:: Leaders are Learners, 2 ::

Last week, I posted the different ways I'm growing and learning. As I flew back from Tacoma, WA this week, where I spent a week with a church made up of communities on mission, I realized that this month has been packed with training. Which led me to realize that there are two other great ways I'm learning and growing. One of them I've been given in abundance this month; the other I'm just re-realizing my great need for.

Formal Training: I've posted a few reviews during the past months, of the church plant crash course I've done since May: a training roadtrip this summer; conferences, and books have been huge helps in shaping The City Church. But as luck or providence would have it, I've gotten to spend 15 of the 31 days in October doing "formal training" with some of the greatest church plant thinkers in the country (especially in the idea of "communities on mission"). I mention them by name out of deep gratitude, knowing that for me personally and for The City Church corporately, their impact has helped shape us:

• Bob Roberts Jr, Omar Reyes, Brian Hook, and Bobby Vaughn of Northwood Church and Vision360, who have hosted two training sessions to bookend the month of October [where I'm currently "multitasking" to write this!].
• Barry Keldie and the good folks at Providence Church, who host a monthly roundtable for planters, and Rick White at CityView Church, who was this month's guest presenter.
• Ed Stetzer, missologist, author of several books, and director of LifeWay Research, then Hugh Halter and Matt Smay, authors of Tangible Kingdom and founders of Adullam and Missio, who all came to Fort Worth for dinner and conversation with a dozen or so of us.
• Jeff Vanderstelt, Caesar Kalinowski, Abe Meysenberg, and many good folks at Soma Communities, for hosting a 7-day "conference" for 30 of us, letting us experience life in their unique church family and model.
  

Stopping and Being: In full juxtaposition to the formal training above, and even more impacting than "pressing hard into God" I mentioned in the last post, I've learned how often I need to stop.
To rest.
To dwell.
To reflect.
To be.
In God.
Period.

The difference in my mind of pressing into God and this is that everything I listed in the other post involved something I do! So much of my life is erroneously spent trying to DO, and in this month's extra-busyness, I've been reminded of my deep, deep need to stop; to be still; to rest in God. To push through all the overgrowth of service, work, and activity, to find God in a clearing, and to dwell there. Rather than do, I need to stop and be. And just as my pressing into God gives me "strength, sustenance, purpose, and identity" (from the last post), as I stop and dwell with God, I remember that all those things come from him. I am his blessed and beloved child, and I don't have to DO anything to earn them.

I need this. We all do. All of our strength, sustenance, purpose, and identity is found there too, by nothing we've done or will do.