Keynote Speaker: Dr. Rick Barger

Lead Pastor, Abiding Hope Lutheran Church
                        Littleton, Colorado

The Converted Church:

An Age-Old Vision Whose Time Has Come

God calls, gathers, and sends the church as the agent or God’s redemptive activity in the world.  Mission is thus not something that the church does but rather what the church is.  The church is God’s mission in the world.  The challenge that the Northern American church faces and the promise it holds for the world are not about a lack of programs, tactics, or strategies.  The challenge is a deeply spiritual one.  Though the church has its own rhetoric and rituals that speak about the things of Christ and the worship of God, a fair assessment of the actual witness of the church would conclude that it looks much more like functional agnosticism than a body that is seized by the gospel and boldly claims it and serves it.   Congregations generally organize themselves around programming, budgets, committees, and Robert’s Rules of Order rather than the courageous, life-changing mission for which it is claimed and called.  The “converted church” is a vision to become a church that actually takes the gospel with ultimate seriousness, and though sinners, endeavors to think like Jesus, and act like him – for the sake of the world.