Two nights ago I had the privilege of spending the night at the home of Otto Wegner in Center City Philadelphia. Otto is a man I admire so much and I really enjoy gleaning from his years of church planting and ministry experience. With that said, here’s a few things I took away from the conversation we had over breakfast:

• We shouldn’t measure success by size, sound and speed but by community transformation.
• When a person who is illiterate and without a job comes to the altar and commits their life to Christ, they’ll wake-up the next morning with a new life in Christ, but they still can’t read and don’t have a job.
• We need to celebrate steps of faith by ministries here in America just as we celebrate those same acts oversees on the mission field.
• The method is the Message. How we communicate the Message speaks volumes to our confidence in it.
• Too often we are not confident in the Message enough, so we feel a need to compensate for it.
• (One of his mainstay quotes) “The presence of God’s people guarantees the presence of God.”
• As the salt of the earth we can’t just sit there and wait for people to realize their thirsty.
• We shouldn’t just plant churches for the sake of church planting – it’s about community transformation.
• Pay with time for things that appreciate. Pay with cash for things that depreciate.