Church Planting Seminar in Chicago

Today was the first day of the church planting seminar put on by the ELCA. It wasn't particularly interesting as the church planting class I took in Ashland, Ohio.

Today we made sure we had a sure theological grounding to be a church planter. It turned out that most of the ELCA planters would one up each other on who had the dirtiest quote from Luther. Now, I am not one to shun cursing, but to think that people who don't preach the gospel ought to be run out of town and have dung thrown at them... thats a bit extreme. Back to the theological background. We did this exercise which had us think of positive theological statements for church planting. So many of the phrases that were offered up to the group were in "churchese" which is language only people who have grown up in the church would understand. I realize that I'm probably a decent offender when it comes to this, but in this setting, it became very evident that most of the people here were going to be planting churches for people who already have some church background.

Then, one gentleman offered this gem up to the group. When we were talking about what we as church planters are not, he said, "we are not people who's theology can be placed on a bumper sticker. Had you said this to me a few months ago, I would have agreed in full, but recently, I saw a bumper sticker put out by my collegue Suzanne's church http://www.thebarnlv.org/loading.html which simply states "Love Wins." which I just love. Now, I still have a strong distaste for hokey theology or cheesy statements which are a big part of Christian culture, but to say something like "Love Wins." is bad theology is just crazy. It seems to me that often we make theology so complex in order to never have to live it because we need to spend more time understanding it all. Something as simple as "Love Wins." makes a great bumper sticker as well as gives us little to learn and lots to do.

Other than that, the small group of Moravians have had some wonderful conversations with each other and the new director of church planting, Fred Lehr. Sometimes in our conversations over meals, it is quite clear to see how different our thinking is between the modern and post modern church, but I am happy that he is willing to engage in the conversation, as I have met other people in church leadership who simply dismiss the post modern movement.

Tomorrow will hopefully be more practical. We did get a paper to fill out which would help us create a 6 month plan, but as it will be at least 18 months before I get out into the church plant, I did not place a high priority on it just yet.