NextGen 2011 Highlights 

 by Brad Franklin 

Hi Friends,

When you receive this letter I will be sitting in a meeting. I suspect you're like me in this: I don't care much for meetings. I'm a proponent of Patrick Lencioni's perspective that meetings ought to be a lot more like movies: unpredictable, engaging, with a certain amount of conflict thrown in to make it interesting. Yes, and finished in about two hours. Tops.

The fortunate thing about the meeting I'll be in is that I will be with an interesting, stimulating group of church leaders. The event is the annual meeting of the board of directors of CBAmerica.

I know, some of you are searching for the delete key.

The good news is that our national association of churches, which has not had a stellar reputation for unity or progress, is suddenly experiencing both. The board is led by the eight Regional Executive Directors from around the country. These are good men who are seeking to bless the pastors in their respective regions and lead a fractious movement of independent churches into a cohesive mission. And some good stuff is happening that we can share together.

For example, Jim Leary, the so-called RED from Mission Mid-Atlantic, has been trained to help churches in conflict. He will soon be offering that training to our region so that we can serve one another in a really significant area: Peacemaking.

Mark Hoeffner, the RED from CB Northwest, is doing some great work in the area of church-planting. We will benefit from that work here in our region too.

I thought you should know a little about what is going on nationally. It is easy to feel that we are pressing on alone. We are not. We are not only surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses who have run the race before us. We are surrounded by a bunch of people who are running it with us.

Now, please pray for me. It's still a meeting.

Grace,

Brad Franklin

Transitional Director, Next Generation Churches

PS: By the way, a lot of the guys who are running the race with us will be at Mt Hermon February 7-9. If you're there, you'll be able to encourage them too.