Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending an afternoon workshop with Ed Stetzer (blog|twitter) at Richview Church in Toronto, hosted by Darryl Dash (blog|twitter) and FEBToronto. While OBC may not fit the exact mould of a church in need of revitalization, I was eager to hear from Ed on the topic and I’m very glad I went. As is usually the case, hearing from someone as knowledgeable on a range of topics as Ed Stetzer is, there is always lots of good information to be received, whether or not it all applies directly to my immediate context.

The afternoon session was targeted mainly towards pastors and church staff and Ed did a great job of acknowledging that and also guiding his content for that audience. The evening session (which I didn’t attend) was intended for elders, board members and other leaders.

Here are some thoughts from Ed’s presentation that stuck with me -

• “In North America, the ‘typical’ church is in plateau or decline”
• “Churches try to make lots of changes to change course but it is clear that churches who changes their core values to line up with cultural norms (Ed mentioned sexuality, specifically) are more likely to be in decline”
• “The scandal of the church is we have made it okay for people to come week after week and just sit there”
• Ed had some great stuff to say about the architecture and design of typical church sanctuaries and auditoriums, comparing the seating to what is typically seen with bleachers or theatres where an audience comes to watch a performance happening on a stage
• He spent some good time encouraging pastors to lead their churches in being Biblical, Missional & Spiritual
• Telling the story of a church he helped in a turnaround period, Rolling Hills Baptist Church was the stand-in example church for most of Ed’s points. Through a series of events, this small church began to rediscover their neighbourhood and their mission while at the same time discovering that their way of doing church didn’t make sense in the light of what they were uncovering. As one person from that church said after visiting several other congregations, “the church changed and nobody told us!”
• A good chunk of Ed’s time was spent talking about the role of pastors and leaders in church revitalization:
  • The people have to be part of the turnaround – Acts 6
  • Decide on a course of action – Nehemiah 2
  • Proactive leadership – 1 Timothy 3
• Ed told the story of his wife’s regular rearranging furniture in their home. When he asked her why she did it, her reply was “Because I want to see what it looks like.” His reply to her? “Why don’t you just close your eyes and imagine what it looks like?” She said to him, “Normal people don’t do that!”
  • His encouragement to pastors and leaders that “normal people” don’t have the sense of vision and calling for the church was, I think, a profound moment for some people. He reminded us that part of our job as leaders is to help people “see” in to the future before there is a future to be seen.

I came away from my short time with Ed Stetzer energized and with lots of great thoughts in my head. I’m looking forward to another opportunity to hear more from him and other leaders like him. I’m not sure if this is the first in a new series of events like this for FEBToronto but if the interest in and success of this event is an indication, I think there are some good reasons to be doing more of them.

Thanks Darryl and your team for making this happen. Thanks to FEBCentral for their partnership in the event as well.

If you’re looking for more quotes from the day, Darryl had a pretty good stream of them going on twitter – www.twitter.com/DashHouse