A week ago Saturday I taught Veritas at Community Covenant Church in Lenexa Kansas. God provided a record number of people …150. It was very exciting to see people hungry and thirsty for more of God in their congregations. People really want their churches to be fully awake and alive in Christ.

I'm touched by the great feedback we continue to get from folks who attend. One person even wrote a blog article about their experience.

Courtney and I attended a 6 hour seminar at church on Saturday. It was about facing the hard truth about your church. Is it a healthy missional church, or is it failing to reach the culture around it?

People came from Covenant Churches from all over Kansas and Missouri. Courtney knew people from 6 churches! The event was held at our church though.

The seminar is named Veritas, and the speaker is John Wenrich. I've added a brand new link on my sidebar named Covenant Vitality Movement Blog where you can read more about it.

I will also be posting something in the future with some detailed observations about our own church. I think I'm good at recognizing the situation of our church, but I'm not good at coming up with ideas to make it a healthy missional church. It would be a team effort and would take 4-7 years.

I actually have increasing self-esteem about the Covenant denomination. Wheras when I grew up in the church, I did not see how it was much different than anything else. It seems like it has been able to get out of the ruts of tradition, and is now able to address our culture.

And the number of e-mails I've received since Saturday amazes me. Check these out…

I attended the VERITAS workshop this past weekend in Lenexa, Kansas, and I wanted to thank you for the presentation. I attend the start-up church from El Dorado and this seminar was most helpful for us. Thank you for your ministry! The Leaders are having a meeting tonight with VERITAS being a huge part of the discussion.

We are in the very early stages of determining if we are going to construct a church building, and I believe the information you shared with us parallels this situation perfectly.

I wanted to ask your permission to use your handouts to help us in our decision making. It is such good information!

Do you mind? Again, thank you for the training, it was an absolute blessing. GOD IS GREAT!

****

You mentioned that this coming weekend that you will be videotaping Veritas. If we could get a copy of that DVD, I am sure that we could put it to use in a timely manner. Many in our church really need to see and hear the workshop.

****

Just wanted to tell you that when the ten of us from Topeka prepared to leave the Veritas workshop, we agreed to meet at our church for feedback. The result of that meeting was that this morning, those who attended our second service met from 9:00 - 9:30 for prayer...four of us were able to be there. Then two or three who had attended first service met for prayer during second service. It is a small beginning...but a beginning! We did not want to be a church who had done nothing to follow up on an excellent conference.

God is at work breathing new life into his church! Please pray that God would continue to use Veritas to bring good will throughout the Covenant and in this movement of revitalization.

p.s. We filmed Veritas in Minneapolis this past weekend. The DVD should be ready soon.