22 January 2008 by Mandy Sayers.

Workshops at the LCI conference begin! My first one was on Emergent Worship. The name sort of makes me think of those horror movies where you wait for the scary alien baby to emerge from the cocoon, pod, unsuspecting human head. It’s worship that is experiential, with a view toward experiencing the living God, which is what people long for when they come to worship. It’s intriguing stuff. It reminds me of the iconoclastic movement.

People who tend to really love emergent worship can be any age. It incorporates ancient symbols, crosses, candles, and all the senses. In our postmodern age, this is a pathway to God many find meaningful. The best way to talk about it is to send you somewhere. Check out www.emergentvillage.com or google emergent worship.

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22 January 2008 by Mandy Sayers.

First off, today started with a great song called “Ain’t No Grave Gonna Hold My Body Down.” We’ve got to do that for Easter or the Great 50 Days!

The keynote speaker was Rev. Gil Rendle, who knows a lot about churches and how they work. What a smart guy. He talked about organizational management in churches, and Lord help me, I liked it. Administration is, shall we say, not one of my gifts, so it’s amazing to me that looking at the data can lead to something that helps. But it does.

Highlights include his statement that churches/organizations tend to know more about who they were and where they were than where they are going. True. And all churches have to deal with an increasingly “small margin of life” (the problem of less time left over in our crazy society). He said Large Churches have found ways to address this that work. He used the analogy of pew-renters (highly committed weekly attenders) v. time share people (can only come to church 2x a month in worship, but treasure that time). Large churches work with these realities in a way that still attempts to form disciples of Jesus.

Another cool thing was the distinction between management (Are we doing things right?) and leadership (Are we doing the right things?). Thinking about our church’s structure at Glen Mar, I wonder how all that shakes out. We need both Moses and Aaron, separated but working closely together, to make the mission work.

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