White Board sessions

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I found some of the comments here very striking and a few very funny.

I deliberately didn't immediately review last week's White Board Sessions conference (TheWhiteBoardSessions.com) so that I could think a bit about what I saw. Here are a couple of notable quotes from a few of the speakers -- you judge whether they're good or bad:

Mark Batterson:
1) "Systematic theology is an oxymoron."
2) "Your dreams are too small and it breaks the heart of God."
3) "Memory too often overtakes imagination."
4) "We expend too much sideways energy fighting with each other over trivial things."
5) "I'd rather have one God idea than 1,000 good ideas."

Vince Antonucci
1) "Jesus' heartbeat is for the lost and we're reaching the saved."
2) "Are you using the kind of hook and bait so that fish don't swim away?"
3) "Do the most messed up people want to hang out with you like they wanted to with Jesus?"

Tim Stevens
1) "How many people visit and find your church uncomfortable?"
2) "If Christ were here today he would try to leverage the culture and study the internet."

Mark Dever
1) "We don't pay staff to emotionally manipulate people to attend a weeknight meeting."
2) "Personal relationships are not at war with propositional truths."
3) "Imagine if churches began to talk about quality the way we talk about quantity."
4) "God must laugh at us when we discover something that 'works.'"

Perry Noble
1) " God is not green. Kermit is green. It will be a cold day ....... when I preach on recycling and not the gospel."
2) "You admit [preacher] that you love Jesus, just not the people who claim to love Jesus."

Ed Stetzer (the last speaker)
1) For most here today ministry won't look like what we have heard today. Conferences are like ministry pornography -- a picture of something we'll never have."

Fresh out of college I was in the management trainee program at Ford Motor Credit Company and required to take Dale Carnegie training. The White Board Sessions reminded me a lot of that training.

-"My dreams are too small."
-"Baite and hook."
-"Meet people where they're at."

With a few notable exceptions (Mark Dever and Darrin Patrick) the meeting was Carnegie dressed in jeans with a twist of Jesus. Not bad. But it struck me as more management and marketing (horizontal) than it did biblical and relational (vertical). In that sense the White Board Sessions were boring. I felt like I was watching a very familiar movie only dressed up in technology and labeled as "new" and "cutting edge." Glad I went? Yep. Glad I do what I do through 9Marks? Double yep!