Feeling the Need

Notes from Perry Noble’s presentation during Unleash 2007

“Christianity is the most exciting thing
that happened to the planet
and it took 2000 years to make it boring.”

• We serve a Great God
• Desire to make Jesus famous

Why churches struggle

• Church is a confusing place if you don’t know the rules
• Most churches have attitude — if you don’t know our rules, then you don’t belong here
• America is seeking God like crazy and they’re not coming to church because we’re out of Jesus
• Our job — make Jesus famous

Improving the Church

1. Need creative environments
   • Need to work in every area to make church creative
   • Most visitors make their mind up about whether to come back within first 15 minutes
   • Every week is somebodies first time to hear about Jesus
   • Put people in environment where they can hear about Jesus
   • Should offer Jesus our best
   • Be good enough to steal something (ideas) and make it better
2. Look beyond ourself
   • Basically we’re selfish people
   • It’s not the great suggestion — it’s the Great Commission
   • What type of people do you want in your church
   • The time when they need grace the most — we say “hell to you” when we should be welcoming them
   • Just be glad they’re in church
   • What kind of people do we want?
   • Misconception about being “deep” — Deep is when you confuse the heck out of me so I can feel smarter but lacks applications so when I leave I don’t have to do anything for Jesus
   • Those wanting to be fed — show up ready — open your Bible
   • You can’t get your church too big — You can know everybody or you can know Jesus — you can’t know both
3. Need to pay attention (or we mess it up)
   • Get up — show world who Christ is
   • Don’t be afraid
   • Creative people become frustrated by lack of lead time to develop creative concepts for worship
   • Take steps to honor God
   • Don’t fear criticism
4. Focus on what matters
   • Ignore stupid, trivial matters that don’t matter
   • Jesus is the focus
   • People’s behavior won’t change until perspective changes — their perspective won’t change until they know Jesus

“What the church is called to do will matter for eternity.” Perry Noble