{"id":761,"date":"2008-08-10T20:21:19","date_gmt":"2008-08-11T01:21:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/192.185.166.32\/~davidfoster\/?p=761"},"modified":"2009-10-21T20:23:24","modified_gmt":"2009-10-22T01:23:24","slug":"today-the-gathering-august-10","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/today-the-gathering-august-10\/","title":{"rendered":"Today @ The Gathering – August 10"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today @The Gathering<\/a> we finished up our current series, \u201cWe Don\u2019t Do Fear,\u201d<\/em> with a talk entitled \u201cLet\u2019s Make A Ding In The Universe.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

The mantra that was introduced is the branding statement for The Gathering, or what we want people to be able to say is simply, \u201cThe Gathering is a great church I love going to.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In order to fulfill that goal we have to define what a great church is.<\/p>\n

Today we defined a great church according to the teachings in the book of Acts.<\/p>\n

1. A great church is about new life. <\/span>It\u2019s transformative. People can\u2019t go without being changed for good.<\/p>\n

2. A great church is about anonymous generosity.<\/span> Remember the story of Ananias and Sapphira when they lied about their giving in order to make themselves seem more important. God doesn\u2019t tolerate pride in or out of His church.<\/p>\n

3. A great church is about engaging the outsider. <\/span> It\u2019s amazing how many times in the book of Acts it talks about great multitudes and great numbers of people being converted. The most important people in any church are the people who are not there yet.<\/p>\n

4. A great church is about being misunderstood.<\/span> Early church was. That\u2019s what brought about their persecution. Are churches understood today or even taken seriously? Statistics tell us most churches have no impact on current culture. They simply can\u2019t be misunderstood. It\u2019s too sad when the only time we make headlines is through a controversy, a split, or a blow-up.<\/p>\n

5. A great church is about numbers. <\/span> This is controversial for most people. I heard someone say this past week, \u201cI don\u2019t like mega-churches. They\u2019re too big.\u201d And then they followed that up by saying, \u201cI go to a church that is a nice size.\u201d And then I wondered, \u201cWhat size is that?\u201d What if we took that attitude in our churches and we turned people away because we\u2019re already at a \u201cnice size.\u201d Bottom line: No one can determine how big a local church is going to be; not marketing, not a great speaker, not wonderful organization; only God through His Holy Spirit as He draws people together. Let\u2019s quit worrying about how many is too many, or how few is too few and let\u2019s start worrying about numbers because numbers represent people, and people always count with God.<\/p>\n

We finished up with our three goals of a great church<\/span>.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Goal #1: To be the church<\/span> gathered in worship.
\n\u2022 Goal #2: To build the kingdom<\/span> as we\u2019re scattered in service.
\n\u2022 Goal #3: To r<font color=”#00ff00″>un to the battle. And remember that the battle is not political, educational, philosophical, or social. It is for the hearts and souls of men and women. It is profoundly a spiritual battle. And to say it\u2019s a spiritual battle doesn\u2019t lessen its importance.<\/p>\n

Next week we\u2019ll begin a brand new series called \u201cChasing Balance,\u201d<\/span> seven positive principles for your pressure-packed life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today @The Gathering we finished up our current series, \u201cWe Don\u2019t Do Fear,\u201d with a talk entitled \u201cLet\u2019s Make A Ding In The Universe.\u201d The mantra that was introduced is the branding statement for The Gathering, or what we want people to be able to say is simply, \u201cThe Gathering is a great church I … Continue reading “Today @ The Gathering – August 10”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"series":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/761"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=761"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/761\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=761"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}