Greg's Musings

Random Thoughts and Great Beer!

Jon Tyson – WIBO Session 3

I attended the Whiteboard Sessions 2010 conference in VA Beach on Friday, May 21. These are my notes from the various speakers.

Jon is lead pastor of Trinity Grace Church in New York City.

Big Idea: The Most Important Thing You Need to Do – Remain in God’s Love
(Jesus said, “Apart from me you can do nothing”)

Church of Ephesus in the book of Revelation chapter 2 – You have forsaken the love you had at first. Consider how far you have fallen. At first they had perseverance, integrity, and faithfulness, but in this message Jesus scolds them for having lost that.

Myth of What the Church Needs:

  • Super Pastor – The church doesn’t love God enough so he does it for them.
  • Miracles – If they could just see the miraculous, they would believe.
  • Cultural Impact – If we have enough the world will pay attention.
  • Mission – It’s all about trying to reach people.
  • Doctrine – If people could just see God for who He is they would love Him more.

    • The Church at Ephesus had all of these things, yet it was not enough to maintain their passion and love. What did they fall from? Union with Christ, co-heirs of God, the Bride of Christ (as Paul writes in the book of Ephesians).

    A church that looses this focus and doesn’t get it back, He will remove their witness. Has this happened to some of the churches in America?

    People are fickle beings. We must stay / remain in where we are with our union of God through Christ. We forget how deep, how wide and how far is the love of God. All of those other things, while important, are not at the core of what we must do and what we as leaders must help people do.

    • If you are not doing this, you are creating a culture of failure based on works.
    • We are not distributing Christian Vision, we are giving out the love of God.

    How?

  • We must (learn to) receive (His love) – We must learn to sit still long enough that He can cleanse us. If we don’t let Jesus do this, we won’t have pure motives. God blesses and loves you for who you are, not what you do.

    • We are like a dirty child who doesn’t want to get cleaned by her parent and we squirm and wiggle to get free.

  • We must respond to it (obey) – We are so focused on strategy because we are so bankrupt in the love of God.

    • Revelation 22 – Tree of Life is the reward and what you can offer to the nations.