Nickcarnes.com

Passionately Pursuing Jesus

Home Conferences 2008 Orange Conference Session 5

2008 Orange Conference Session 5

2008 Orange Conference

Session 5

Louie Giglio

New Question: Can the church influence culture or lead culture?

  • The church is not poised corporately to take the lead in culture.
  • A whole new idea – What if we decided together to be the church of Jesus Christ? What if that was our Goal?
  • The church that Jesus said He would build…the one that Jesus said that even Hell would not prevail.
  • What if  we chose to be instead of just do?
  • John 1:1-3, 14-?
  • It’s an incarnate church – The Message “Jesus put flesh on and moved into the neighborhood” – We are the presence of God in the neighborhood.
  • The church is transcendent – We, “the church,” can transcend culture.
  • Jesus was before us, He is with us, and He will be after us.
  • Relevance is to be in step with, so to strive to be relevant means that we will always be behind someone. Trying to be relevant is tiring because you can never catch up.
  • One extreme is to completely avoid being culturally relevant…the other is to be oversaturated with cultural relevance. Relevance may have become the golden calf of the contemporary church. The golden calf of the future/emerging church may be social justice.
  • Because of Christ, we transcend culture…I cannot even type the notes for what Louie just said…Wow!
  • It doesn’t matter what is going to happen…because Jesus “Will Be…” – We can relate to people even if we do not have a lot in common, because Jesus “Is”
  • We have to figure out how to link our lives to Jesus and be more passionate about Jesus than relevance.
  • Gospel is simply – The way forward and why – Jesus is our gospel.
  • Jesus is our culture! It’s the greatest thing going.
  • The Church that is I AM.
  • We have to preserve the things that have come before us that have built our foundation, yet we have to continue to change things to move forward.
  • There is room for preservation and modernation with the transcending church.
  • What’s the story in the midst of our churches? “Wow look at what new stuff we are doing?” or “There feels like there is something timeless that is taking place here.”
  • The Transcendent Church:
  • #1 Worship that is linked with Justice – Preaching, teaching, communicating,
  • #2 Supernatural acts with supernatural stories
  • #3 A church that is more about movements than (plus) walls. – Movement is about wind – Wind powers you forward.
  • #4 Should be more about the future more than the past. – God is always leaning forward.
  • We will never be culturally relevant, but we can be culturally transcendent- and that is the most amazing people around. – Even when the styles change, we will still be in the neighborhood with Power.
  • Fall in love with Jesus not cultural relevance!!!

Comments

  2. It WAS an amazing conference with lots of amazing speakers! However…am I alone in thinking that there were some big egos in the room too? Andy Stanley implored us to quit fighting amongst ourselves (AMEN!) but yet that closing session (Giglio) was mighty judgemental about “other” types of worship or styles of songs. It was unsettling to me. I didn’t think it was a good way to end the conference. Francis Chan had me until he he held up the guy who sold everything, lived out of his car and went to friends’ houses for meals and showers.

  3. Lynn,
    Thanks for the comment. Its funny how two people can listen to the same message and get two different outlooks on it. I thought Andy did a great job as well. I see Louie message differently. I didn’t think he was being judgmental, but was saying that we cannot allow being relevant to be more important than delivering the gospel. I think his illustration with the music (Amazing Grace My Chains are Gone) was pointing out that there are some foundational things that we need to preserve, but something we need to change in order to move forward. I think his illustration of the older people when the song was performed was illustrating a real life conflict that people have with change. I didn’t see it as judgmental unless pointing out the roadblocks that people put up when it comes to change is considered judgmental.

    I saw Francis’ message as different as well, because I got the impression that he thought that guy was crazy, but was using him as an illustration of what some people have done. I really thought he took the illustrations for his point from a mild example to an extreme one in that guy’s place. I may have missed it and you may be right, but I did not take it as him putting the guy on a pedestal or anything. Every time I hear Francis Chan, the only one I hear him hold up is Jesus.

    I am glad overall you enjoyed the conference. I know I did. I am sorry it ended less enthusiastic as you may have desired!

  4. Thanks for the response, Nick. I might have been a little sensitive to the poking fun at the traditional style…not because I’m “old” but because that’s the kind of church environment I come from (and am in). Answer me this…how come many of the speakers didn’t seem to tie their messages into children’s ministry? Of course we got it in the breakout sessions, but not the main speakers. Do you think they were just told…Here’s your opportunity…have at it whatever you want to say to this group of people?

  5. No problem Lynn. We all have areas of preference.

    I believe they allowed the speakers to share whatever messages they felt were appropriate. Since the conference contains Student Ministry leaders and Children’s ministry leaders as well as other staff like Senior pastors and college ministry directors, I am sure they are ok with the main sessions being mainly about general topics, and holding off on specific ministry stuff for the breakouts. I don’t know for sure, but that is what I would assume.

  6. I am on the side of not liking Louie this year. Maybe it is because I hear him so much or …. but he just did not reonate too well with me. However, with that being said, I still had 2 pages of notes from him.

    The conference was amazing.

  7. Hey guys….just reading through your comments and conversation…very interesting stuff! Two quick thoughts that might help clear up some of the questions you guys brought up…

    ** Reggie meets with each of the speakers at least once while they’re planning their message. He doesn’t tell them what to say, but he does give them an overview of the conference and gets feedback about what they would like to say (it’s not too realistic to tell Louie or Don or Francis exactly what to say 🙂 ). As long as it is something that he feels the entire audience can benefit from, then everyone goes on their way.

    ** One more little insight…that was only the second time Louie has given that message, so there is still a lot of tweaking he’s going to be doing. He actually wrote this message specifically for Orange and tried it out somewhere else once before, so he had each of you guys in mind while he was writing! 🙂

    Keep up the great dialogue…we hope to see you all at Orange 2009!

  10. Just reading through the notes here; are the talks going to be released on CD?

    Thanks

  12. Nick,

    Thanks. rethink said they were not available unless you were at the conference…so I’m looking for someone who picked one up there.

    thanks
    -Greg

Trackbacks