Chinese Food, Collaboration, and Church Planting
What do you get when you put those three things together? You get the picture to the left! This is our crowd at the Exponential Conference last week in Orlando. This year’s theme was, ‘The DNA of Reproducing Churches,’ so naturally our team had a lot to say – and a lot to learn from the other fantastic churches and church planting networks who were there too! Additionally, Dave was asked to be the President of this year’s conference, since there’s no one who can talk about reproducing like Dave! Well, except maybe his brother Jon…. 
At the far left you’ve got Dave Dummitt, lead pastor of 2l42 Community Church in Brighton, MI and one of our NewThing apostolic network leaders, no doubt explaining something life-changing to Mary Nelson, founder of the community development corporation Bethel New Life in Chicago… Mary was a part of a group who joined us up at Community back in January for an Urban Church Planting Forum… She is brilliant… Then you’ve got Dave, just having a great time and making friends with everybody, listening to what everyone says, adding his own brilliance to it, and then putting those great ideas into practice here at Community…. Then you’ve got Pat Masek, who is Dave’s assistant, calmly making sure everything stays in order just the way it’s supposed to and making sure everyone is having a great time (thank you Pat!)…. Then you’ve got Sherry Gossman, our amazingly talented graphic artist, listening intently to everyone and mentally taking notes on how this will make us more successful….
You can’t see the folks on the right side very well, but boy do we have a line-up… Across from Dave Dummitt is his own Jeff Boriss, creative arts director for 2l42 and part of the 2l42 worship band who was our headlining worship band for the entire conference!… Next to Jeff is Kirsten Strand, one of my favorite staff people here at Community (am I allowed to have favorites?) and director of our Community 4:12 ministry to under-resourced communities…. Kirsten is strategically placed across from Mary Nelson and just next to the brilliant Troy Jackson, both expert minds in her field of community development… Troy is the senior pastor of University Christian Church in Cincinnati and a leader in the CCDA (Christian Community Development Association)…. You can’t see the next two peeps, but just next to Troy sits his fellow Cincinnatian, Brian Tome… Brian is the lead pastor of Crossroads Community Church, a 7,000-member church in Cincinnati and one of the leaders in reproducing and generosity… And next to Brian is yours truly, fascinatingly and strategically picking his brain as I learn his best practices for generosity within the church. Don’t be surprised if some of his ideas start to show up at Community… And some of our Generosity Conference ideas may show up at Crossroads!
I love how collaborative this group of people is. You don’t find such open sharing of ideas in the business world and unfortunately not in some denominational church worlds either… But it is encouraging to see such humility among church leaders resulting in a Kingdom-minded movement of generosity and reproducing churches!
2 Responses to “Chinese Food, Collaboration, and Church Planting”
April 28th, 2008 at 2:50 pm
And I never thought you were a name dropper!!! Seriously, isn’t it great to sit, share ideas and challenge one another?!
April 18th, 2014 at 4:21 am
Hi! I’m at work browsing your blog from my new iphone 3gs!
Just wanted to say I love reading your blog and look forward to
all your posts! Carry on the excellent work!
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