BubbaSmith.net

I got the privilege to go to NewSpring’s Unleash Conference today. It was an incredible experience. It was amazing to see what God has done here! This will be a 2-part review! One with a summary of key takeaways and another of the practical ministry takeaways. Here were my big takeaways:

It’s All About Making Jesus Famous One Life at a Time - This is NewSpring’s Vision. It is beyond evident that the vision is burning in the hearts of every staff member and volunteer. Everything they do as a church, is done with the intention of changing people’s lives. When I say everything… I mean everything!

Quit Playing Games and Start Preaching the Word - I love how simple Newspring is. I.E. The youth – ALL they do is preach, worship, small groups, and a summer camp. It’s all centered around pointing teenagers to Jesus. Period. I love it!

People Act Like they Don’t Know Christ, Because they Don’t Know Christ - Let me clarify! They had a 5th grader that went to their childrens ministry for the first time. He saw a PS3 and Wii and said, “They have a PS3! A Wii! This s*** is awesome!” Those are the people we’re trying to reach, we need to have people like this coming to church! Instead of correcting them, let’s love them and point them to Jesus. They’ll only change as a result of knowing Him!

People Can Believe in You and Go to Hell - I love Perry. He was saying that we should never try to get people to believe in us or think we’re awesome. We need to constantly be getting their eyes off  of us and onto Jesus. He’s the only one that can save them.

Celebrating Wins is Critical – Every staff meeting they start with sharing victories in their church. Then they celebrate them – this fuels them with passion every week becasuse it helps them recognize they are doing what God called them to do!

They Don’t Know How They Grew! - Twice in their church their attendance has doubled in a one week span… from 400 to 900 and 4,000 to 8,000. What did they do? Nothing… They have no idea how it happened! Perry always relays it like this: Leadership is as easy as listening to God. Then do what He  says! Perry said, “If you can explain what God is doing in your church, He’s probably not that involved in it!

I loved being at Newspring! I know it definitely fired me  up to come home and do more for Jesus. I’m so glad they are doing what God called them to do and inspiring the body of Christ while they do it!

Tomorrow I’ll talk about the practical things I learned that we can implement in our ministries!

³⁴And Jesus called [to Him] the throng with His disciples and said to them, If anyone intends to come after Me, let him deny himself [forget, ignore, disown, and lose sight of himself and his own interests] and take up his cross, and joining Me as a disciple and siding with My party] follow with Me [continually, cleaving steadfastly to Me].                                            -Mark 8:34

I know we talk a lot about God giving us the desires of our hearts, God having an amazing plan for our lives, and Him causing us to live abundant lives, all of which are true. However, I think in pursuing those things, we often miss out on the avenue God intends us to take to get those things.

When we give our hearts to God, we no longer own our lives, He owns them. It’s not up to us to choose what we want to do and pursue, it’s up for us to discover those things which God has planned for us.

Jesus said in Mark 8:35 that, “Whoever wants to save his life, will lose it, and whoever gives up his life for His sake and the gospel’s will save it.”

Every morning we wake up, we have 2 choices: Deny, forget, ignore, disown, and lose sight of ourselves and our desires in order to pursue what He would have us pursue or live for ourselves and what we want and think we need.

We all need to be willing to do anything, live anywhere, give everything away, in a moment’s notice for His sake. The real abundant life is living everyday in His presence, doing what He says to do, regardless of the cost.

Everyday we need to say to ourselves, just like John the Baptist did, “HE MUST Increase, and I must decrease.”

Ask God to open up your eyes to things that you’re holding onto that are holding you back from following Him with every fiber in your being. When he reveals them to you, let go and pursue Him with everything you got – you’ll find abundant life in the pursuit.

But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty I Corinthians 1:27

The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” -Psalm 14:1

I used to work at a Bank. I got to interact with hundreds of people everyday and I got to know our regular customers pretty well. One of my favorite customers was an engineer who would always come in chomping a cigar. By the world’s standards, this guy was successful. He was smart and had a ton of money!

Every time he came in, he would share with me “Keys to Success in Life”. We would have some good conversations, until I left for Africa for two weeks. When I came back and saw him again, I greeted him, and he responded, “O the moron’s back from serving God! I’m disappointed in you, I thought you were smarter than that, Doug (My real name).”

(I thought this Picture Was Pretty Funny, I obviously Don’t Believe Atheists Threaten Christians)

From that day on, everyday he would come in, it would be to harass me for my beliefs. He never tried to disprove God, but just tried to make me feel like an idiot for believing in Him. People at the bank  would actually apologize to me for him when he would leave!

I’ve Lived Without God, and Lived for God – There is no Comparison

My response for a while was to just ignore his attacks,  try to have a normal conversation, and love on him as much as I could. He kept this up and so one day I asked him an honest question . . . “Can I ask you a question?” “Yes” he responded. “Do you enjoy your life? Do you have a great family life? You have vacation houses and all the money someone could want… Are you happy?”

“No, my life sucks, I hate it.” He said.

He didn’t have to say much after that. I think he got the point . . . after that moment he started asking me questions about God. He actually invited me to his house for coffee with him and his wife to talk about God. After that we had great conversations and I know that I had the privilege of planting seeds in his heart and I pray that others will water it, and God will take care of the rest.

Whats my point? I’m not saying that every atheist on the planet hates their lives, but I can tell you that they are missing out on the life Jesus provided for them through the cross, and if they’d look deep in their hearts, I promise you that they know there is something more to life than the life they’ve been living.

Philemon 1:6 says, “I pray that everyone who meets you find out how wonderful it is to live in Christ.” That’s something I pray everyday.” Most people are turned off by Christians – Why? Because they know some! They think, if being a Christian is like being like Aunt Mildred, Forget it! When people who don’t live for God see our lives, they should literally be thinking, they have something I don’t and I want it!

If there are people you know that don’t believe in God – don’t condemn them, love them. Love always wins and never fails. Don’t try to prove to them God exists – show them God exists by living your life for God. When a door opens to share Jesus with them do it! I promise you that one day – they’ll come back and thank you for it!