Vineyard USA 2019 National Conference Recap
This past July, I was afforded a wonderful honor: I was included on the speaking roster at the Vineyard USA National Conference. Given that this is the Association of Vineyard Churches that is my home movement, I was deeply grateful and really humbled to be included in the limited few that have had the privilege of addressing the movement. It turned out to be a wonderfully fun time, although the backstory may be a little more colorful than those present were aware of.
The Conference
This particular national conference wound up being particularly interesting for a few reasons. The first of which was that the theme of the conference is one near and dear to my heart: Come Holy Spirit: Spirit Ministry and the Local Church. Given how much of my life has been dedicated to equipping local churches in Holy Spirit ministry, I was thrilled that our movement wanted to take our every-two-years national meeting to focus on just this topic. So exciting!
The other element of this national conference that was particularly fascinating was that this year Vineyard USA tried doing a dual-location conference. The whole national conference was held back-to-back weeks first in Dayton, Ohio, then in Denver, Colorado. A number of Association of Vineyard Churches (the name of each national network) have been experimenting with their national conferences, and I assume this was an attempt (and a successful one) to reach a higher fraction of the movement.
The speaker lineup was a wonderful crew of people. In addition to our Vineyard USA National Director, Phil Strout, we had Vineyard legend Steve Nicholson, as well as our well-known innovator & church planter, Jay Pathak. From the UK, we had Vineyard UK & Ireland Co-National Director, Debby Wright, as well as founder of Soul Survivor, Mike Pilavachi. Like many major conferences these days, there was also a full lineup of TED talks from wonderful speakers (including some OTJ friends - Carolyn Yoder, Clay Harrington, Brian Blount, Chalane Coit, Wilson Cochrane, Phil Chorlian, and more!)
My Road There
When Phil Strout asked me if I would speak at the conference, I was really quite surprised as it was not something I was expecting. After checking on logistics and so forth, I agreed, and thus began the road of preparation. Given that this was my first (and possibly only) time to have the honor of sharing with the Vineyard USA family in this way, I really wanted to take the opportunity seriously and bring a word from the Lord to our Vineyard family.
The process of working through hearing God for a message to share usually feels like a murky and fuzzy process. It often feels like you’re wandering through the fog, not quite sure where things are headed, until hopefully things click into clarity with a kind of “a-ha” moment that brings what you’re trying to say into focus. Until you get there, the journey is one of hanging in there and wrestling through the process, all the while trying to listen to God.
For this particular message, the process felt difficult. Early on, I had the sense that it was important to talk about the strategic window of time our movement is presently in, but beyond that, I really wasn’t sure what God was saying. I wrote the message, talked through it, and rewrote it at least 4-5 times. Each time, I would sense I was headed in the right direction, but it didn’t feel quite right. Finally, I scrapped and rewrote 80% of the message the Saturday before the conference. Might have had the chance to talk through it one more time, then I was on the road. I definitely didn’t go in feeling very confident I had heard the Lord or had something important to say to our movement. On top of that, I never felt the Lord give me any sense of what the ministry time was supposed to be. I didn’t like that, but I figured I’d just go up there and wing it…
Speaking to the Movement
Of the two conferences, Dayton was the first, and I think that wound up playing out well on my side. Because of our proximity to Dayton, I knew a lot more people there, and I could feel the energy and the support of not only the large group we brought from our home church, but also of many friends attending from other churches as well.
As I took the stage and began to share, I settled into telling my story of encountering the Holy Spirit and my life changing course. Fortunately for me, I’ve told this story so many times at this point that it helped me relax, and the story is so funny and bizarre that I felt the group really connect with me as well. I continued through the main thrust of my content, sharing from the all-too-overpreached passage of the Elijah-Elisha succession, extracting lessons for the different generations of the Vineyard movement and encouraging us that we need to learn to operate as a multigenerational family in some new ways. Surprisingly, I felt it was going rather well! Being internally prepared for something less positive than what was happening, I was encouraged.
Finally, the message concluded, and we began to transition to ministry time—the part I’d been most dreading. Not knowing exactly where we should start, I felt it would be a good idea to start with honoring the first and founding generation, so I asked them to stand up. As they did, the group exploded into celebration and applause. I felt Phil Strout, our national director, was supposed to bless and honor them, so I invited Phil to take the stage and jump in. This was as much of a sense for what to do as I had. Once Phil was done… I had no idea what was next!
Phil takes the stage (with a bit of joking about how I could have prepared him better) and begins to tell this audience that this talk was a word from the Lord for our movement. What!?!? Seriously?? Because I kind of felt like this was anything but that.
While I’m still stunned and taking it all in, Phil leans over to me and says he thinks he knows what we’re supposed to do for ministry time. Relieved, I thought to myself, oh….the Lord didn’t show me, because He wanted to show Phil. Thrilled to have finally found what God was doing, I readily agreed, and Phil led us through a powerful and beautiful moment of generational reconciliation and blessing. It was beautiful and powerful, and us being on the stage doing it together wound up being such a wonderful illustration of exactly what my talk was about. It played out so much better than I could have dreamed up, and it was one of those things that God put together in the moment in such an exciting way. One week later in Denver, God so generously showed up in just as powerful of ways with that group as he had the week prior. Of course, this was just my experience of my session. The other speakers all brought powerful messages and ministry times, and the whole conference really blew me away. We asked the Spirit of God to come in the name of our conference, and come He did.
Always in Process…
I think it’s easy to believe that there is a time when we might “arrive” when it comes to our faith. We all have people we look up to, people who have gone before us in the faith, that we think to ourselves, If I ever reach THAT person’s level, my faith won’t have the uncertainty or discomfort I have now. We think that at some point we will come to the place where we don’t struggle with our humanity as God leads us along.
At least from where I stand right now, I’m not convinced that ever changes, and I suspect that might be on purpose. I think God loves to take this journey with us, and part of that involves walking by faith more than sight at times. In fact, I think it is being willing to be the person who will walk with God through the uncertainty that gives us what we need to pour into others. It’s only when we’ve found something in God that we have anything worthwhile to give away; otherwise, I’m just sharing out of my ideas, rather than God’s grace. Over time, some areas of risk begin to feel more comfortable, but then God goes and pushes you into a new place where the stakes are bigger than before and you’re wrestling with the same knots in your stomach and desperately asking God to speak clearly.
The thing is, we’re always in process, and I think God loves that. It’s easy for us to want the process to end—we tend to value achievement, and we want to arrive and complete the process—but I think God values the process more than our achievement. God is relational before He is missional. He loves the process because we have to walk with him so closely in it. I value the result, but often God’s priority is the journey. If we’ll walk the journey with him, we’ll find him at the end of the journey the same way we’ve been with Him the whole way through.
Putty Putman
The Vineyard Church
Urbana, IL