I contacted Dell support and they were kind enough to allow me to switch operating systems (from Vista to XP). I didn’t have the option of pre-installing XP at the time, so I went with Vista. After 7 months of having touchpad issues, I started getting the dreaded blue screens of death. Exciting. Today I am officially sans-Vista, and have spent the last 3.5 hours installing XP and all the dell drivers dell left out!

Today I heard Alan Hirsch speak at the Missional Track. It’s great to go back to where my whole vision started: simple, missional, incarnational. Basically what Alan Hirsch talked about was reaching the Western Culture for Christ. He started off with a simple illustration of cultural distance (in reference to knowing Chirst).

Cultural Distance

/—–/—–/—–/—–/

0 1 2 3 4

Each integer represents a cultural barrier to the gospel such as:

• Worldview
• Belief system
• Language

Thus, “0″ equals being a Christian, and “4″ is as far aways as can be from Christ.

The point that Alan made is that Western culture is moving further and further away from “0,” and that most church methods are based on reaching people by bringing people to the church (church as center, or “0″). While this is still well and good because some percentage of Amercan culture can be reach this way, we still need to figure out how to reach the other 60% (or more).

He made the point that the church growth movement has been around for 40 years, and has contributed (made evangelism more present), it still hasn’t been the answer for the decline of churches in America (and in Europe). In fact, the church is still in decline in America, and we must watch to make sure we don’t end up like Europe.

I can’t wait to find out what is next!

Well, the first day of the Exponential Conference is over. This conference is basically about starting churches, whether traditional or not, which gives you a mixed bag of folks. People like Neil Cole, Andy Stanley, and Rick Warren are there. There is definiately a clash of methodologies present, but at least we can all agree that the overall goal of everyone there is the same: we want the world to really know Jesus Chirst.