Here are my notes from Francis Chan’s message at Exponential last week.  Good stuff.

• Church planting doesn’t have to be a miserable experience.  It can be great, even when there are stressful times here and there.
• Always struggled with the book of Acts because it looks so different from today.
• Acts 4:13 – they recognized they had been Jesus b/c of their boldness and they recognized they had been with Jesus.
• We have people in our church that are incredibly educated but lack the boldness to lead and serve.
• Paul asked the church to pray for him to have more boldness..he prayed this when he was possibly the boldest man for Christ at the time.
• God wants to use the ordinary and foolish things to astonish the world.  These ordinary men had a boldness about them.
• If I could go back 15 years and start over, I would ask for more boldness.
• I’m finally saying things that I’ve been thinking for the last 15 years.

exogesis vs isogesis –

exogesis – start from the scriptures, study what does this say, lead out from the truth
isogesis – already have a thought and a theology and take verses from the Bible to prove or fit your point

• we need an exegetical approach to church planting and ministry
• False religions, teachings and cults come from an isogetical approach to the Bible:
• Mormons – you would never start from scripture and come up with jesus had a great great grandfather
• Jehovah Witnesses – you would never start by just reading the Bible and say “i got it, Jesus was Michael the archangel.”
• just get alone, believe in the Holy Spirit and study the Bible by yourself was his response to them
• Would we consider that as a church
• When we started our church, we “know” what we need yet is that what we would start with if we started from Scripture
• I’ve been preaching exegetically but haven’t always been living that way
• If I just started with Scripture what would my theology be
• Gangs are more like family often moreso than our churches
• One former gang member – “It’s like Satan stole God’s playbook”

• We need the boldness of Elijah – 450 prophets of Baal, and he basically told them You’re going down
• The false prophets, after the fire fell from heaven, were just saying “The Lord is God”
• When was the last time people left saying The Lord is God
• Sometimes our worship resembles more the prophets of Baal vs Elijah’s experience – a lot of noise and stuff going on but no presence of God
• Elijah was a man like us but prayed earnestly.  He actually didn’t pray that long.

It is time for us to REALLY begin to believe in the power of the Holy Spirit