Something about Verge was different – and I want to get it down before I forget. Because I easily forget.

1. Worship Gatherings Should Not Be Abandoned
This first thing is actually a running thought I had throughout the conference.

One of my fears is that young zealots will walk away from Verge and say, “I get it now. We’re going to totally scrap our public worship gathering,” or “Who needs preaching? It takes the already limited time I have away from community and mission.”

Maybe some failed to notice, but during Verge we were convicted, inspired, moved, and challenged… all through preaching and powerful corporate worship experiences.

I know that as a whole, we’re moving away from event and program-driven Christianity (good!) – but an “event” is an okay event in my book if at that event the gospel is proclaimed, God’s Spirit is present, and the sacraments are observed.

2. Francis Chan is Awesome But Not For the Reasons You Think
Yeah, Francis Chan blew us away.

Here’s what stuck out to me, though, more than any one thing he said: we saw this mega-church pastor get on his knees in front of us all and beg God, in tears, to show him how to do church.

You got this sense from him the entire weekend that the bigness of his church didn’t matter. His books didn’t matter. His reputation as a pastor didn’t matter.  He acknowledged that he distrusted even his own motives for why he does what he does and that he wanted to be courageous enough to ask the question: does any of the stuff we think is so important in the evangelical world really matter in the end?

3. The Holy Spirit is Real
The best part of the weekend was a worship session on Saturday afternoon that never seemed to stop. It was time for the singing to be done and for all of us to move on to the next deal on the schedule – except that God had something else on His schedule.

Matt Carter got up and acknowledged that something was going on. Breakouts were going to start soon and that if people needed to go they could, but he opened the door for others to stick around if they felt so led. And we did. People just stood there. Or knelt. Or bowed.

And then one by one, people spontaneously started calling out to God. In a group of thousands, people started calling on the name of Jesus.

It’s hard to describe what happened, and I really don’t want to dishonor that moment by trying to make it seem more dramatic than it was. I’ll just say that for me it was an intense moment of sensing God’s hugeness and my own smallness and yet feeling accepted in that instead of alienated. It’s the first time I’ve seen something like that happen in a group that large since my charismatic revival days.

4. Mission & Community Are Hard
I was trying to explain to a friend unfamiliar with evangelical church jargon what a “Missional Community Conference” was about. I failed. It should’ve been simple because the conference was about mission and community (obviously).

Here’s why this conference sticks out: Verge was not just about mission and community, it was about being committed to those things until it gets painful.

Being committed to doing mission with a small band of people who know you well should and will be uncomfortable. It will cost me something. It will hurt.

But it’s worth it.

That’s what I’m leaving with. It showed up in the teaching, sure, but I got a fresh reminder in person.

During the weekend, I got to spend some time with Josh Wilson, a close friend and co-worker from The Journey that I hadn’t seen in months.  Right now, since leaving one church and getting ready to plant another, my experience of community is somewhat sporadic at best.

Seeing Josh reminded me first of the depth of friendship I miss out on when I am away from community. Secondly, it reminded me that community is painful because it means letting people get close enough to call you on your garbage. I don’t like getting called on my garbage.

There’s a trend right now among evangelical pastors that plays on our natural fears and desire to manipulate. It says that if you’re a pastor, you can only let people get so close. If people get too close, then you loose some of your power. Clear lines of authority get cloudy. You loose organizational effectiveness in pursuit of relationship. It’s that much harder to hold someone accountable to job performance and becomes close to impossible to fire them, if God forbid, one day you’re forced to.

Who cares.

Letting people in close enough to see through your every motivation is stinking painful. But the alternative – living life alone, surrounded only by admirers and no real friends – is infinitely worse.

Now I know that a Penske truck with trailer is no 18-wheeler, but 10 wheels on the road all told is a big deal for me. Driving something that high off the ground and that long and cumbersome was a new experience for me. In fact, it caused me to look at road trips differently. My perspective on driving was altered.

What changed?

Well for starters, I could not easily accelerate; it takes a while to get something that large up to speed.

I found myself for the first time aware of how high bridges, signs and telephone wires were only because I didn’t want to hit anything.

I realized I needed some extra help from someone I just passed (in the form of a courtesy flash of the headlights) when I changed lanes just to know that I wasn’t about to hit anything.

The biggest deal was that when I got hungry or wanted to pee, I couldn’t just pull over any old place I wanted.  There was no way I was plowing that monstrosity through the drive-thru at Chick-fil-A (but oh, believe me, I wanted to) because frankly, I didn’t want to hit anything.

I needed a truck stop that sold diesel and that had a parking lot with plenty of room (so when I had to turn around, I wouldn’t hit anything) and if it had a good restaurant connected so that I didn’t have to eat day-old-fried-sausage-cheese-mystery-whatever-on-a-stick, all the better.

I know that I wasn’t a real trucker and that Penske is a far cry from a big rig, but that day I experienced the road for the first time through the eyes of someone who drives a truck.  And here’s the deal, it gave me some compassion & appreciation for them.

To be honest, I have never appreciated truck drivers, or the extra difficulties that they have to go through simply to get from point A to point B.  In the past, if I thought about them at all, it was only as a nuisance.

As church leaders, we can sadly get to the point where we look at people, especially people that need or want something from us, in exactly the same way: a nuisance.

When the people in our churches only become a nuisance to us, we’ve lost touch and lost compassion for those that we are called to love and shepherd.

We forget easily how daunting it can be for people to try and join a new group.

If you are new to church, frankly it can be scary:
- to take the time and effort to attend a worship service with hundreds (or even thousands) of people you don’t know.
-to email the leader of a church.
-to try to join a small group.
-to reach out for help.
-to try to belong to something.

What can you do as a church leader who is naturally an insider, to regain the perspective of what it’s like to be an outsider?

Attend an event by yourself.
There are plenty of churches that have services on off-times (like Saturday and Sunday night) so that you could easily attend another church one weekend. If you simply can’t get away to another church, attend a mayor’s breakfast event or large civic function in your city. Go by yourself.  Don’t tell people who you are. If you’re an extrovert, don’t talk to people – try to imagine the experience from an introvert’s perspective. What does it feel like to go somewhere new and not know the protocol, not know where to park, where to sit or even where the bathrooms are? How does it feel to be ignored while large groups of people talk amongst themselves? Try showing up late – how does it feel to walk in with all eyes on you?

Try to join a group.
I know, you’ve got so much free time on your hands. But trying to join a local group like the Rotary Club or the Chamber of Commerce will do more than put you in contact with other key leaders in your area – it will remind you just how daunting it is to try to join a group as an outsider. As pastors or ministry leaders, we are at the very center of our church social circles. When was the last time that you were actually an outsider, and felt the insecurity that comes with that? You’ll get better at crafting pathways for new people to connect when you know again what it’s like to try to belong somewhere as an outsider.

Email someone you admire.
This sounds weird, but pick someone you respect who is not likely to respond to you personally. Take some time and actually craft an email introducing yourself and thanking this person for their work or impact. If they reply to you, great. But if they don’t, it’s good for you to feel what it’s like not to get a response, or worse yet, to get a canned response to something you took time to write. Every time someone new to your church or organization takes time to write, call or email – it’s a big deal to them. Is it a big deal to you?

With everything on our plates, it is so easy for us to forget the big steps we often ask & expect people to take in attending church for maybe the first time in a long time, signing up for a new group, and trying to get answers to key questions from us or our staff. It is easy to forget that the Ultimate Insider became the Ultimate Outsider – for us.

Moving from irritation to appreciation takes more than mere observation. It takes actually sitting in the seat of another. And for me, that meant driving a big honkin’ truck… while trying not to hit anything.