting a ministry and launching two campuses and well, you know the rest.  Plus there’s been some great joy too.

And then I thought: if going gray is the cost of doing this ministry, bring it on. I get so excited by the stories of changed lives I hear, of families find hope and purpose, that I’d gladly have it consume my life, or at least some follicles.  I’m probably going to go gray anyway, and if being a small part of what God is doing accelerates it, that’s fantastic.  I don’t want my life to be about my pleasure, my comfort or my personal ambition, so that the end of it all I have to show for it is a big house and a full resume.  I want it to be about Jesus, and sharing Him with the people I love and the people He loves.  And sometimes, that’s brings its share of stress. 

Week after week, we hears stories of people having their first encounter with God in years (or ever) and people who are discovering Christ’s love.  That pumps me up totally (hey, remember to share ), and that increasingly consumes my personal prayers as we dream together about what Jesus can do.

Okay, that’s enough vanity for the next ten years of my life put together, but what’s it worth going gray  for in your life?  How have you experienced stress (I’m thinking of our amazingly dedicated volunteers who get up at 4:30 every Sunday morning), and what would you consider "worth it"?