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April 25-27, 2010: 2010 LCMC Leadership Conference Hosted by: Lutheran Church of the Master 2617 South 114th St Omaha, NE 68144-3098

For all you who can't be here, a quick summary from the first full day at the Leadership Conference:

-Excellent talks by Barry Anderson and Dave Housholder

Housholder challenged us in a number of ways:

-When we talk about Biblical authority, are we talking about using the Bible to proof-text our pre-conceived notions, or are we willing to talk about Scripture as a whole, read it as a whole and let it shape our worldview.

-Being a Bible Church: every church claims to be a Bible church.  What do WE mean by that?  He used the comparison of choosing a line down the mountain when snowboarding- will we choose a soft, easy line, or will we choose to be on the edge, Scripturally speaking, in a more challenging and yet dangerous way?

-He offered some excellent clarity on the topic of inerrancy.  Inerrancy, as he showed, means: not imposing your view on the text; being a "good guest" in Scripture... submitting to the Bible's worldview; don't critique Scripture- let Scripture critique you.

-He challenged our congregations to truly adopt a Bible culture.  Parking lot test- when you look at people coming into church from the parking lot, how many are carrying Bible?  A Bible culture chooses a translation, sticks with it, lives in the Bible, brings it to worship, gives the Bible away, etc.  

He summarized the three missiological periods of Lutheranism:

1) Immigration- 1880-1920- Lutheranism grew through immigration from northern Europe.  High rate of involvement from people coming from "dead" state churches.  

2) Procreation- 1920-1963- Lutherans had kids.  4-5 kids per family.  If they could "keep" half their kids in the faith, the church grew.  The advent of the birth control pill and widespread use has dropped the average family to 1.7 kids; not enough to sustain the church.

3) Adult Conversion- 1963 to present.  We must grow through adult conversion.  Hous challenged us to aim for an yearly average of adult baptisms equal to 5% of the congregation's membership (i.e., 200 members- convert and baptize 10 adults in a year) in order to grow.

Keys to adult conversion:

Socialization- give them a place to meet, eat, get to know each other

Catechization- teaching the basics of the Christian faith to an un-churched culture

Transformation- life change

In the afternoon we had an ERD meeting.  Good turnout.

A few key points:

-It's time to look, again, at ways to creatively offer financial support to our new mission churches.  Successful model in past entailed a handful of congregations each pitching in a little money to a mission church and partnering in that manner.  We can and should do that again.

-We will have increased crossover with ARC (Alliance of Renewal Churches), by inviting them to our events and vice-versa.  The future is multiple partnerships and crossover between like-minded associations.

-We are needing a small amount of financial support to pay for district insurance, to create a "love fund" to cover travel to LCMC events for our international partners and our mission churches, to provide for minimal travel expenses for congregational visits when/if necessary.  We can cover the projected budget with 25 gifts of $200.  Dave passed out information on this.  Morningside Lutheran has offered to handle the accounting.  Donations can be made to "Evangelical Renewal District" and sent to:

ERD c/o

Morningside Lutheran Church

700 S Martha

Sioux City, IA 51106

Enough for now.  God bless,

Chris

--
Christian Magnell
Pastor, Christ Lutheran Church of Palm Coast, FL

PRAY THE SCRIPTURES

Pray the Scriptures gatherings on Tues. evenings 6:30 - 7:30 p.m. led by Nancy Crowe in the sanctuary at the foot of the cross.  This is very exciting as Nancy has great resources. There was already 10 in attendance last Tuesday, and expect more this week!. 

"Anointed, Transformed, Redeemed"

Faith is offering a Summer Women’s 7 week bible Study on Wednesday nights, July 7^th –Aug. 18^th 6:30-8:30.   “Anointed, Transformed, Redeemed”.  For questions or information, Contact : nurse@faithlcmc.org or text or call cell phone 738-4228

And God said....YES!

We had our last required favorable vote pass on April 18'th. Our congregational majority chose to stay the course with our Biblical heritage.