“I know all the things you do, that you are neither hot nor cold. I wish you were one or the other! But since you are like lukewarm water, I will spit you out of my mouth!” Revelation 3:15-16.
Stephen (that’s the back of his head on the bottom right) and I just got back from attending the Catalyst Conference in Atlanta. There were over 11,000 ministry leaders in attendance this year. We heard from Andy Stanley, Rick Warren, Erwin McManus, Francis Chan, John Maxwell, and others. It was a little like drinking from a fire hydrant!
We learned a lot, but I’m pretty much “conferenced” out. I’m ready to be in Wilson and put into practice the stuff I’ve been learning lately. The cool thing is that God has already been telling us what we need to concentrate on. The conferences have merely underscored and sharpened what we already felt.
Francis Chan really sealed it for me when he said, “I don’t want to stand before Jesus some day with a megachurch of thousands of disciples and have him spit them out for being lukewarm. I’d rather have a smaller number of mature disciples that are hot for Jesus!”
I know that God has called me to pastor WCC. He has called me to love the sheep he has entrusted to me, to lead and feed them, and to present them to him mature. I don’t want to get sidetracked on lesser things. I want to lead WCCers to get white hot for Jesus!
My ambition is to stand shoulder to shoulder someday with the WCCers who have run the race with me and to hear Jesus say to us, “Well done.”