Musings on 25 Years of Ordained Ministry--6

Community Church of Joy: Evangelism Conferences

As Joy began to gain some notoriety in the church world, so to speak, especially among Mainline denominations like the Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, and Church of Christ, we began to get more and more phone calls from pastors and church staff asking us how to do what we were doing.

So in 1988 we launched what we called at that time, The Community Church of Joy Academy of Evangelism and Church Growth. The purpose of the Academy was to offer a 4 day conference once a year where people could come and see/experience/learn about the mission of Joy. I had the great privilege of overseeing that event. It was a big job year after year to book the speakers, set the program, do the advertising, and oversee the implementation of the event from notebooks to hospitality to registrations, and so on. I was fortunate to have a great assistant help me, and of course the Joy staff was a great support as well.

The conference followed a similar format year after year. Monday night: We modeled our more traditional service (since most came from traditional churches we wanted to ease them into the week!) and Walt shared his story of bringing change/transformation to Joy. Tuesday was a long day. A major session in the morning by me or Walt, morning workshops, then another major session in the afternoon (me or Walt speaking) followed by another round of workshops. Tuesday evening, after dinner, we would model our seeker service. Wednesday we did it all over again, only this time, we brought in a well-known church leader to speak at the two major sessions. Wednesday evening we held a concert or comedy event to give people a chance to relax after some very long days. Thursday featured two sessions in the morning by me and Walt, and then, for me, the highlight of the conference: We ended with communion and personally laid hands on/prayed for each person who came to the conference. When we were up to over 600 people, that was a lot of prayer. So many of the pastors were deeply wounded. Many of them had never been prayed for before. It was always a profoundly humbling and sacred moment.

In the early days, there was an almost predictable rhythm to the event. Many pastors came in skeptical, even critical of a church like Joy--it's shallow, it's all entertainment, they've watered down the Gospel, if they're reaching that many people they must have compromised their message somehow, etc, etc, etc. Many came in defensive. But by Wednesday night something started stirring in their souls. By Thursday prayer time they were ready to head back to take the mountain. I can't tell you how many times we prayed for a pastor who had come to our conference as a last resort, ready to quit ministry, only to go back fired up.

Aa time went on and as what Joy was doing became better understood, people increasingly came to the conference like sponges, ready from the opening chord to take in all they could.

One interesting tidbit: Our seeker services, as explained in the previous post, were designed not for the churched but for those not in the church. They were perhaps the most controversial part of Joy's mission. The 80's and 90's were the decades of "worship wars" as people literally fought over worship. Some argued that worship was only for the converted and that evangelism had no place on Sunday morning. Usually these folks argued that worship should also be traditional/liturgical, with organs and robes, etc. On the other side were those arguing for relevancy and using familiar everyday stuff like drama and contemporary music to put the Gospel into language new generations could understand. Joy really tried to stay out of the wars. We said that God was delighted with both. But...that having been said, that there was no Joy in heaven over empty churches. So we needed to do something to reach people for Jesus.

So when we modeled our Seeker service, people came with all kinds of stuff: Some were skeptical. Others curious. Still others eager to learn. But time and again I had people, even those who still weren't convinced about seekers services, say that the seeker service they experienced at Joy was the most spiritually moving "worship service" they'd ever been a part of. My point: When you lift up Jesus, no matter what the venue or language, Jesus will draw people to himself.

Because I was in charge of the conference, I had the great fortune of bringing in speakers I wanted to meet and hear. Many of them ended up becoming friends. I'm not one to name drop :) but here are some of the people who graced our conferences over the years:

Robert Schuller, Bill Hybels, Kent Hunter, C. Peter Wagner, Win Arn, Eddie Gibbs, George Hunter, Bill Easum, Bishop Herb Chilstrom of the ELCA, Bishop David Preus of the ALC (he was in a severe car accident right after he spoke. We almost killed the Bishop!), Lyle Schaller, Kevin Graham Ford, Michael Slaughter, and Leighton Ford, to name a few. We also brought in real pastors to share devotions and highlight their unique ministries which was always inspiring.

Over the years the Academy grew and we added conferences. We did a version of the conference on the East Coast for a few years and then created a new event when we teamed up with Disney World. Disney offered a couple of sessions on imagination/vision and we followed up with sessions outlining implications of the Disney talks for the church. We had the misfortune of moving that event to Disneyland one month after 9/11. The financial hit we took on that event ended that particular conference. Too bad as it was really unique.

One summer, early on in our conference adventures, we took the conference on the road. The Good News Band (the group that lead the Sunday night service and then the Seeker service at Joy) and I did one night worship conferences from here to Minneapolis. We stopped in Albuquerque, Denver, Minden, Nebraska (we drove through cornfields forever to get to it--almost drove past it, but it was the best stop of the tour. They'd never had anything like us come through their little town before. Voted best pot-luck ever by the band. Also home of Pioneer Village), Lincoln, Sioux City, Iowa, Okoboji, and finally, St. Paul. I did a one hour presentation on seeker worship and then the band and I modeled it.

One year we did a conference on story-telling. I brought in a well-respected Hollywood Screenwriter. He was fantastic. But he was rather cynical about faith. By the afternoon the worship center was filled with his F-bombs! Pretty interesting experience--a room full of pastors who want to shape culture with the Gospel listening to one of the primary culture shapers--a movie screenwriter, using language not often heard in a church! It made for an interesting 24 hours. To my delight, with the exception of a couple of people, everyone in attendance loved it.

Eventually the conferences morphed into a full-blown Leadership Center. We not only offered conferences but consulting and resources. We even went international (more on that in another post.)

Out of those conferences I wrote 5 books. Two of them sold quite well. Three of them, not so much.

As the Leadership Center grew I could no longer keep up with all of its demands, nor did I want to. I was content leading the conferences. So Paul Sorensen, one of our pastors at Joy, took the helm and helped guide the Center into its potential.

I loved those conferences. Everything about them. Because I really enjoyed hanging around other pastors and church leaders, dreaming together about how we could do a better job of bringing Jesus to our communities.

It's been over 5 years since our last conference but I still hear from pastors whose ministries were revolutionized by their time at Joy. That's pretty darn rewarding.