To Whom It May Concern thoughts about life as I see it

Notes for Advance ‘09 Day 1

Here are some notes that I have taken from the first day of Advance '09:

Mark Driscoll: What is the Church? [Listen Here]

Eight Marks of a Church

1. Regenerate Believers
2. Qualified Leadership
3. Gathering for preaching and worship
4. Sacraments are done
5. Unified by the Spirit
6. Discipline for holiness
7. Obey the great commandment to love
8. Obey the great commission

Also, he had these tidbits to say:

• "Spending only time with Christians can lead to koinonitus."
• "Don't be so creative you become a heretic; I would rather be faithful than cool."
• "If you don't have unbelievers coming to your church, it may be because you don't talk about Jesus or you have Sunday school."
• The Church is to:
  
  • Be Gathered and Scattered
  • Be Attractional and Missional
    
  • Be Connecting the Sermons to small groups
  • Not confuse biblical principles with cultural methods
    

Tyler Jones: The Resurgence of the Church [Listen Here]

• "Our response to the Church is all wrong.  We don't love the body like we love should love our physical bodies."
• "Love the body, make it healthy."
• "Longterm active repentance is what the church needs. Paul suffers for Jesus for a long-term, so should we."
• "The Church is the vehicle that takes Jesus to the World."
• "Because we are only dealing with secondary issues, the bleeding of the church has turned into hemorrhaging."

Bryan Chappell: Communicating the Gospel through preaching [Listen Here]

• "The message, 'Be good' damns people.  Only God is good."
• "The Bible tars every single person in the Bible except Jesus. that's the point, to point to Jesus."
• The notes for this are here [pdf]

Matt Chandler: Preaching the Gospel to the De-churched [Listen Here]

• "If you're opening your mouth & talking about God, you are theological."
• "The only reason sin has any power in your life is because you love it."
  
• "It's funny, you have too many guys trying to become something, when the Bible talks about being nothing."
• "There has to be a recovery of the understanding of the holy doctrine of the Holy Spirit."
• "How do you develop a lifestyle of repentance? Preach the cross."
• "What many of us need to repent of is the love of ministry. We love doing ministry more than we love the Kingdom."

Overall, it was a great first day, being able to hear these men in person and what they have to say.  Look for more notes online, and if you have twitter, follow the #advance09 hashtags for real-time information regarding the Advance '09 conference.