Amazing! What a start to Unleash. I’m seeing lots of friends. I’ll post pix later. Perry launched the conference this morning teaching from Matthew 17.

  • “Church is an incredibly confusing place if you don’t know the rules.” When you don’t understand, the rules are confusing.
  • “If you’re Baptist, you think your normal.”
  • The problem with most churches is this. They say, “If you don’t know the rules, to Hell with you.”
  • America is seeking God like crazy, but they’re not coming to Church to find him.
  • We need creative environments.
  • “Christianity is the most exciting thing to ever hit this planet, and it’s taken the Church 2,000 years to make it boring.”
  • The sermon begins in the parking lot. Within the first 15 minutes, people decide whether or not they’re going to return–before they’ve even heard the sermon.
  • Every week is someone’s first week in this church.
  • We give people half-baked, pitiful, lethargic presentations and we pray for the Holy Spirit to use it to reach people for Jesus. God’s not going to bless that.
  • We have to offer our very best. We have to have the hard conversations with people that are not a fit in order to offer our best.
  • “The only people that get mad when you talk about money are the people who aren’t giving any money.” You need to teach about money.
  • We need to look beyond ourselves.
  • We’ve been commanded to take this Message to the world.
  • “What type of people do you want in your church?” You have to decide that. It impacts how you do church.
  • “The time when people need grace the most, we say ‘to Hell with you.’” “We can’t pretend our poo-poo doesn’t stink.”
  • “You can’t get your church too big.”
  • There are thousands of names written on our walls. They are friends of people in our church who need Jesus. “Don’t tell me ‘it’s not about the numbers.’ If you say that, I’ll punch you in the throat.” :-)
  • We need to pay attention.
  • “Get up,” and “don’t be afraid.”
  • Creative people are not normal. They’re weird. Creative people are happy when the pastor plans ahead. They can’t be creative (or happy) when you give them something to create on Wednesday or Thursday for a message on Sunday.
  • When you take steps to honor God, people will criticize you. “When you begin to do what God wants you to do, you’re going to piss some people off.”
  • We need to focus on what matters.
  • People’s problems are not their behavior–people’s problems are that they don’t know Jesus.
  • Boycotting Disney as an example. That’s stupid. Disney isn’t a Christian organization. We can’t expect a organization that isn’t a Christian organization to act like a Christian organization. That’s like getting mad at a duck because it acts like a duck. “All you do is quack. Stupid duck.”
  • “When they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus” (Mt: 17:8).
  • We need to focus on Jesus.
  • What we do matters for eternity.