Hey now you're an allstar!!

People here are going a little nuts about the whole church planting thing....http://www.sydneyanglicans.net/insight/letter_from_seattle

But there is no doubting some of these churches in the US are going pretty amazingly, but then you meet the main guys and you realize they are certainly not average, in lots of ways http://theresurgence.com/interview-with-matt-chandler-video

So - what gives? Same Gospel very different results around here??

They obviously do heaps of things well, but Ultimately it is a little hard to get away from the fact that they all seem to be built around BIG Personalities. Their preaching is Theologically orthodox, (if at times surrounded by what seems to me to be a lot of humour laden padding), but there is definitely a positive response to it!

There is no way I could sit in church and look at a screen preach - but then maybe the outsider or new christian would be fine with that?? (and maybe midweek meetings would be a good way of using that kind of secondary teaching approach?)

I can't imagine hiring a guy to "pastor" a congregation and tell him his 3 years of college means he gets to set up the data projector!! (and get me a coffee while you're at it damn it!!)

Driscoll starts his from scratch which means you get to set the culture, Chandler (as he explains in the interview linked above) took over 160 and grew it to 6000... I cannot even truthfully comprehend that... much less how you even begin to go about it...

But then I still have a hard time comprehending from some of our older members the reality of the Billy Graham appeals 50 years ago (143,000 at the SCG), http://www.abc.net.au/compass/s2484481.htm, he makes these guys (respectfully) look like rank amateurs!!

So same Gospel today, "that Christ died for our sins in our place and because of that all who believe that He is the saving Lord, will inherit eternal life - so be reconciled to God!" produces one of two things - sight or blindness...

Can any church do things better, to help demonstrate and not hinder the proclamation of the Gospel - absolutely (some need to do more than others)... but maybe Al Stewart is right, the ground here looks pretty hard at the moment (which is what sewing seed is like generally in Australia!), which Piper might agree with in his comment about the hearts of men growing cold.....

Maybe we saw the season of harvest in Sydney in '59, and now we are into a season of hard plowing and sewing and all the unglamourous stuff!!