I meant to post something up last night, but I was too tired.  Here are my thoughts from Session 1

Reggie Joiner is the founder and CEO of The reThink Group.  We use their curriculum in our preschool and children’s environments every week.  He is also the genius behind the “Orange” philosophy of ministry which says that two combined influences (the church and the family) are better than just one. You can check out the Rethink and Orange Conference sites here and here. 

Reggie opened up The Orange Conference with a great message.  Here are some of the highlights:

• A lot of times we try to get families to conform to our image of what family should be.
• The church needs to meet families where they are and not where we want them to be.
• God is interested in using broken people to tell His story…just read the Bible and you’ll see what I’m talking about.
• Never buy into the myth that you have to be a perfect parent before God can use you to impact your children.
• A little change (in a parent’s life) can make a big difference.
• Our unrealistic portraits of the perfect family might just paralyze a generation of families.
• If you want your children to have a personal faith, it has to be in you first, and it has to be a faith that is happening every day.
• It’s not about how great you are as parents, but it’s about God showing up in your family and doing what only God can do.

I recently finished a series of messages on Wednesday nights about margin. I defined margin as “breathing room”, and argued throughout the series that must of us don’t have enough breathing room in our lives. We don’t have breathing room in our schedules, we don’t have breathing room in our finances, we don’t have breathing room in our lives anywhere.  

So, I thought this morning that I would give you just a handful of bullet points that I shared throughout the series. This isn’t comprehensive by any means, but just a sample platter of sorts. Hope they make you think! 

• When there’s not enough margin in your life, the urgent squeezes out the important.  
• If you’re too busy for God and you’re too busy for people, then you’re too busy!
• Jesus had margin.  He took naps.  He set aside time for little children.  He was never in a hurry.  He made alone time with His Father a priority.
• Run your own race at your own pace.  Don’t run someone else’s race and don’t run at someone else’s pace.
• God is not pro-exhaustion.  He calls us to live sustainable lives. 

Pastor Johnny started off this morning talking about money and greed. Here are a few of the thoughts he shared:

• “We don’t need more possessions, but less desires.”
• “If God really needed to get our attention, he would probably hit us in our pocketbooks.”
• “To be focused on temporal riches is to miss out on eternal blessings.”
• “Cultivate a thankful heart and distinguish wants from needs.”
• “Spend less than you make and give more to the Lord.”
• “It’s easy to give God the credit, but difficult to give God the cash.”
• “Any of you that have more than you need to live on is rich.”
• “The only antidote to materialism is generous giving.”
• “Tithing is ‘training wheels’ giving.”
• “Use your resources to meet the needs of others.”

This weekend, we are privileged to have Dr. Johnny Hunt be with us to speak to our men (and some men from all over Georgia, as well as several churches from Florida as well).  He is the senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Woodstock, Georgia

He’s spending all night tonight and tomorrow morning talking about the three main struggles men face: money, sex, and pride, and he spent tonight talking about sex and lust.

Anyway, I thought that some of you ladies might want a little insight into what Pastor Johnny shared with your husbands, so here are some of the takeaways I wrote down from this evening.

• “Lust is when I must have something at once.”
• “Have sex with your own wife!”
• “Be intoxicated with your wife.”
• “All of us have the potential to be seduced.”
• “We cannot allow anything to serve as a substitute for what God expects us to find in our wives.”
• “Can you honestly say that your best friend is your wife?”
• “God created sex for our enjoyment.”
• “Providing for you wife doesn’t mean you just give your wife a place to stay!”
• “You can be totally forgiven and still suffer from the consequences of your sin.”
• “What will you be robbed of if you give into sexual temptation?”

Steven Furtick is the Senior Pastor of Elevation Church in Charlotte, North Carolina.He spoke a challenging message to us from Matthew 13. Here are some of the highlights of his teaching:

• Jesus healed Peter’s mother-in-law and many people think that is why Peter denied him
• Jesus is not our homeboy. He is the ruling, reigning Son of God
• So many people have a Ricky Bobby theology when it comes to Jesus
• We need to restore a sense of honor to church leadership
• Don’t let anyone talk about your pastor.

Tommy Barnett is the Senior Pastor of Phoenix First in Phoenix, Arizona. He talked about how the church ought to make it a priority to make people feel like they belong.

• We should be setting the pace for culture and not having culture set the pace for us
• It is easier to be a member of a country club than a local church
• I believe that God has called us to make the church a place to belong first, and then they’ll start believing
• If you don’t have many cigarette butts around your church, you don’t have much of a church
• Sometimes it takes a little while to clean people up, so we don’t need to turn anyone away
• We’ve got to learn how to get empty vessels into the house of God
• We have made the methods sacred instead of the message