Francis Chan

He mentions Exodus 33:15 – the rest of these notes are written as I heard him… so there’s a lot of “I” in the following paragraphs, but that is Francis talking… good stuff.

If He’s not in this thing – I don’t wanna be a part of it. Verge – on the outer edge… just about to cross. We’re on the verge of seeing something happen – what God is already doing. Timing – everything these guys are talking about is what God has already been putting on my heart.

I liked American Church – I like hiding in the back. To his wife “of all the people on the earth, you bug me the least”

There is a unity and a love in the scriptures that we really don’t see in the church as we’ve been doing it. Maybe we’re regurgant – whatever we see in scripture is just what comes out.

We have to make sure this is driven theologically though. I’ve had other ideas: try this, try that. This is different. One of my elders said, “God doesn’t get mad at the people, He gets mad at the leaders.” Looking at scripture, we have to change… I don’t know how. This is theologically driven – it’s scripture – we can’t quit.

Be biblically corageous. Be as biblical as you can. Erase everything else. Open up the bible and do what it says. Would you ever have come up with this just reading scripture? My first thought wouldn’t be, “let’s have a gathering.” Make disciples – go out and make disciples. That’s what I would think. Staying on mission requires others – you can’t do it alone. Gathering would happen naturally in the disciple-making process. We domesticate.

In the church, when Jesus says it, we don’t have to do it, we just have to memorize it (compared to Simon says). If I tell my daughter to clean my room – she could just memorize it and say it in Greek and have a study group about what it would look like if she did that.

When I meet a brother, I have to treat that person like family. Acts 2 & Acts 4:32. It’s radical what they did, but it makes sense. If you saw someone rise from the grave, you would tell everyone you know. The way we love one another is how others see Jesus. When others come to our gatherings they still don’t see that.

Do you think that way? Do we think about what Jesus wants. What does He desire? He wants to see us living like family. Like an extension of one another.

Why do people say this is cultural? Why would they write it down if it was just cultural? Why can’t this happen to us? What’s mine is truly yours if you ever need it. We are each other’s life insurance. Let’s be interdependent with one another. It’s so rare. It’s those times that feel like the Bible.

Are you sure you’ve experienced the Holy Spirit this last year? We’re not in here starting and strategizing a movement. This has got to be a Jesus thing. The disciples didn’t plan out Pentecost. It was the Holy Spirit working in a bunch of different individuals to create one unified result. You don’t go out to a calm ocean to try and make a wave so you can surf – this is the same thing. The waves are created by Jesus and we’re along for the ride. If we start a movement, there’s no power to it.

Do we pray for our neighbors and neighborhoods? Are we just trying too hard?

Like the Big Red Tractor – are we just pushing and pulling it along? Finding the most talented people and do enough to make us happy? That’s not enough. It’s not what we see in scripture.

Let’s pray – let’s pray that our churches are family. We don’t look like family anymore. We’re as individualistic as the rest of the world. If we pray for this to change, we know we’re praying in Jesus name because these are things clearly in scripture that God wants – help us to love one another so much so that people would see Christ in how we love one another. I’m asking that we really make Jesus Lord. Let’s not just memorize, study, and talk. Nothing was going to stop the church in teh book of Acts – it was an unstoppable force.