A Hour With David Foster

I just returned from meeting with David Foster. He pastors The Gathering in Franklin and has been in ministry for over 20 years. He’s written books and is a very articulate & relevant speaker. I emailed him last week to tell him that I’d like to meet with him so I could learn from his experience in ministry. He shot me an email back and we decided on coffee at Starbucks. This meeting has been a year in the making. I met him at The Leadership Summit and said that I’d call to set up a meeting with him. The problem was that I wasn’t ready just yet. One year ago, our church was in the middle of transition. But it really was I who was in the middle of it. Call it selfishness, pride, or whatever. The fact was that I really wasn’t ready to learn from someone else.

Today, I sat across from David and soaked up everything he said. He had pastored at a church in my hometown while I was in middle school. He left Greeneville to come to Nashville and reach this city for Christ. Today’s face to face meeting was more of an introductory meeting, but I still wanted to learn as much as I could sitting across the table. You can read his blog and learn a great deal from it. But when someone speaks, you see their body language and passion at work. I saw lots of that today. There were so many things that I learned, but here’s some of the highlights:

• Don’t organize a leadership team too quickly. Take your time and get the right people in place.
• The days of multi-million dollar church buildings are over. Unless your church grows so much that you have no other choice.
• The number of people who don’t regularly attend church is more than you imagine - 80%
• If 1,000 churches are targeting the 20% who do go to church, what about the people who don’t go?
• If you go after the people that “normal” churches don’t care about, your church will explode with growth.

Thanks so much David for an hour of your time!

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