Nazarenes Gather for M7 in Kansas City
Nazarenes from all over the United States and Canada came to Kansas City for M7, the Mid-Quadrennial Conference on Mission and Evangelism, and the denomination’s largest gathering between general assemblies.
Over 4,000 people attended plenary, mega-seminar, and workshop sessions, and other functions at the downtown Kansas City Convention Center in Bartle Hall from February 19-21.
“We welcome the Nazarene family to Kansas City for a time to share and consider how to reach our mission field for Christ in a post-modern world,” stated Tom Nees, director, USA/Canada Mission/Evangelism Department, and M7 director.
The conference opened with a plenary address from Dan Boone, president of Trevecca Nazarene University. Boone, a descendant of the American frontiersman Daniel Boone, proved an able explorer as he guided the assembly into the unfamiliar territory of God’s future. “The only way for us to get into God’s future is to get God’s future into us,” he proclaimed. Using Revelation 11:15-18 and 21:1-5 as a starting point, Boone explained that God calls us into a redemptive partnership to create a new future. “We are always looking for ways to energize the clergy,” related Boone, but he explained that having an eschatology, a vision of God’s future reconciliation, will provide pastors with all the energy they need to lead with hope. “It is a magnetic pull that is full of divine energy.”
Tuesday morning plenary speaker, Oliver Phillips, decided to discard a prepared address to help the assembly focus on the implications of the new denominational statement of mission, “To Make Christ-like Disciples in the Nations.” Phillips, who serves as Mission Strategy Director for the U.S. and Canada, pondered the scope and meaning of the phrase “Christ-like” as he reflected on the implications of the church’s witness in the world. “We are to make Christ-like disciples, but I want to ask which Christ and who’s Christ we are trying to be like,” proclaimed Phillips.
In his attempt to define Christ-likeness for the church, Phillips offered two main portraits, both of which came from the gospel of John. Phillips called for an embracing Christ woos us in spite of who we are. Phillips, a former drug addict and alcoholic, asked the church make room for everyone despite their struggles and failures.
Phillips then related Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman who came to the well to draw water in John 4. By engaging her and offering redemption, Jesus voluntarily crossed gender and cultural taboos. “This Jesus broke down geographic, cultural, and gender barriers out of his desire to be a revolutionary change agent and to speak out against systems of oppression,” proclaimed Phillips. “Jesus was not only about extending compassion, but establishing justice.”
During the Tuesday evening plenary session, church leadership expert and author, Reggie McNeal, shared the three shifts that must be made to join the missional church movement. The first shift is a movement from being internal to external. McNeal explained, “So much of our evangelism strategies focus on turning people into church people. All we do is end up taking people away from the places where they can be salt and life to others. The church is a connector to help people get where they want to go—which is abundant life. When we confuse that, we miss what Jesus meant.”
McNeal said that missional churches should be into people development rather than be program-driven. “The days of templating people’s spiritual experiences are over. We believe if we keep people busy, they’ll be disciples, but we are wearing them out.”
In explaining the last shift, McNeal emphasized the need for apostolic-based leadership, “I tell people it’s A.D. 30 all over again. God is at work in the world and the church must move to where ministry is taking place.”
Susie Shellenberger, a registered Nazarene evangelist and editor of Focus on the Family’s Brio magazine for teenage girls, brought Wednesday morning’s plenary address. “We all like to be comfortable, but God is not impressed with our comfortableness,” stated Shellenberger, who warned against spiritual complacency. In a call for spiritual intimacy, she stated, “God does not want us to be close to him, or next to him, but part of him.” Shellenberger closed asking the assembly to live in radical obedience to the movement of the Holy Spirit in our culture and our relationships. “It will cost us everything,” she advised.
The closing service of the M7 Conference was one of commissioning. Nina Gunter, the first woman general superintendent of the Church of the Nazarene, was the featured preacher of the night. Her message was titled “What in the World Is God Doing?” and was based on Luke 5:33-39, the parable of the old and new wineskins. She began by speaking of how difficult it can be at times to know what God is doing in the world. The transcendence and otherness of God has not, however, made Him a distant God, because He has made himself approachable in the incarnation of Christ. God has chosen to make himself and His activity known in our world.
She called the church to abandon fear of innovation, fear of new paradigms of inclusion, fear of launching out into the deep. She challenged hearers that we must “do some things differently if we want God to be at work redemptively in our lives and in our church.”
Gunter warned that the rate of change in our culture has increased so quickly that what used to take a generation now changes every 5 years, which presents challenges for our church, some of the biggest challenges in our 100-year history.
Gunter called upon her hearers to rise to those challenges, to re-Wesleyanize the Church of the Nazarene. She asserted that this church is a vigorous 100-year-old, who can still give birth! “We can embrace new methods, new structures, and new ways to connect, serve, and resource our church, all for the ultimate work God has called us to, the work of making Christlike disciples in the nations.”
In addition to the five plenary services, M7 offered over 240 workshops and a multi-site ministry track featuring nationally-known presenters from Leadership Network. Jim Dorsey, Evangelism Ministries Director, stated that many pastors and church leaders expressed excitement and gratitude for so many innovative and challenging multi-site and other workshop offerings.
On Tuesday morning, General Superintendent Jerry Porter made the first public announcement to a national gathering about the upcoming Nazarene Centennial on October 5, 2008. Porter shared that a celebration was being planned that would include every local church in every world area. Resources will be made available online at www.nazarenecentennial.org.
Music was a special highlight of all conference services, which featured many excellent soloists and groups, including The Sharpes, and Adam’s Voice, as well as choirs from the Ft. Lauderdale Manor Church and Brooklyn Beulah Church, and a combined Mass Choir. Eon Trotman and Dave Hubbs coordinated conference music.
Each plenary service featured resurrection stories of changed lives from across the United States. These stories were gathered on video specifically for M7.
Over 500 college and university students from nearly every Nazarene campus and several secular campuses brought energy and enthusiasm to the event.
Prior to M7, over 200 volunteers were involved in a One Heart, Many Hands service project, which benefited several inner-city Nazarene-sponsored ministries and sites in the Kansas City area. OHMH coordinator, George Sisler, related, “It has been a rewarding experience to work with the pastors and laity of the Kansas City District and to participate first-hand in their ministries. There has been a lot of love in Jesus’ name going on and it has been so very good to be a part of it.”
For more information about M7, visit the conference site online at www.m7conference.org, which has video, news, and photo galleries, which will be added to over the next few weeks.