If you missed it, I’m sorry.  Perhaps the greatest weekend in the history of our church took place on August 24^th and 25^th. 

And although, we’ve already mentioned some of the highlights in this blog, we thought it might be nice to comment on each individual session from our 2007 Leadership Conference.   So today, I’m going to break down Session 1.  I’m not going to give you all the details (you should have been there!), but I do want to give you some insight into the sessions themselves, and how great they went!

Anyway, we introduced the first session with this hilarious video.

Immediately after that introductory video, our pastor shared a message entitled, “The Future is Now”, in which he communicated the mission and vision of Southside Baptist Church.  The following statements were the ones that stuck out to me the most from Session 1.

• “Over the last five months, our staff has sat down and hammered out a path that we want to follow.  It begins with our mission statement, and is followed by our values, strategy, and our mission measures.   Our mission defines the church.  Our values drive the church.  Our strategy designs the church.  Our mission measures are the direct result of how we do church.”
• “It has been said, that the local church is the hope of the world, yet most churches are either in decline or staying the same!”
• “We have a mission statement that is clear, concise, and compelling, as well as biblical.  It is a mission statement that defines what we are trying to accomplish!”
• “God wants us to connect to Himself, connect to other believers, and connect to unbelievers.”
• “God intended for the church to be alive and not dead, authentic and not hypocritical, and relevant, not irrelevant.”
• “We are not here to guard our traditions, but to teach truth that brings about transformation.”

Anyway, if you missed it, you have no idea how great a weekend it was.  I can’t emphasize enough how incredible it really was. 

And don’t forget to tune in tomorrow when we’ll break down Session 2 for you, and share with you some of the highlights from the rest of Friday night.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 4th, 2007 at 1:32 pm and is filed under Leadership. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.