ACMC 2010 DMV conference

Had a great time at the Advancing Churches for Missions Commitment [ACMC] DC/MD/VA conference on Saturday. Our little group that went consisted of Leslie - Ember board member, Joyce - Ember board member, Robyn - college student/trying-to-figure-out-life, and my 12 year old daughter Kt.

There were some really great sessions and George Verwer, founder of OM, was ridiculous in the two plenary sessions. Ridiculous in terms of very engaging and lots of really good information. I thought my breakout went really well and I had a great time doing it.

Met some interesting people as well as caught up with some old friends doing neat stuff. The quick list:
MBoorman - new youth pastor at Barcroft Bible - they have 6 languages in their congregation
DH - old friend who runs NavYouth, been running open mic nights to connect with students who are musicians, now going to try an experiment with music studios.
Dave Shive - former prof at Washington Bible College, now works for ACMC full time, in his mid 60s but probably has a higher Millennial score than I do. His session on passing the missions leadership baton from the older generation to the younger generation was fantastic - see the notes below.

The demographic was, sorry to be blunt, old. As far as I could tell, there was 2 or 3 people involved with students there. I saw one middle or high school kid - mine. All of this is unfortunate because I think any high school or college kid interested in global leadership would have had a lot of fun at the conference. Next time, Ember focuses on recruiting a whole bunch of students to attend.

Finally, I know they conference organizers had some trouble putting this thing together - last minute issues and cancellations and all that. But it really was a fun day so my thanks to them for their efforts and for inviting me to run a breakout.

My notes to follow - enjoy.

+ George Verwer - Plenary 1
Any missions event in 2010 should start with Thanksgiving. We are making progress.

Acts 13
1. church - the local church
the church is in a credibility crisis
2. worship
3. Holy Spirit
4. Sent
5. Prayer
6. Preached
social concern + proclamation come together
Luis Palau - new kind of evangelistic outreach [related]
7. Helper
George has had 55 personal assistants - all do it for one year and live with him as family, all young men. All 55 are still walking closely with Jesus.

+ Dave Shive - Passing the Baton to the Next Generation lf Church Missions Leadership
'missions activist' - love that term he used
passing the baton has a backdrop of precision

older gen needs to decide if they trust younger gen to create new structures or to micromanage them
older gen needs to decide whether to pass it on, what exactly they are going to pass on, how do they pass it on.

responsibility rests on older gen - form of church is irrelevant to Dave - as a 60 year old, he doesn't need his needs met by a church

10 problems
1. maturation - spiritual growth is important in this discussion - love and maturity between generations
2. alienation - goal is not to alienate
3. stereotypes
young are lazy
old are stuffy
from the audience - a youth pastor and his wife - a lot of this is also based on our expectations of people - they rise or fall to what we expect of them - very very true.
4. change - change is essential - technology also makes us aware of the change faster
5. changing interests
6. control
7. departures - kids leaving the faith/church
8. faith loss - younger people have less loyalty to institutions
9. gender - large issue for men - feminization of the Church
missions used to be the brave thing to do
70% of boys will leave church in their teens and twenties
10. old age - we all die

+ George - plenary II
top 10 impossible countries
1. North Korea
2. Tibet
3. Afghanistan
4. Iran
5. Iraq
6. Saudi Arabia
7. Yemen - Socotra - not one believer on the island of about 50,000
8. Libya
9. Tunisia - few hundred believers
10. Somalia/Turkmenestan

Christianization of America is a greater priority than the evangelization of the nations.

Top Trends
1. most church growth in history
2. house church movement - alpha course, G12 colombia
3. emerging missions
new range of sending countries - from anywhere to anywhere
4. partnership
5. rapid shift to holistic ministry
6. business as missions
7. explosion in short term missions
8. explosion of technology in missions

"I've never had a boring day since my conversion"

[Related: ACMC conf notes - 2004, 2003]