Learning From Perry Noble At Unleash Conference

The first session of Unleash was pretty exciting.  It was my first time at NewSpring Church, and the room was full of excitement.

He started the conference off by taking us to Joshua 5, which is where the story is told that God told Joshua to make flint knives and to circumcise the sons of Israel for a second time.  You might guess that the room was filled with nervous laughter as Perry began to unpack the situation.  Joshua was asked to circumcise hundreds of thousands of grown men.  He capped the description off by saying, “And we think leadership is hard!”

Perry followed this Scripture up by talking about a trip he took with his family, in which they stopped at a cliff that people could jump off into a lake.  The cliff was pretty high, and Perry admitted to being afraid to jump.  However, his very young daughter decided she wanted to jump.  At this request, Perry’s first response was to tell her that she was not allowed.  But, he thought if she saw the height from which she had to jump, that she might change her mind on her own.

He was wrong.

He stood at the top of the cliff with her, and as they leaned over to see how far she would fall, she responded, “I wanna jump, daddy!”

So, he let her jump!

Crazy, right?  His point was this.  So many church leaders are afraid to jump into what God has called them to do.  Because they’re afraid, they tell the next generation that they shouldn’t jump either.  But he didn’t take the courage of the next generation into consideration.  She wanted to jump – and she did!

Church leaders have forgotten how to jump.

4 Factors Involved in Bold Church Leadership:

1. Desperation Factor

1. God brought them to a place and marked them, so that they had to be desperate for God, because without his provision, they can’t go on.
2. When was the last time you were desperate for God?

2. Sacrifice Factor

1. Everybody in Joshua’s church loved the idea of progress.  It’s the sacrifice we have a problem with.
2. When it comes to sacrifice, leaders have to go first.
   1. i.     Comforts need to go.
      1. We’d like that people come back every week, rather than they’re lives be changed.
      2. We’re more concerned with attendance than repentance.
      3. We want people to enjoy our church services, but God might people to be disturbed!
      4. The church needs to be comfortable with the lost acting like the lost.  We should just be glad they’re in church!
      5. ii.     Conformity needs to go, too.
         1. Stop using Christian buzzwords to describe yourself.  Just go prove it by loving your community!
         2. Some of us are rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

3. Recognition Factor

1. Joshua 5:13
2. The reason churches look like they like today is because the leadership doesn’t recognize Jesus anymore.
3. Are we building His church or asking Him to build ours?

4. Strategy Factor

1. Joshua 6:1-5 – If you’re a leader, you’re not reading this, thinking, “That’s gonna work.”
2. Church leaders need to stop depending so much on strategy and start looking to Jesus again.
3. Vision ALWAYS comes before strategy.
   1. i.     If I wrote a book about surgery, there’s not a doctor in the world who would buy it, but people listen to anyone in the church world?!
   2. ii.     That’s stupid!
   3. iii.     Listen to God. Do what He says!
4. Too many churches are just trying to “get back to Acts 2.”
   1. i.     Why go back, when that was where God started?
   2. ii.     He’s doing a new thing now!
5. If you can fully explain everything that’s happening in your church, then God is probably not involved.

My notes from the second session will come soon.