FEBRUARY OCPN & ACTS 29 GATHERING RECAP
Click through our slideshow & read the blog post below!
On February 16th, we gathered pastors, leaders, and church planters all over Florida. It is always a great privilege to see faithful leaders who want to saturate their cities with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
The speaker was Brian Lowe - Pastor of Exodus Church (Belmont)
The topic of his message: The Glory of God in Church Planting. It was a study on Colossians, the faithfulness of Epaphras and Paul, and the glory of Christ in the Church. When reading Colossians 4:12, we saw that “Epaphras, who is one of you, a servant of Christ Jesus….” We were reminded that we are sheep before we are shepherds. Epaphras was a leader at Colossae, but Paul still emphasized our place in the Catholic Church (Universal Church). He was a redeemed man used for the task; they learned from Epaphras, which means they were discipled by him.
There is a need for a vision of Jesus and a vision of the Gospel. That is what will save and sustain us in the task. Christ is the one who sustains us in the task, and He is the head of the church. I am not the ultimate authority over my wife, children, or church.
For Brian, we need a bigger picture of the Gospel than “the crazy.” Crazy will always happen, but the light of the Gospel will shine in the middle of hardship. God will use us in spite of us. We have no idea why our churches are still here, only the Glory of God. We’re all ordinary people.
Eddie Copeland
There was a time of conversations with Eddie Copeland. There was a discussion on why don’t we work with other churches. There are three reasons: Ego, Logo, and Pride. That strongly urged us to humble ourselves as pastors and church planters and serve other congregations. To close this short conversation, Eddie said that “the unity of the church is the greatest apologetics we will have.” When we talked about John 17.
Rodney Wilkinson - Gospel Fellowship - Boynton Beach
The last to preach in the morning was Rodney, and he talked about The partnership of marriage in church planting. We read Ephesians 5:22-32. And one of the first stories that he told us was when he was assessing a candidate a few years ago. He said that a friend told him that whenever a pastor is talking, you should look at his wife to check what his saying. At this specific assessment, this man was giving all the right answers, but he saw his wife uncomfortable. Then he asks her: “And how do you feel about this church plant?”. As she tries to hold together for a while, her body posture tells how distressed she was then she says, “I told you I wasn’t on board. And you want me to sit in front of these people and lie, but I won‘t.”
What a great illustration to remind us that we are on mission together, and by God’s grace, that couple was counseled that church planting was not for them at that moment. The Lord wanted to work on their marriage first because God loves them, not what they do for Him. We were glad to hear that this couple is now serving God in a local church and doing well; praise the Lord!
Marriage is hard, and many church planters want to postpone working on their marriage because they are “busy” planting this church right now or busy with their kids, and there is always an excuse not to work on their marriage. We were reminded that the purpose of our marriages is to display the Glory of God, and that’s not only from the pulpit, not as a cover-up for the church people.
The profound mystery of marriage that Paul mentions in the text is between Christ and the Church. In our marriages as pastors and church planters, we display how beautiful that can be when its foundation is the Grace and Love of God.
After that, we had lunch together, and some pastor brought their questions about Acts 29. We also had some breakout sessions in which we learned about many different topics about church planting, and some planters shared about their journey into planting and how we could help them financially, in prayer, and even working together with them.
Then we finished with Pastor Boyd Bettis from The district church in Jacksonville.
He shared on Ecclesiastes 1:8-11 and Romans 15:14-19, and the theme was Planting Together. We are ministers and servants at the same time. Sometimes we lose sight of the power of God in His word, and He’s working in us even in the hard moments. We need a missionary heart to plant churches. Where is Christ not being proclaimed yet? We need to plant churches in those places, not where it is convenient for us. How can we strategically plant there? How can we send people and resources there?
How dependent on the Lord are we? We can never assume that we have it all figured out. We need the Lord all the time.