In 1979, I attended my first Christian conference. I was just a young kid at the time. The conference was called Jesus ’79, and I still remember some of the speakers (Tony Campolo was one of them).

I’ve been to countless Christian conferences since as an attendee and then as a speaker.

To be frank (and I am ), in all the years that I’ve attended Christian conferences, the most appealing part for me was in getting to know the people outside of scheduled sessions. Fellowship, connecting, building new relationships, and networking were the highlights.

With few exceptions, the speaking generally didn’t impress me. Only those speakers who knew how to unveil Jesus Christ made an impression.

I’ve often said that the difference between good preachers and great preachers is that good preachers leave you saying, “What an excellent sermon,” while great preachers leave you saying, “Wow, what a Christ!”

Fast forward to five years ago.

In 2007, some of my close friends and I were persuaded by a number of people to begin holding a different kind of conference. And so Threshold was born. Our first event launched in 2009. Continue Reading…

Yesterday I wrote about my visit to Leonard Sweet’s crib in Orcas Island to share at his Spring advance.

One of the questions we discussed was, “Is there a coming Revival? And if so, what will it look like, how will the body of Christ respond, and who will it affect?”

I thought I’d post some of what I said in my answer to the question and ask a related question so all of you can weigh-in.

The Charismatics often define revival differently than do other Christians. Namely, Charismatics regard one of the characteristics of a revival to be signs and wonders.

Consequently, they typically count as “revivals” the Azusa street revival in 1906-1909 in Southern California, the Latter Rain revival of 1948 in Canada, and the 1994 revival beginning in Lakeland, Florida, moving to Toronto, Canada; Melbourne, Florida; and then Pensacola, Florida.

(The latter was dubbed “The Toronto Blessing.” I was present in the early meetings in Lakeland when it first broke out. I also visited the church in Melbourne, Florida to which it had spread. A decade later, I visited the same church in Melbourne, and it had become a hollow shell. But that’s another story for another day.)

I’m defining revival here in the classic sense. It’s when scores and scores of people get converted to Jesus Christ in a short time-span (usually four years). And this massive conversion phenomenon covers more than a few cities. It typically embraces an entire nation and sometimes other nations.

With respect to the United States, there have been two revivals in the 20^th century. Both were undeniable. Continue Reading…

“I am prepared to go anywhere . . . provided it be forward.”

~ David Livingston

Today we complete our series on beyond evangelical. Some of you asked me to compile all the posts in the series into an eBook. I’ve decided to take you up on the suggestion.

Here are four things you’ll want to know about the upcoming book:

1. It will contain all seven posts in the “beyond evangelical” series.
2. It will contain new chapters that have never been published anywhere.
3. It will contain several previously published posts that are related to the subject.
4. It will release in June (God willing).

As I’ve established throughout this series, those who have moved beyond evangelical (which is short for beyond evangelicalism) are neither on the Christian left nor on the Christian right.

They are neither fundamentalist nor emergent.

They are neither postmodern nor modern.

They are neither pietistic nor activist.

They are neither legalistic nor libertine.

Those who have moved beyond evangelical embrace elements of each theological/political position, yet they have gone beyond them. Continue Reading…