As we head off to the morning sessions today and then hit the travel road back home this afternoon, I wanted to share a couple brief thoughts so far on the Verge Conference. I hope to post a bit more in-depth once I get home, but for now, here are a couple of impressions:

I am encouraged. To be able to look around a room full of 2,100 people who are not only intrigued by the idea of missional communities but intrigued enough to spend time, money and effort to come hear more about is tremendous. Over the past few years I have become increasingly disillusioned by the way we Americans have typically tended to “do” church. It is a consumer-driven, entertainment-based model where the church is the purveyor of spiritual goods in a local community and the best way you will grow is through marketing. Leadership and whatever equipping might be present is from a top-down, information-heavy model that in the end, very rarely creates effective, robust disciples. To know many other share this sense of (I hope) holy discontent with the modern American model is encouraging.

I am hesitant. We’re wrapping up the conference and still, no one has sought to present a clear, compelling definition of what a missional community truly is. An astute listener might be able to pick out bits and pieces and weave together a definition, but it would seem to me that, at a conference such as this, especially the first of its kind, they wouldn’t simply assume that so many people are already well into the book. We all might be on the first page together, but some are already about to flip to the second page while many others are still stuck on the first word.

I understand that this is the concern of many people with misisional and I, at times, share this concern. As Ed Stetzer recently said, many of us could be more clear. It would seem to me that a conference such as this is the perfect place to do that. You have a room full of 2,100 people, many of them Tweeting and blogging instantly. What a better place than to lay down some clear parameters. Without that, are we really any better off than before the conference?

I am intrigued and excited. This conference received better interest than I ever thought it would. That may simply because I can be a pessimist, but I don’t think so. I can’t wait to see where this leads. I am hesitant to use the word “movement,” but it is past time for the Church in America to stop playing around. Let’s see what happens next.