Day #17 - "Exponential" (Orlando,Fl)

Monday April 19th

Wow. I guess I did not expect exactly what I was going to when someone signed me up for this conference (Thanks Bob). I mean I knew I was going to be on my one-month “Luke 11 ASK Vision Road Tour” and perhaps be in Florida at this time. So I thought – “why not, it would be good to attend a church planting conference”. But this “Exponential Conference” is considered to be “The Largest Gathering of Church Planting Leaders in North America”! A few impressions, observations so far ...

First Baptist Church Orlando

First of all this FBC Orlando Campus is incredible. I mean some church leaders have vision and I am sure many lay leaders and church members have sacrificed in order to bring to fruition to this vision. Donna & I are parked in the RV by a lagoon on their campus. It’s beautiful – trees, grass and everything. It feels like camping right next door to their church massive parking lot!

I don’t know how many people attend this church but anywhere from 7,000 to 10,000 is my guess. They have their own primary and high school facilities on site. The church has been hosting this conference for the last few years.

Exponential

Today was simply the beginning of “Pre-Conference Seminars”. Maybe I am just lucky but I seem to have chosen the right one. It’s entitled “How To Star A Missional Church Movement”. I mean I went to this because it has similarities with what we believe the Lord is calling us to do with the ECMC Vision.

Well interestingly enough, the main guy leading this just happens to be the Conference President. He is the pastor of a church in the Chicago area. They were perhaps the first ones to start the new movement of multi-sites / campus churches in North America. They now have something like 11 sites and 29 congregations. Anyways, they are into reproducing “movements” for church planting. He seemed excited and surprised when I told him what I was doing for the month and the nutshell vision for the ECMC. I told him I lacked “experience, coaching and mentoring” in this and help would greatly be appreciated. Who knows what will come out of this as far as partnership. I mean Chicago is not that far from Ottawa.

I am probably one of the few Canadians here. I hear there maybe 20 of us here max out of 3200. I will try to get a meeting with them and just get their impressions from what they are experiencing from a Canadian perspective. But one thing is for sure – there is not much of anything like this in Canada. I don’t mean to be negative or disrespectful but when it comes to the church and para-church organizations, especially in relationship to church planting, we are not even in the same league, maybe even the same planet. But the ECMC is similar and a grass root initiative similar to many things I am seeing here. I’ll explain more tomorrow …