Lasting Impressions: Mark Waltz Session Innovate 2009

More great stuff from Mark Waltz here.....

• Will we be responsible for people or to people?


• I'm not the star of the story... God owns life change, not me.


• When I think I'm responsible "for" people, I think I have to dictate what their next step is in their walk toward Christ vs. I know they must figure out what their next step is...
• I talk to God on their behalf vs talking to a lot of people on God's behalf
• People are responsible for their own actions vs. me feeling the guilt/shame for their actions
• I share journeys, offer encouragement/teaching vs. never allowing people to wrestle/mess up
• Our energy is going to be To people and For environments
• We need to create spaces for people to tell their story... it communicates they matter and can develop a sense of belonging... I'm not alone and my story matters to someone else.
• When stories take place, my story connects with God's story and to stories of others around me
• What is space?: Giving people the opportunity to tell their story, a environment to be safe, ask questions, challenge, and where there's grace (my understanding of space)
• Recommended book: Search to Belong by Joseph Myers
• For most of us, we won't have more than 4-6 intimate friends our whole life and half of those will be within our family... "I trust this person to a level that I can share anything about my life to them, and I have. He/she has my back and can also share in return and I have their back."
• Think like a designer, what's the purpose of this environment? Who will use this space? What do we want people to experience in this environment? What do we want people to leave with? Who's responsible for quality control?
• Goal is to help people to move from visiting to owning... own their journey
• Look for opportunities to give people "on ramps" to get involved
• We can't create "personal" spaces but we can control the environment to help people organically find those connections
• Sometimes "measurables" are selfish in nature. We care more that we want to know we're successful for what we did and for whom. Sometimes stats aren't needed.
• We decided to be a church "with" small groups, not "of" small groups... a church "of" relationships

Big Idea: Be purposeful about the spaces we create for people to connect