Scott, #15 means that in our multi-site strategy we are trying to create more local and more personal congregations, filled with people who know and are known, not just venues where we can gather an audience to hear me preach and watch a show. If the multi-site movement has any value in it, imo, it is in making the church “smaller,” more accessible, more personal, and more pastoral.

* Celebrate the Lord’s supper weekly, and do so with wine and bread which Christ said is the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. Both historically and Scripturally, this is one central thing Christ’s Apostles taught the gathered church to do together. The gospel is not proclaimed by word only. ‘For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.’

I’m new to the area, and I’m quickly noticing a trend. Four times a year, or perhaps once a month in the particularly devout congregations I visit, they may turn off their $60,000 sound system for long enough to partake of little cheap juice and a crumb of cracker. He said ‘do *this* in remembrance of me,’ about one thing people, and he didn’t stutter.

And even when the staff has embraced it, we (the “dumb sheep” congregation) still have a long ways to go toward internalizing it.

The pastor should not assume that once something is stated or taught, it has been internalized. I don’t know why it takes so long, but maybe it has to do with being dumb sheep, or maybe it is a recognition that the Holy Spirit has actually been working it into the pastor’s life and thoughts for quite a while before he ever utters it a staff member.

Grace and glory,
yucko