Best hi-jack, ever.

It all started a few Sundays ago. I was on my way to my church when my mom told Melody to text me and let me know that it was mission Sunday at their church. Mission Sunday is one of my favorite days of the year, and my parents' church(the one I spent my teen years in), usually invites a missionary to give the sermon.  I was running late for my own church service, and my parents' church was much closer, and if I changed route right then, I could also pick up a cup of coffee...something I desperately wanted.

The speaker was great. Afterward there was a luncheon held by the high school group to support their upcoming mission trip to Guatemala.  I enjoyed socializing with the people I used to see every Sunday.  During one of the conversations, Joy(a person I am quite fond of) asked me about my own mission plans. I explained that my plans had basically been dashed and all I really knew was that God was in charge, and I wanted to follow him where ever that was. I mentioned I had been researching a few organizations.  Her husband, Jason (pastor of adult ministries) piped up that there was a conference coming up with World Impact, an organization I had been researching, and that they were having amazing speakers, it was about church planting, and I should come.  I gave a non-committal answer. It was interesting, but the phrase "church-planting" had intimidated me.

Later, I was at Joy and Jason's house, and Jason asked if I had checked into that weekend. I mentioned that I was free that weekend, but I hadn't yet registered or decided to go.

Later, I was in the car with a friend when I got a phone call. It was Jason, he told me he was signing his wife up for the conference, and since it was already set up in front of him, he could just add me in if I liked.  That sounds nice and passive, doesn't it?  Tone says a lot. For example, by his tone, I had realized he was going to sign me up, and this was my phone call to let me know.  I actually had suspected he had already signed me up, but I was not in the mood to prove it, and what could a conference hurt, anyway?

On the day of the conference, I showed up, pleased to be able to hop into the carpool going up to The Oaks. The drive there was beautiful.

The conference was amazing! First of all, when you walk in to register, you got your name tag, and then a bag, and in that goody bag were two books.  Not just any two books: The Making of a Disciple by Dr. Keith Phillips, and Madness by Jossy Chacko.  These two books had both recently been mentioned to me and they had caught my interest. I had intended, after finishing a few more books out of my room, to track these two books down. Here at the conference, 5 minutes after my morning coffee, they had been placed in my hand, and I didn't even have to wait for Amazon to load.  This alone could have dubbed the weekend "happy" for me.

I looked at the schedule for the day.(Yes, I had managed to show up at a conference without knowing who would be speaking.) The speakers were: Jossy Chako, Bryan Cullison, Keith Phillips, and Francis Chan.   If there were pineapple soft serve ice cream at the snack table, it would have been Disneyland!

Jossy Chacko is from India, and he has been working in the unreached areas of India. He discussed that church planting is more about witnessing to people, who in turn witness to people, and pretty soon, you have a huge number of new believers who need a church!  The stories he shared were amazing!  His organization is called Empart and the work God does through this organization is incredible. They train local believers to reach out, to be scripturally sound, they help start social services such as educational help and health education.  They basically go into a community as an indigenous Christian, and respond to the individual communities needs.

Keith Phillips, founder of World Impact an organization that focuses on ministering in the most dangerous parts of inner-cities in America, discussed  The Urban Institute, a school set up by World Impact to help train pastors from the community so that they know their doctrine.  The problem with seminaries is that it is expensive to attend them, and so inner city pastors who want to be better educated for their congregation often do not get the opportunity.  This is the reason The Urban Ministries Institute was set up. It provides an education equal to seminary, minus the Greek and Hebrew classes, and it is affordable, and open to any one (pastor or not) who wants to minister to the urban poor.  They even set up satellite schools where they are wanted and have set up multiple satellites in prison, because there are inmates who are Christians who want to be better leaders.  The prisons are a captive mission field, and there are Christians in there who could reach them, if given the proper training.

Bryan Cullison spoke next about the history and mechanics of social movements. It was incredibly interesting, but mostly statistics, which makes a summary hard to give.  Even with the studies, strategies, statistics and history, he stressed that most importantly that for there to be a Christian movement, it must be with the Holy Spirit. There are no strategies that can fill the Holy Spirit's place.

Then Francis Chan, author of Crazy Love spoke. I was excited to hear him, because I have heard him speak on youtube.  After this, however, I feel I definitely need to put Crazy Love on my reading list. Wow.  His speech was titled "His Burden is Light?" and he talked about how often, we take the light burden Christ gives us, and we over think it, we try to take too much control back, and by having that tug of war with God, we make our own burdens heavier than they should be.  We try to manipulate the uncomfortable scriptures, and make them say that we really don't have to do that extreme command.  Rather than changing ourselves, too often we change our theology, when we should be submitting to God and his word.  "We put the burden on ourselves, because we think we're failing. We're not letting God run it by taking that pressure on ourselves, by worrying ourselves. Guys... God's not worried!"  Make sure your ministry is not about you. Serve out of thanksgiving, love, joy, and peace, not out of guilt or debt.  Jesus' burden is light. Our burden weighs a lot more.

Here are some other quotes that stuck with me from that day:

"Let us quit chasing vanity and smoke! Let us live for eternity." -Jossy Chacko

"I said, 'Don't go, they'll kill you.' And he said to me, 'Did Jesus know what would happen when he came? He still came.'" Jossy Chacko (He was talking to a friend who had converted from Hinduism, had to go into hiding to be saved from his previous friends, and then after studying, decided to go back to his tribe to witness to them.  They killed his wife, but he still stayed and witnessed, and finally the tribe came to Jesus. This man was not just flinging words around lightly)

"The success of the church is raising up indigenous disciples." Dr. Keith Phillips

"Satan is unwilling to concede a single inch! Why are we?"- Bryan Cullison (Talking about unreached peoples, noting that even if we had reached 99% of the current unreached peoples, with the 1% remaining, we still have no right to quit)

"I hear in other parts of the world, they actually take this book literally!" -Francis Chan, about the Bible

"You guys... just read the Bible!"- Francis Chan

"God's not sitting in heaven thinking, 'Oh! I hope they build me a temple!'  God does not need us. We are not the givers. HE is the giver! We just get to be a part of his awesome plans."-Francis Chan

And those are just the summaries of 4 speeches exceeding an hour each.  There was a worship service between each speech.  It was amazing. It was great!  It was overwhelming.  Here I am, 4 days later, and I am still processing. It was so good for me. I am glad I got the opportunity to be there.

By the way, I was talking to Joy that day, and she confessed that Jason had signed me up before he called me.  In Jason's defense, Joy had told him that I needed to be there, and he needed to convince me to go.  However, Joy did have to advise Jason after he signed me up that he probably should tell me I was going, hence the phone call.  That whole thing still makes me laugh.  I am glad I have such pushy people who care for me. Left to my own devices, I likely would have missed this amazing event in exchange for doing absolutely nothing that Saturday.  I could just see in my mind what might have happened if Jason had decided not to warn me. There would have been a doorbell at 6 am, and a "You've got 15 minutes to be in the car."  I wouldn't put it past Jason to pull a hi-jacking rather than give me opportunity to come up with excuses.

I have been hi-jacked often in my life: into babysitting, hard labor, dates, long road trips, and all sorts of situations. So far, I think I enjoyed this "hi-jacking" the most!

This is a short, entertaining clip by Francis Chan. This was not from the conference I sat in. Francis Chan had a lot of serious stuff to say, but he had his equally funny moments.  Enjoy!