Hanging with Tony

Tony was very gracious a number of months ago to invite readers of his blog to hang out with him. I took him up on the offer and tonight Kirk drove up and Josh, me, and Kirk took Tony out to Applebee's to talk about what we are going to try to do next at First. Kirk did a great job of giving our church history and the opportunity before us.

He shared that the church in a church model hasn't worked. He gave examples of three churches, the only one I can come up with is Graceland and Dan Kimball. He did say there was one that he knew of, that was similar to our situation, was a church in Edina, MN called The Upper Room. He invited us to come up there and see what they were doing.

The other thing he said is to get a group of people together. A group of people who are tired of the church and disenfranchised, people who are just hanging on by a thread almost giving up on the church. Get those people together and start sharing life and talking about what the church needs to be and letting those people form the core for the start.

One other thing he said that was interesting is of these people, we should ask them to make a serious commitment to the community. Ask them to stay here and partner with us. To not move. To not take other jobs. But to commit to being there.

That is GREAT! And that's what Jen and I are longing for. To meet with people and do life with them. The more I am involved in this emergent conversation and the more I think about what church can be, the more pumped I get at doing it. It is going to rock.

Sidebar: Tony was great. A great guy. Great thinking. compassionate. Caring. great to be with. Time well worth spent.