Today was an incredible day as we had the first gathering of area Pastors. God blessed us with 35 pastors from other churches and some 10 or so wonderful folks from our church who helped make it happen. God really showed up at the meeting. I believe that God will use it to begin to create synergistic relationships between the churches in our area so that God’s Kingdom can be furthered to an even greater degree.

The setting for the event was the wonderful Club Continental on the river. Our wonderful team of volunteers and staff worked tirelessly last night and this morning to get everything set up by 11:00am. People began arriving on time at 11:30. We began introductions around 11:45 and everyone sat down for a great meal by the clubs staff.

Eddie, Angel, Brian, Renee, Diane, Craig, and Rick stepped up and played 2 wonderful songs to get people into worship. Most everyone seemed well engaged and seemed to enjoy the experience.

I was then given the blessed opportunity to share the vision for the churches to come together primarily around 5 points. (see other post with podcast of message!). Here are the 5 points. Here are 5 things they did:

1) They focused on the absolutes of scripture.
   a) They stopped looking at the ways they were different and started to function in the ways they were alike.
2) They encouraged the leaders and individual Christians in town to promote Christ and His Word above their particular church or way of doing things.
3) They prayed to raise the water level of the Holy Spirit in their city.
4) They appreciated one another’s respected interpretations of scripture.
5) They practiced supportive speech and actions towards others.

Here were some opportunities that were highlighted:
1.    Networking–
a.    Get to know one another,
b.    Events like this
c.    To start a dialogue,
d.    To begin to learn about each other
i.    personally and our churches corporately.

2.    Prayer –
a.    gather together periodically to pray for
i.    our city,
ii.    our churches,
iii.    our communities,
iv.    our government, etc. –
b.    Maybe even dream about a world prayer center.

3.    Benevolence –
a.    I’ve heard of other church alliances that collaborated to centralize benevolence in their area so that people couldn’t work the system and so that they could more effectively steward their resources in this area.
b.    Today there is no catalogue of available resources or needs in our community on issues such as:
Addiction
Elder care, clothing, finances, etc.
What if we cataloged that and leveraged it so that we all knew what resources and needs were out there to meet them together?

By not working together we might be actually wasting kingdom resources that could help more people because of our inefficiencies.

4.    Collaborate on important social issues of the day.
a.    Example for you today.
b.    CCVCS – Assistant State Attorney Sam Garrison here today.
i.    <Bring Sam Up>
c.    Diane Hutchings here today –
i.    Through the American Family Forum they polled all of our local candidates on issues pertaining to church and family to hear how they stand in an effort to better educate church goers without bias..
d.    Fred Meiners – Sea Mark Ranch
e.    Many more of these exist, yet lie uncovered,
i.    What if churches worked together to address these social issues?
ii.    What kind of impact might we have on our community?

5.    Evangelistic Events –
a.    Serve Tampa Bay-
i.    series of simple acts of Christian kindness that culminated in a worship event where 1500+ got saved and then directed into local churches.
b.    Family Fun Fest
i.    Pastor Wayne – Come share for just a few minutes.

Pastors were then given an opportunity to fill out a connection card if they wanted to engage in any of those areas. Which many did.

I stand in awe of God for giving me the opportunity to share with this fine group of Godly men and women. I continue to join with others to believe God that amazing things will happen as a result.

A special thanks to my loving wife Mary Jo for supporting me in this, my awesome friends Amery, Pam, Erin, Eddie, Angel, Brian, Renee, Diane, Craig, and Rick who worked so hard to make this happen. I love you all dearly and couldn’t think of doing life without you!

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