OK, this is my final report on a talk from my day visit to Together on a Mission, unless I decide to write about what I hear in some of the teaching CDs I bought. I have actually found typing up my sermon notes a valuable excercise for myself, irrespective of whether any of my readers found it interesting.

I have already mentioned that Adrian Warnock has given us some excellent coverage of the conference. My friend Dan has now returned and got busy himself writing reports - there are five posts already on his blog.

The Thursday afternoon session was P J Smyth speaking on “Penetrating Leadership”, based on the story of Jonathan and his armour bearer attacking the Philistines. I’ll actually refer you to Adrian Warnock’s summary for the list of points, as the structure of three main points each with three sub-points is clearly outlined there.

The passage was treated as a lesson in leadership, with special focus on the type of risk-taking faith needed for church planting ventures. Killing Philistines was a metaphor for taking territory for the kingdom (no hand-wringing apologies for the nasty, mean and unkind bits of the Old Testament here!). He took time to specifically pray for prophets and preachers, and remind them of the need to be bold in proclamation. Overall it was more of an inspirational rather than informational message. The commitment to church planting cannot just be mentally assented to, it requires leaders to get out there and take bold steps of faith.

Having recently read his book critiquing churches such as those in newfrontiers, I wonder if Ian Stackhouse would have taken issue with last year’s message from P J which called for the building of some mega-churches (“juggernauts”). And maybe he would have considered this year’s message too ‘militant’. But I think that it was a timely call at what was after all a leaders conference, not to sit back and congratulate ourselves for the progress already made, but to be willing to take risks of faith to see the kingdom extended.