Hugh Halter of Missio discussed the power of posture during Verge Conference’s 5th session. Here is what he said:

Posture is about nonverbal communication. It is a powerful thing.

You must be missional and incarnational.

Christian leaders living in excess is a posture problem. Think about how often you have done things nonverbally that make people uninterested in Christ. People are interested in our words but often not in our posture.

Incarnation causes you to go in. It is the Word became flesh.

Incarnation is to be an advocate for lost people. Jesus’ defense of the woman caught in adultry. You are not condoning the sin. You don’t have to worry about sin because Jesus said that He already took care of that.

Incarnation wins people’s hearts.

Missional and incarnational ministry is what the world needs right now.

Ed Stetzer of LifeWay Research discussed empowering disciples rather than disempowering them during Verge Conference’s 4th session. Here is what he said:

I’m tired of hearing about great disciple making movements across the world except the United States.

Disciples do. We may have to do mission and ministry differently, so that we might do what we need to do.

Look at 1 Peter 4. Keep your love at full strength. Disciple making movements keep people at full strength. There is something wrong when the abnormal is people effectively discipling others.

#1 :: ALL HAVE GIFTS

The way we do leadership often disempowers people who we know are gifted. We teach people to be passive spectators and then we are shocked by how they live. If we disciple through knowledge and not action, then we have raised up puffed up nostics. I am tired of knowledgeable people not living in mission, criticizing mission.

God has gifted each person in your church (1 Corinthians 12:7). Any system that disempowers and demotivates the people of God is unhelpful and perhaps sinful. Disciples don’t just know, they do. When we do for people what God has called them to do, everybody gets hurt and the mission of God is hindered.You cannot disciple people with books. You disciple people with life on life.

Obedience-based discipleship leads to mission-shaped disciples. If you are so gifted that your abilities overshadow the people of God, you should either quit or change.

#2 ::  GOD INTENDS ALL TO USE

As church leaders and pastors, you are a manager of people and their gifts.

I don’t know how it happened, but somewhere along the way we figured out how to sit in church week-after-week doing nothing and calling each other Christ followers. The greatest sin in most churches is that we have made it okay to sit in church week-after-week and do nothing and call ourselves Christ followers.

#3 :: FOR WHICH HE EMPOWERS US

There are varieties of giftings, but then sometimes leaders disempower people. To break the cycle, the enabler has to stop enabling. I’m not calling on you pastors to bemone the reality. I am calling on you to stop enabling. In the church, we know that people are called, but we must enable them. The underappreciated and undervalued shine as God has gifted them. Ordinary people do extraordinary things for God.

#4 :: TO BRING GOD GLORY

Don’t miss that the use of gifts is tied into the glorification of God. God will not get His glory if you are up front getting all of the credit.
We will not be a mature church by having a bunch of knowledge. We need life transformation.

I care less about the label and more about the lifestyle.

Disciples see what Jesus is doing, and they join Him in it.

Neil Cole, author of Church 3.0, discussed reating 4th generation disciples during Verge Conference’s 4th session. Here is what he said:

Sheep without a shepherd are wolf chow. Jesus has created sheep to be protected and cared for by a shepherd. So when you see lost sheep without a shepherd, they are victims. Don’t judge them. Help them.

When it comes to multiplying disciples, you have to get to the fourth generation. If you haven’t gotten to the fourth generation, it is not yet multiplying.

We need to see the harvest fields, but more importantly, we need to know what to do with them. Here is how a Life Transformation Group does it:

1. We read the Bible together.
2. We confess our sins together.
3. We identify the names of lost people that we know, and we pray for them daily.

You can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved, so start by looking for someone who desperately wants to be saved. Also look for someone who will be faithful to the process. Jesus looks for those who are sinners but who are also faithful. Your life is too short to waste without seeing multiple generations of disciples.

George Patterson of Western Seminary discussed acting like an apostle during Verge Conference’s 4th session. Here is what he said:

The best kept secret among Evangelicals is that it is far easier to plant churches and do small groups if we do it like the apostles did. That might sound simple, and it is. I thank God for that.

Let’s stop presenting Jesus by just telling facts about Him. We need to represent Him.

Stop trying to shove the camel through the eye of the needle. The average American church spends most of its evangelistic efforts on the camel.Jesus said He came to preach His gospel to the poor.

Don’t get hung up on a method. Only one approach has been consistent, universal, and simple, and that is to evangelize like the apostles did. The one thing apostles did consistently after a person’s conversion but before baptism was go to the family. After you convert someone, do not pull them out of their circle and family.

David Watson of CityTeam Ministries discussed how to have a good strategy during Verge Conference’s 3rd session. Here is what he said:

Strategy is determined by structure. If we are a house church, the strategies we think about are house church strategies. If we are a megachurch, the strategies we think of are megachurch strategies. The problem with this is the strategy is based on us and not who we are trying to reach.

Strategy and structure are intimately connected, but most of us have connected it to the wrong end - ourselves. The strategy cannot be us but about them. We must learn how to reach people within their context not our context.

I’ve got to learn something in order to reach people that churches are not reaching. Our strategy has to be defined by the structures we are trying to reach. This means you have to understand the structures in your community.

What is difficult is we all get tunnel vision. We all drive the same routes daily. We like routine. We avoid things and people that look different.

We need to map our community’s many different structures and then define our strategy for reaching each culture. We must understand the structures around us and learn how to work in those structures and through those structures. And that takes lots of people.

Dave Gibbons of NewSong Church (Irvine, CA) discussed handling culture shifts during Verge Conference’s 3rd session. Here is what he said:

One of the things I think we are really horrible at is seeing. Consider these observations:

• Look at our economy. If you listen carefully to the experts, we are actually still in a lot of trouble. In these unstable times, what will you do as a church to give stability to your people?
• There is a widening gap between the poor and the rich.
• Can our government still protect us? We used to worry about nations now we worry about individual attackers. How does this affect the people you reach?
• July 27, 2048 is the date when China and others are expected to surpass the U.S. in life expectancy and gross per capita income.
• There is a shift from the West to the East. It is not going to happen. It already has happened.
• We are shifting from church with walls to church without walls.
• We are shifting from steps and solutions to stories and narratives.

If we can leverage the power of the Holy Spirit, we have an advantage to expect and react to how this affects the people we reach. But how many of us are praying like we should? In addition to prayer, do this:

1. Establish the Biblical theology of liquid leadership in your church.
2. Be prophetic and not just pastoral. We need more than pastoral diplomacy.
3. We need a both/and environment.

When God stirs up a nation and causes chaos, it is a time when God moves. Make space for God, and He will give you the strategy.

Dave Ferguson of Community Christian Church (Naperville, IL) discussed creating an apostolic environment during Verge Conference’s 3rd session. Here is what he said:

Over and over again, God’s own impulse to the lost is to go and to send. I think there is something stirring within us just to bring people in. A big part of this is to start apostolic environments.

How do you create an apostolic environment?

1. Ordain every Christ follower.
   Ask them what people group do they feel burdened for then anoint them then send them out.
2. Lead with a yes; ask how? later on.
   Develop a “yes” reflex to try things.
3. You need to teach people to go and not just bring.
4. Plant the gospel before planting a church.
5. Missional teams have to be both incarnational and apostolic.
   If you think only incarnational than you are just “one and done,” but if you also think apostolic then you have movement.

Jeff Vanderstelt of Soma Communities (Tacoma, WA) discussed letting the people be the church during Verge Conference’s 2nd session. Here is what he said:

In a lot of the ways, the structures build build to run churches serve as containers to hold people in. It is almost as if we are extracting people from the world rather than sending them out into the world.

Church is not about going out to be Jesus to people. You are going out with Jesus in you. Jesus wants to fill everything. Ideally, a city should be so full of Jesus that there is no one who can escape seeing Jesus.

Everyone is a full-time minister. We just get our paychecks from different places. You do not have to get a paycheck from a church to be a full-time minister. The job of church leaders is to equip people to do ministry rather than trying to do all of the ministry themselves.

Jesus died for more than church events and volunteering to be an usher. The most effective carrier for discipleship is not an event. If you do not go do anything, you are not getting equipped. The best place for equipping is life.

How do you know if someone is faithful to what you have taught them? They have to live it out. Equip people to do normal, everyday life with intentional missional community. You’d be surprised to see what the church can do if you start believing that Jesus is in people.