Read this first: http://faithparley.blogspot.com/2009/05/something-happened-last-night.html

I was there (I’m the Asian-American Brandon mentions) and I felt such an electricity last night looking around at all of these pastors who share the same heart. The concept that 7 men representing 4 church plants could get together in one living room and start talking about how they could effectively partner with each other to reach the city in tangible productive ways was incredibly moving. None of us were there to see how we could grow our church – we were all there to see how we could be the Church in Austin: living in and building missional (gospel) communities, doing real work to help real people in this city with no other agenda than to show love and mercy, and to brainstorm ways to create a means to enable other pastors to do the same thing.

Crossing demoninational and theological lines is a very difficult thing for pastors to do… especially in American culture where competition is a part of growing up… everything is a game or a contest and everyone is told they can be the best if they give it their best (which is a bald-faced lie… but I digress). While the Church should be immune to this, it has proven to be a difficult thing to overcome (competitiveness is actually celebrated by most) without God’s amazing grace leading the way. None of us in the room were experts and none claimed to be… we didn’t come in thinking we had it all figured out – we came in with the genuine desire to see what God is going to do with this unusual partnership.

I’m very excited to see what tomorrow brings… really, really excited.